99.99999% the speed of light ?

ok, ill appolagize first of all, its another "kinda" LHC type question, indirectly.

basicly, ive been watching as much docu's as possible, and reading loads on the topic.

in everything they mention that they are going to fire protons at 99.9999% the speed of light. Also, the physisists always say that we are constantly bombarded by particles that hit our atmosphere at "near" the speed of light.

now, my questions are why do they only go near the speed of light ?

and

arent we constantly being hit by particles that are traveling at the actual speed of light, in the form of actual light ?

although i have a feeling this strays into the matter / anti matter topics, and the LHC might tell us why that is

(all doomys please dont hijack this topic!)

Well I don't know much about things like this, but I do know light isn't a particle. It isn't a wave either. Light is just light. A little packet of energy, what we call a photon.
The only thing that can go lightspeed are electromagnetic waves, I think, and that fact that protons are particles means that it would require an infinite amount of energy to get them to lightspeed. Considering there isn't an infinite amount of energy in the universe, let alone the generators that power the LHC, then that is kinda hard. But it doesn't require an infinite amount of energy to propel something to 99.9999% of C, so that's what they do. The faster the better.

Yes the guy above is partially correct;
Weightless observables have a probability of action resulting in the "speed of light" as seen with the photon; it has no mass, no charge therefore it doesnt have to worry about it's physical properties in terms of accelerator energy required, inertia etc etc.

Relativity relies on constants such as the speed of light to prop up it's theories; although I can't and would never claim to be able to provide a more solid theory; the speed of light is bound to be exposed as a localised measure used by humans and by no means is any sort of dimensional speed limit.

Quantization of energy suggests that there probably is no speed limits in the universe and confusingly would suggest that "things" can actually arrive before they are sent ....bad news is we'll never be able to observe them as they're on a different level to our physical world

reply to post by watch_the_rocks


For someone who "doesn't know much about this" you certainly summed up the particle-wave duality aptly, as well as the basic reasoning why 1.0 lightspeed is not currently attainable by human technology as a projected particle. Well done!

Another aspect of quantum correlations and measurements is the aspect of simultaniety, and the core notion that the very act of measuring location and/or momentum in quantum interactions influences them.

I await these experiments with a sense of wonder and hope the yield is as fascinating and insightful as they physicists are hoping for.

It is also a question of our ability to accurately measure any phenomenon to the sensitivity of 100%.

It could very well be that the nature of light is simply mass achieving this true 100% level and thus transmuting itself from particle to wave packet.

Originally posted by boaby_phet
arent we constantly being hit by particles that are traveling at the actual speed of light, in the form of actual light ?

The particles are travelling at the speed of light correct but they are not actual light they are subatomic particles with very little mass and that is what enables them to be accelerated to very high speeds and the reason why the protons in LHC go at 99.9999%of the speed of light is because according to one of einsteins mass-velocity formula when a particles speed reaches the speed of light the particles mass becomes infinity
So, thats why they arent able to achieve 100%

ahh i love this place for answers thanks ppl.

raises another question, mainly is the speed of light actualy what the predicted speed of light is? but i will reserch this one a little more. or wait till next week.

(actualy,we will see the first experiment, but who knows when the public will get any data or results)

near the speed of light because they have mass and you cant propel things with mass to the speed of light without infinite energy thats really one of the main objectives of the lhc to smash apart the atoms and identify the sub atomic particle that carries mass the elusive god particle the higgs-boson

I have a little whackamole theory that I've been futzing with for more than 15 years..... the math isn't quite tweaked to even suggest a "proof".. but I'll share the crux of it with you. Hey, maybe someone else will take it and whip it into something that makes a difference. Maybe, on the other hand, it means nothing at all.

I started out wondering why light doesn't have an acceleration period. This, in itself, is not a new or original thought. Light manifests itself at "c" -- lightspeed -- right out of the starting gates.

I wonder......... how I wonder..... I wonder if lightspeed can be a gradually increasing variable, starting out at T (time) =0 as 0+1 and increasing velocity throughout the continuum to our present day measurement. IF, and it's a BIG if, IF that is true, it would indicate such a minimally small increase in velocity as to be hardly measurable within our lifetimes. Yeah, right, I hear you...... yet another pet theory that requires a distant point of X,Y,Z,T to measure. I have the same angst, believe me. Also........ and I'm not positive about this, but..... if this works out to be scientifically validated, I kinda think it will subtly alter the Hubble Constant. I'm not nearly so vain as to think that my silly ponderings are even in the realm of Mr. Edwin.... so that's a major drawback. Also, it kinda futzes with Special Relativity and I would never in my wildest imaginings be able to even sit down and talk with the Master intelligently, let alone tack onto his works.

So there's the dillema. I'm an arrogant kook, or a subtle visionary. My money is on #1. Still, it's something to work on on days like today, when its too windy and squally to go outside for very long.

Stupid Ike.

reply to post by argentus


The only instance I can think of for light having an acceleration is dragging reference frames around a Kerr black hole.

But the measurement would have to be intuitive as c=c in the observer's reference frame.

That went just about right. Well done.

My own theory is that for some reason light is in another dimension. We cannot observe it entirely, but we do have indirect measurements of it. Same I believe applies to quantum effects. Those are just indirect measurements of what happens in another dimension. Thus, we cannot ever get a full picture of it with our sensors that are designed to work in 3D-space.

This is all just guesswork, though. We might actually someday find an indirect effect faster than light, only to realize that we cannot go faster than that in our three dimensions. For that to be true it would require *same* energy to reach near speed of light in a world that has more dimensions. Since we can then fold space, it becomes possible to appear travelling faster than light in three dimensions.



[edit on 9/9/08 by rawsom]

reply to post by Anonymous ATS

Relativity relies on constants such as the speed of light to prop up it's theories; although I can't and would never claim to be able to provide a more solid theory; the speed of light is bound to be exposed as a localised measure used by humans and by no means is any sort of dimensional speed limit.

Hi Ano,

You should be an ATS member!

I like to say that E=MC2 is a nice mathematical formula, not the way it works in the universe. Cudos for Einstein but I suspect that even he was aware of the shortfalls of his mathematics in his later years. (Einstein was a contemporary of Braun)

reply to post by watch_the_rocks


The question on my mind is the possibility that CERN is in effect trying to create something along the lines of a photon in the expectation of studying how it is created, and how it travels.

My Scifi brain thinks that CERN will lead to the development of a 'Hyperspace' type technology in which a Photon is accelerated into the fabric of spacetime, passing momentarily out of it to reemerge farther along than it could travel on our own string.