Exceeding speed of light idea.

As far as I can tell the answer to the OP question is that at speeds a significant fraction of c, the addition of velocities in two inertial frames of reference has to be a lorentz transformation rather than the simple addition of velocities like in a galilée transformation. Basically it doesn't work as simply as 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 1.

I don't know why people are mentioning friction. :confused: :o
 
jakspyder said:
shouldnt we work on being able to easily travel at say, the speed of sound before we tackle the speed of light? ok i know most jets can do more than the speed of sound and stuff, but for example the local busses dont go that fast, and as such it takes an age to get anywhere!

so less reasearch on lightspeed and more on fast busses i say!
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Speed of sound is relative to the medium it is passing through so you could probably walk faster than the speed of sound through some mediums, albeit not walk through the medium yourself as that could be fairly painful without the advent of some fancy quantum tunneling device.
 
Having not been bothered to read the thread, has anyone yet pointed out that the third object you're accelerating from 0.66c to c? Relative to the ground that is. This is impossible.

Frame of reference confusion surely?
 
Antar Bolaeisk said:
Speed of sound is relative to the medium it is passing through so you could probably walk faster than the speed of sound through some mediums, albeit not walk through the medium yourself as that could be fairly painful without the advent of some fancy quantum tunneling device.
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true i suppose but seeing as we are here on earth walking through air and stuff and not in some crazy other place, i think working on fast mach 1 buss' on here would be best.
 
Let's say you're standing on a train that is moving at a speed of 60 mph. This means that the train's horizontal speed is 60. Your speed relative to the ground is 60, but to the train you're having a speed of 0. When you start walking at 2 mph, your speed to the ground is 62, but the speed to the train is 2.

But there's a different problem with that idea. The speed of light is 300.000.000 meters a second. 1/3rd of that is 100.000.000 meters a second. That's the same as 360.000.000 km/h. Now let's say you can do that in about 10 minutes. So you need a runway that is 1500 times as large as the earth! So where do you find a runway for this? No, not on Jupiter because it's a gas planet (no solid surface).

Now the scientists who are working on this problem are almost all retired. Have spent their entire lives working on this problem. And even before, it was studied by others including Einstein. So you can guess that stuff like that has all been tried before :)
 
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Speedy said:
Let's say you're standing on a train that is moving at a speed of 60 mph. This means that the train's horizontal speed is 60. Your speed relative to the ground is 60, but to the train you're having a speed of 0. When you start walking at 2 mph, your speed to the ground is 62, but the speed to the train is 2.

But there's a different problem with that idea. The speed of light is 300.000.000 meters a second. 1/3rd of that is 100.000.000 meters a second. That's the same as 360.000.000 km/h. Now let's say you can do that in about 10 minutes. So you need a runway that is 1500 times as large as the earth! So where do you find a runway for this? No, not on Jupiter because it's a gas planet (no solid surface).

Now the scientists who are working on this problem are almost all retired. Have spent their entire lives working on this problem. And even before, it was studied by others including Einstein. So you can guess that stuff like that has all been tried before :)
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You completely missed the point.
 
n00b question here, please don't laugh (well you can, 'cos it's very n00b!!)

If the speed of light is the fastest speed, and light itself is protons (or is it newtons, well it's something like that), then what 'force' is applied to those <thing>tons to push them?

Isn't that force therefore faster than light itself?

Or am I talking nadgers?
 
Maybe OcUK needs a general physics sticky, explaining some of the basics of GR, QM etc, complete with links to references as it seems to come up very often. It could clear up many misconception, as well as answering questions such as the OP. One day I may write one as it's great to see people being interested in physics.
 
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