Introduction
Right, get your thinking caps on.
You've seen Star Wars' Millennium Falcon travel at light speed!
You've seen Star Trek' Enterprise travel at light speed!
You've seen the ships of SG1 travel at light speed!
You've not seen modern day Earth NASA space shuttles travel at light speed!
Now i've got a theory that might just work! Just might
Background Info
A wise man once told me nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Granted that this is true, so far we've not broken no laws of Physics!
Now, light, is a funny entity. It's both, a wave and a particle at the same time. Hence, the wave-particle duality!
Now light, has both the properties of a particle and a wave, as proved by De Boglie's equation, f=λ/(mv) where f is the frequency, λ Planck's Constant and mv is mass multiplied by the velocity (momentum!).
Now, I was told when energy transfers happen in space, there is a conservation of energy, this is very important in my theory!
The Theory
During the explaination, please relate to the diagrams!
Now if the space ship can emit enough light from the (coincidently, I call them) sublight engines, then using conservation of energy, the ship should move really fast, at more or less light speeds. This occurs because the photons collide into the solid mass, but the solid mass doesn't move, so the ship does, as said in the conservation of momentum, by Newton! (Every action has an opposite but equal reaction) If this is true, my theory should work. It's broken down into more understandable steps below!
Step One:
The space ship is docked. It's trejectory is calculated and begins initial boosters.
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/5291/steponewe7.png[IMG]
As you can see the solid mass is directly behind the space shuttles engines. This will not move! It's a solid still body (this can be obtained by attatching it to the moon so it doesn't fly of)
Step Two:
As the space shuttles starts its sublight engines, the mass of the light, a lot of light in this case, causes the shuttle to jerk forward, and keep moving it forward to light speed due to conservation of energy!
[IMG]http://img58.imageshack.us/img58/8073/steptwone3.jpg[/IG]
This should work, I reckon ;)[/QUOTE]
Ok, now to make something that will withstand the pressure of light speed :p
Physicists: My theory of obtaining lightspeed!
- Thread starter Ricochet J
- Start date
Um if you had an infinite mass (due to travelling at light speed), would you not actually wipe out the entire universe, as everything would be pulled towards you (due to your gravitational pull of "infinity" Newtons) and form some kind of gigantic black hole?
Also this would happen at some point before 'infinity' (i.e. when your mass is still a real number),as infinity is not an obtainable value, so you'd never actually reach light speed anyway.
Also this would happen at some point before 'infinity' (i.e. when your mass is still a real number),as infinity is not an obtainable value, so you'd never actually reach light speed anyway.
In short no. The reason is because we are considering two definitions for mass. Relativistic mass and invariant (rest) mass. Relativistic mass, which does increase with velocity, cannot simply be substituted into equations where invariant mass is used. Such as when when working out orbits, which are based on static solutions to the Einstein equations and therefore do not take into account any momentum in the system. So although people say 'Your mass increases as your velocity,' this is slightly misleading, but an easy way to express it for the general public to understand without going into too much detail.
Exactly spp, relativistic mass is a derived term for the total energy, not fundamental and not really relevent in most contexts. The relativistic momentum is better used in most circumstances.
Jimbo have you ever done any courses in special relativity?
Jimbo have you ever done any courses in special relativity?
Not true. Our nearest star (Except the sun) is 4.2 light years away. Even at the speed of light it will take you 4.2 years to get there. Although at this speed everything else will move really quickly. So if you go there and then come back, 8.4 years will have passed for you, but many thousand or million will have passed on earth.
Hey I've got a question about lightspeed and the relativity of time:
When a body (lets call it Bob) accelerates towards the speed of light compared to another body (lets call it Norman) they both experience time nornally (their local time). But if Bob was to watch Norman, then Norman seems to slow down. And if Norman was to watch Bob then Bob seems to speed up. (btw this isn't a joke, so please dont get your hopes up lol).
So the actual act of accelerating makes Bob the faster body. But relativity says that their speed is just relative to the observer, so you could say that Norman is the body that is accelerating, not Bob. In which case, if Norman was to watch Bob then Bob would slow down. But this cannot be true unless there are two parallel dimensions where in one Bob is the accelerator, and another where Norman is the accelerator?
If this isn't true, then the act of acceleration is the important factor. So what happens if both Bob and Norman accelerate from each other with equal force - they both become the accelerator, and both observe the other as slowing down. If they both follow a circular trajectory and return to their starting point, in theory Bob will meet a younger Norman, but Norman should also meet a younger Bob. Will there be two dimensions where Bob meets a younger Norman (and Norman meets an older Bob), and another dimension where Bob meets an older Norman (and Norman meets a younger Bob)?
[I posted this three times and it hasnt seemed to have appeared lol hope this isnt an alternate reality thing]
When a body (lets call it Bob) accelerates towards the speed of light compared to another body (lets call it Norman) they both experience time nornally (their local time). But if Bob was to watch Norman, then Norman seems to slow down. And if Norman was to watch Bob then Bob seems to speed up. (btw this isn't a joke, so please dont get your hopes up lol).
So the actual act of accelerating makes Bob the faster body. But relativity says that their speed is just relative to the observer, so you could say that Norman is the body that is accelerating, not Bob. In which case, if Norman was to watch Bob then Bob would slow down. But this cannot be true unless there are two parallel dimensions where in one Bob is the accelerator, and another where Norman is the accelerator?
If this isn't true, then the act of acceleration is the important factor. So what happens if both Bob and Norman accelerate from each other with equal force - they both become the accelerator, and both observe the other as slowing down. If they both follow a circular trajectory and return to their starting point, in theory Bob will meet a younger Norman, but Norman should also meet a younger Bob. Will there be two dimensions where Bob meets a younger Norman (and Norman meets an older Bob), and another dimension where Bob meets an older Norman (and Norman meets a younger Bob)?
[I posted this three times and it hasnt seemed to have appeared lol hope this isnt an alternate reality thing]
If you ever manage to travel at the speed of light, no time will have passed for you.
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Whilst velocities can be relative, acceleration isn't.
Special Relativity only deals with inertial frames of reference - which means no resultant forces, i.e. no acceleration...
You might want to read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox#Resolution_of_the_paradox_in_special_relativity
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That's the thing I've never been able to get my head around. (The Bob thing that is)
What pressure? There's no atmosphere in space. If you accelerate slowly enough, it doesn't make a difference how fast you end up going. Travelling at a constant speed is no different to staying still except that the stuff around you is moving faster.Craig321 said:
Once you're at the speed of light you won't use fuel (assuming you travel in a straight line), so the length of the journey doesn't change the amount of fuel you need as you only need it to get to that speed, and then decelerate at the end of your journey.Energize said:
After reading that Wikipedia page, I think in this case Bob and Norman would have aged by the same amount when they meet up. If you look at the Minkowski diagram on that page, this situation would be a reflection in the x-axis, which would mean the simultaneity planes would be parallel to the x-axis.
That's exactly what I thought, relative time dilation I thought, in an
amazingly compressed space... You're a mindreader, Psyk
Time slows down for the object moving at near lightspeed. If you travelled to Alpha Centauri at 0.995C, it would take you 0.42 years to get there from your perspective, while 4.2 years would have passed on earth. It is this, that allows you to travel millions of light years in a matter of seconds from your perspective.
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Soldato
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Millions of light years in seconds?
It would take 8minutes to get to the sun AT light speed.
Edit:
They are basically telling us that, anyone in the far future who travels great distances at great speeds, will probably not come back to any living person they know, or..at least, people you knew being old.
Sucks much?
Folding space!
It would take 8minutes to get to the sun AT light speed.
Edit:
They are basically telling us that, anyone in the far future who travels great distances at great speeds, will probably not come back to any living person they know, or..at least, people you knew being old.
Sucks much?
Folding space!
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Your time slows down relative to the outside world. You travel through spacetime at lightspeed, thus when you are travelling at 0.995C in through the 3 space dimensions your speed through the other dimension ie time, decreases by 10x. Also your mass would increase and you would shrink in the direction you are travelling. The closer to the speed of light you travel, the slower you experience time relativley.
It's called special relativity and time dilation has been proven using particles, time also slows down when there is a really strong gravitational force as it warps spacetime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation
Yup, but no time has passed for the photon, being at the speed of light if any amount of time passed for the photon it would have travelled an infinite distance.
Hmm, I suppose that means if you reached the speed of light you would die instantly from your perspective as the universe would be destroyed as soon as any time passed, well assuming you weren't slowed down by something. Which I don't think is possible when you have an infinite momentum and kenetic energy?
The time dilation factor is infinite at the speed of light, so for the person travelling at the speed of light to experience any time at all an infinite amount of time would have to have passed in the universe, which is obviously not possible and so no time passes at the speed of light.
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