Physicists: My theory of obtaining lightspeed!

Soldato
Joined
29 Jun 2004
Posts
12,957
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! :D
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.

steponewe7.png


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!

steptwone3.jpg





This should work, I reckon ;)
 
No relativity involved - as your ship gets quicker, it will require more and more light to be emitted from it as its mass increases as it approaches lightspeed. If it were ever to attain lightspeed, it would have an infinite mass, which would require infinite energy to move it, and is therefore impossible.

Not to mention that this is the biggest of many reasons why this is an extremely flawed concept, but I'm sure someone who didn't drop out in their second year of astrophysics at uni will explain it better than I can now.
 
Last edited:
Killerkebab said:
How will the craft then move? As far as I can see, it will fly straight in one direction at the speed of light until it slams into a body.

Forward thrusters shooting in the opposite direction would slow it down and steer it!

MasterMike said:
No relativity involved - as your ship gets quicker, it will require more and more light to be emitted from it as its mass increases as it approaches lightspeed. If it were ever to attain lightspeed, it would have an infinite mass, which would require infinite energy to move it, and is therefore impossible.

a lot of light can be obtained by nuclear fission in the engines reactors! This chain reaction lasts for a very long time from what i've read and has enough energy to power up NYC for a whole day. This will be what provides the near infinate light required for lightspeed!
 
eXSBass said:
Forward thrusters shooting in the opposite direction would slow it down and steer it!



a lot of light can be obtained by nuclear fission in the engines reactors! This chain reaction lasts for a very long time from what i've read and has enough energy to power up NYC for a whole day. This will be what provides the near infinate light required for lightspeed!

There is no such thing as near infinite. Something is either infinite or not. An infinite amount of energy is required to move an infinite amount of mass, and this is impossible.
 
MasterMike said:
There is no such thing as near infinite. Something is either infinite or not. An infinite amount of energy is required to move an infinite amount of mass, and this is impossible.

Well okay, near infinate came out wrong. But a lot of light will be ejected! :D

Comeon, this stuff has to count toward something! :D
 
eXSBass said:
Like I said, it'll need a lot of light ;)
No crappy 2 candlelight power torch!

With this level of electromagnetic radiation, isn't it likely to evaporate your mass first? (I don't know any equasions so am looking at this completely logically/with common sense)
 
firstly, you don't need a wall for the photons to bounce off. This is perfectly illustrated by current space propulsion techniques or by jet boats whose water jets shoot out into the air behind the boat not the water.
secondly your method is no different to burning conventional fuel. As you speed up your mass gets larger blah de blah.... etc.
 
Someone more with this please correct me if I'm wrong, but is eXSBass getting conservation of energy mixed up with conservation of momentum here?

Minto said:
firstly, you don't need a wall for the photons to bounce off. This is perfectly illustrated by current space propulsion techniques or by jet boats whose water jets shoot out into the air behind the boat not the water.
secondly your method is no different to burning conventional fuel. As you speed up your mass gets larger blah de blah.... etc.

I think that's about it.
 
Basically you need to read up on Special Relativity and Lorentz transformations. Sure your craft might move if you set it all up, but it's still limited by being a massive object, moving through spacetime.

As you go through a side or two of derivation, you find that to accelerate to the speed of light would require an infinite amount of energy, since momentum = gamma x m x v. When v = c, gamma goes to infinity.

gamma = 1 / {sqrt [1 - (v^2/c^2)]}

You get all of this by making the assumption that the speed of light is the same everywhere, and that each observer has their own personal measure of time.
 
Last edited:
Big flaw = nothing can be "fixed". i.e. the "big solid mass in a fixed location" is still floating in space. Or if it's attached to the earth then the earth is flowting in space.

And why does Captain Birdseye's view matter :confused:
 
Back
Top Bottom