Reaching the speed of light

True physical Speed of light travel will never happen imho.

Like Einsteins Theory states, the closer you get to speed of light the more energy it would require to go faster and this increases to infinity the closer you get to light speed.

Warp technology and Hyper-Space travel are the only ways to surpass the speed of light limitations and with those, you aren't actualy traveling faster then the speed of light.

With Warp technology, your actualy standing still and warp the space/time around your vesel to achieve forward motion, but your vesel is actualy standing still.

With Hyper-Space technology, you transit your ship into hyper-space, a layer of space/time where traveling 1 lightyear callculates to traveling, say, 1000 lightyears in normal space/time.

Originally posted by Infoholic
2nd, If you were to break the barrier of the speed of light, wouldn't that take us to time travel? Think about it. You stand out in your back yard on a nice clear evening. You look at the stars and you are actually looking into the past. If the speed of light is calculated by how far light can travel in a years time "light year", and the distance to a long away star... the star is, let's say for the sake of argument, 100,000,000 (one hundred million) light years away... would the star in question is actually being viewed from 100,000,000 years ago?

Infoholic

Time travel?

No, it wouldn't.


Watch a football match live, if someone kicks the ball, you see the ball move, then a second or so later, you hear the kick. Now, are you watching the future when you see the kick, or are you hearing the past when you hear the kick?


If I left earth for the sun at say 2 times the speed of light [in a warp field], I'd get there in 3/4 or so minutes. Then if I immediately turned back, I'd arrive at earth 8 or so minutes after I left = no time travel. It could be viewed as no different to travelling across time zones - moving from earth time to sun time same as moving from GMT to GMT+5, while the local hour may change, the universal time-line has not moved backward.

By the way how dose the einstein's theory work (I mean the one which states that you need more energy to go faster the faster you go).

I find this hard to belive since speed is so relative concept. what is the "zero point" speed - there is no such a thing everything is so relative velocity just compares the speed between two objects. (just like someone here mentoined).

Anyway I didn't think about this for too long and only in basic concepts so my response might be highly flawed...

anyway if someone has some links to this theory I am too tiered and stupid to think on my own

By the way how dose the einstein's theory work (I mean the one which states that you need more energy to go faster the faster you go).

I find this hard to belive since speed is so relative concept. what is the "zero point" speed - there is no such a thing everything is so relative velocity just compares the speed between two objects. (just like someone here mentoined).

Anyway I didn't think about this for too long and only in basic concepts so my response might be highly flawed...

anyway if someone has some links to this theory I am too tiered and stupid to think on my own

Originally posted by Infoholic
2nd, If you were to break the barrier of the speed of light, wouldn't that take us to time travel? Think about it. You stand out in your back yard on a nice clear evening. You look at the stars and you are actually looking into the past. If the speed of light is calculated by how far light can travel in a years time "light year", and the distance to a long away star... the star is, let's say for the sake of argument, 100,000,000 (one hundred million) light years away... would the star in question is actually being viewed from 100,000,000 years ago?

Infoholic

I think the light you are seeing is 100,000,000 years old - the star would be older.

I'm not sure even if you had ftl you could reach the star before it had expired.

For arguments sake, lets say a new star appeared in our nights sky and we had the ability to get there in a few hours, those few hours are still relative in earths time regardless how far out you are. If you were to turn back and 'only' travel at lightspeed back to earth, you would age as per normal and would never make it back to earth in your lifetime.
Following these basics figures, time travel is not possible.

I've been wrong before though

reply to post by Flyboy211


It would not take 4 years, you would be there instantly when you travel at the speed of light, so it is not a problem. Only when you want to come back to earth (you would be back instantly as well), you will discover that all your family and friends are dead as many years have passed here.

I could be wrong here, but im sure that light speed cant be exceeded because light is always travelling at the same velocity, so if you were travelling at light speed from a standing observers view, light is still travelling at light speed from you, so you could never truly go faster than light? I think thats where space time comes in, not sure, just going by what i remember seeing somewhere on theoretical time travel.

[edit on 19-1-2009 by derangedinsanity]

answer is no it would not exceed the speed of light, even if it could reach it, which it couldnt.

reply to post by Novise


I very nearly said that you wouldn't be able to withstand the centrifugal force - then realised that there's no gravity in space - not sure if centrifugal force works in space
Would this create an artificial gravity anyway?

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Yeah, I actually came up with something similar to this idea some 5 years ago. Except this contraption I envisioned was nowhere near a trillion miles in diameter at all. Infact, 300,000km /pi is roughly a lever 100,000km or 62,000 miles in radius was the large end estimate as towards the size of the machine (I dubbed The Hard-Hawk) With this radius, 1 rotation per second will be enough to, according what I have researched (and I bo no means am a physicist but have studied The Theory of Relativity; and General Physics) the edge of the lever would grow more and more massive, starting of real minimal changes at first, but around 50% the speed of light the motor turning the lever would have to work harder, and the contraption may end up slowing down as a result....IF the motor was large enough, it may be possible to seed up the edge of the lever but while speeding up past this point - the radius of the lever will decrease - and in the theoretical realm the fulcrom of the lever and its edge will combine to form a rapidly spinning black hole ( IF the gravity and mass of the edge were sufficient). This has long been a interesting hypothesis to me. The ideas that spawn from man made black holes, and the potentional to discover ways of containing and mainipulating black holes (man-made) will allow for artificial gravity, antigravity, cold fusion, man made stars, and faster than light travel; things like a replicator off of Star-Trek will become more reasonable when we discover ways of turning lighter elements into other heavier elements the same way stars do; allowing us to continue to prosper well after all of earths primary minerals that contribute to building of earths daily infastructure; including fusion in result of gasoline or diesel. If we had these abilities, one day we would have to leave this planet; say 4.5 billion years from now; and would have to move to a region of space with lighter elements like hydrogen and helium to make our oxygen and nuritment. Maybe ET's have had to do this, and are basically space driifters (though maybe not). Anyways I am still working on this contraption and have figured out a way to immobilize the artificial black hole to where it is not spinning at all (this is hypothetically done by having another lever connected tot he same motor spinning in the opposite direction. The net velocity of the two products will cancel eachother out causing an artifical black hole that is stationary, and possibly easier to contain and mainipulate).Anyways, I hope I can learn more about this contraption. I consider it a mere hypothesis than a theory. That's all I got.

The problem as other posters have stated is that the closer an object comes to the speed of light then the more energy (or torque) you need to push it, at the speed of light the amount of energy needed to spin the object faster becomes infinite and so it can't be done.

This is only true if "Special relativity" is true though, I have no reason to think that it isn't

Originally posted by davespanners
The problem as other posters have stated is that the closer an object comes to the speed of light then the more energy (or torque) you need to push it, at the speed of light the amount of energy needed to spin the object faster becomes infinite and so it can't be done.

This is only true if "Special relativity" is true though, I have no reason to think that it isn't

Yes the amount of energy needed would increase due to the increasing of the mass which is accelerating. The idea is that probably can't reach 100% the speed of light; but as long as we had a motor powerful enough; 99.999999999999999% may be reachable; and in turn may be able to manifest man made black holes.