light speed and space exploration

The use of a "slingshot maneuver" to gain speed, as it was shown in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, is a bit of a fallacy. A ship can gain some momentum, but only if it feeds off of both the body's gravity and it's relative velocity. While flying close to a star will increase the ship's speed due to the star's gravity, the star's gravity will also slow the ship down again as it flies away from the star.

Here's a pretty good overview of the effect:
en.wikipedia.org...

i know about the ether issue but i still dont understand how light from a fast moving star is traveling at exactly c in relation to earth. anyone have info about this? links about experiments or obersvations? i'd like to know more about it

Whether actually attaining light speed is/will be possible is mute anyway.Its really not practical when you think about it. The time it would take to reach your destination,and the fact that so many yrs back on earth would have passed already doesnt seem reasonable.

Personally,im looking forward to advances in quantum physics.If we could bend space itself to connect 2 points like a tunnel,that would be more feasible for space travel.The best example i've heard is to think of space like a piece of paper. The quickest way from point A to point B isnt a straight line,fold the paper in half so the two points meet. If we could do that with space that would be great. Of course we'd need to master and harness anti-matter. Seeing as how that seems to be the only thing capable of producing
enough energy to acomplish that feat.

Kama,dont know if you have acces to it,but the discovery science channel is always showing a special about space/time travel etc. Might be able to find some on the internet.

No. That is precisely what the Michelson-Morley experiments showed would NOT happen. The velocity of the room itself would not effect how long it took the flashlight's beam to cross the room regardless of which direction it was pointed. There is, metaphorically, no shining the light "into the wind".

I was just thinking about this and it's kinda interesting....

If you're in a spaceship going faster than light, and then you stop the ship and look back from where you came, it would appear as if your ship is moving backwards!

And considering the time issue, it doesn't make sense how you could step outside of the main timeline by going FTL. Sure if you took a powerful telescope and looked back at earth after traveling FTL you'd be looking at the past, but that doesn't mean you are in the past.

It would be fun to go FTL away from earth, use a telescope and see the history of events.

This is pretty good:
mb-soft.com...



It gets into some of the math at the end.


[edit on 25-9-2006 by Tuning Spork]

light cannot travel faster than the base speed of light. if it did than physics would break down. an interesting read is michio kaku's light speed. at least i'm pretty sure that's the title. he explains a lot of this stuff in easy to understand fashion.

The speed of light is much faster in higher dimensions.
Those who have read the space taveling cases with the alien contactees: Billy Meier and Claude Vorilhon(AKA "Rael"), know that it only takes minutes to get to a near by star system.
Anti-gravity propulsion is super fast and even faster when in other dimensions.
Have you ever seen an aircraft go from 0 MPH to over 1,000 MPH in under a second?
Take a look at the video footage of this technology in broad daylight:
ufovideosource.com...

has anyone considered this. seed of light, also means realy realy hot. when things heat up, they break down. all the particles break apart, or seperate at extreame heat.

so, if you travled at that speed, you would break apart. then, if you could slow back down, you would not all come back together again the way you were befor you started.

the law of entrophy.

i see your point tuning spork

i'm having trouble wrapping my head around this one

if light is launched from the bulb of the flashlight at light speed regardless of the speed of the flashlight, then how come it would not reach one side of the room faster than the other

the question is this: does the speed of the source of light affect the speed of the light it produces?

the speed of light is supposed to be constant which means the answer is no. yet why in the experiment in question does the light seem to be traveling with the planet? if the speed of light is constant than the room WOULD reach the light faster because of the speed of the room (though it would be red or blue shifted i think)

"Say that we are receiving light waves from a star that is standing still. Yes, we would see the light as traveling at c, the speed of light. But now, if that star was approaching us at half the speed of light, and it sent light out ahead of it (at the speed of light), the first thought is that that light should be moving at 1.5c, the addition of the two speeds. Just like what happens with a train whistle when the train is moving toward you, simple addition of speeds."

from what i believe now, the speed of the source of light (in this case the star that is moving at .5c) does not affect the speed of the light it produces. there would be major blue shift.

its like this. the speed of the source determines the "density" of the light (which results in red shift for low density or blue shift for high density) but not the speed of the light

so in the space ship flying .99999c away from us and the astronaut with the flashlight, the light would be wicked fast but it would be maaaaaaajor red shifted because it was so thin since the source of light (the flashlight) was traveling away from us at high speeds

i still think all claims to time dilation and other dimensions are untrue. i'm still looking for any evidence that i believe to prove that time and dimension are not absolutely constant

time dilation has been proven with the experiment of the two atomic clocks. one was kept on earth, the other was put into space. i'll look later for an article on it.
as for other dimentions, if you're talking about m theory.....it's all theoretical physics right now. we haven't directly observed these higher dimentions but they are predicted in the math.

as luck would have it i have immediately found an interesting site that has not one but several time dilation experiments. all of which prove time dilation exists.
here you go

hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu...

goldeneagle posted this in another thread i find it very well explained:

"Hmm, there seems to be a misconception about the therory or relativity here. The idea most of you have is the "twin paradox" idea. That time slows down on a space craft approching the speed of light and nothing can go faster than light, however this is more of an illusion other than some cosmic forces at work. My physics prof explained it, it's hard for me to but I'll give it a shot. The thing is that we don't know what happens at that speed so I can't tell you if my interpretation is correct. But it's far more plausible.

There is no such thing as a light-barrier like we have the sound-barrier. If enough energy is applied we can pass through 3.0X10^8 KM/S as any other speed. However on the space craft everything seems to have froze still. This is not because time is dilating, it's caused by light not moving because you have matched it's speed. Like looking out the window of your car when you match the speed of a semi-trailer. You are moving at high speed but the truck looks like it's standing still out the window.

Example of what happens on the ship:

If and on board clock froze at 12:00PM as your ship passes through the speed of light. It will appear to remain at that time until you slow down below the speed of light 2 hours later, then the clock will "jump" to the correct time, 2:00PM as light is able to "move" from the clock to your eyes. However you have aged at the same rate as a ground observer. This theory is more plausible than the twin paradox idea and will allow us to travel faster than the speed of light, there may be hope for interstellar travel if this holds true. But the ship would need to be piloted by computer because humans wont be able to operate the controls or read any guages at these speeds.

I explained it to the best of my abilities, hope that gives you another angle at the idea of faster than light travel and what happens when you approch the speed of light."

the only problem is that light isnt the only thing that doesnt go faster than c, the forces that hold molecules together, electricity, possibly even inertia and gravity, are only able to travel at c. what would happen if you escaped these forces is not really predictable

at speeds near c i would predict that the red shift and blue shift would be so extreme that vision would not be possible

i dont know that we need anything up to or exceding light speed for space exploration especially since overcoming aging and death are probably going to happen long before warp drives and space folding

Why can they not make a small ship or rocket that just blasts energy to accelerate in space everytime it wants to get faster and record the findings, it could be a small object that just travels in a line, send information back obviouly maybe have a camera on it, but even so its made to travel faster and faster as one possibly can in space, that way they can test a few things, it might even be able to go half the speed of light or near it that way we will see what really happens. Have a few animal species or insects inside to see if they can live, and maybe have a thruster that sends it back.

When people say it gains mass is that like getting fat?

I guess to travel the speed of light you have to be like light, your very atoms would have to be able to go that speed, you never know we might even become a nuclear bomb if we did reach light speed our atoms would not be able to handle the speed and stay together as it won't be able to handle it.

So is light related to time, does time travel at light speed too? Who says light has always been constant did the big bang travel at the speed of light? could the folding paper theory of travelling in a worm hole open a lot quicker than the light it self and is that how the universe was made faster than linear light speed?


[edit on 25-9-2006 by The time lord]

Keep in mind that the Michelson-Morley experiment measured the speed of light within their own laboratory. They weren't measuring light from the sun as they approached it at dawn versus light from the sun as the receded from it at dusk. That would have shown a slight Doppler shift. So, they measured light from light sources within their own lab, both with and against the motion of the Earth through space.

Their attempt to detect the effect of the ether on light would've been like if we were to detect the effect of our velocity through the air on sound as we sped along on that open-bed train car. But there was no ether; there was no tangible, unmoving substance to space. It was as if we found out that they weren't shouting across an open platform, but rather in an enclosed car where there would be no Doppler effect on our voices since the air was moving right along with us.

So, is space "moving along with" every body? Well, no, 'cause there isn't any substance to space. But what IS moving along with any body is it's own frame of reference, and in any frame of reference c is a constant. Oy.

One important way, perhaps, to think about light is to realise that it is not a "thing". Light, in transit, is pure energy. When we see the flashlight's beam cross the room, we are seeing energy that has been absorbed and then released/reflected by air molecules in the room. In a very real sense, we cannot "see" light. What we "see" is the effect of energy (work) on the rods and cones of our retinae that are, in turn, translated into colors in our minds. But, maybe that's getting off topic...

I want a beer.

kama, i'd have to say that explanation is doubtful. we have verified proof of time dilation. according to what we know of physical laws of our universe there isn't enough energy in the totality of the universe to reach light speed.
however that being said, folding or bending of space-time ins't impossible. and that being said, you wouldn't actually be traveling faster than light if you bent space-time. ftl travel isn't even theoretically possible because at those speeds phsyical laws break down and the resulting weirdness isn't predictable. you could be ripped into a billion pieces or shot into another universe, we don't know. but like i said, there isn't enough energy in the universe to reach light speed.

i think in the future, not sure when, folding or bending of space-time will be how we travel large distances to other stars or even galaxies. however there are a lot of things that need to be discovered before that is even remotely possible.

in regards to an earlier poster stating something about rael and aliens, i believe extraterrestial intelligence exists. i also believe they may be visiting our planet. heck our government may even have alien tech, but for right now....we the public have no access to it. so for now we'll have to do our space travel the hard way.

ok call me ignorant but nano seconds and muons are not hard evidence to me. try the time dilation experiment from space and then i'll start paying attention

ok we've established the light speed issue

now back to e=mc^2

i've read a few explinations of how it is explained but nothing that i would say was concrete enough for me to really believe. i'm talking strictly sub-light here, how does velocity determine mass? how is a body more massive traveling at sub-light speeds than if it were at absolute rest?

steven hawking in "a brief history of time" put it this way:
Because of the equivalence of energy and mass, the energy which an object has due to its motion will add to its mass.