theory of relativity is flawed.we should be able to go faster than light.

Einstien says that the closer you get to the speed of light the more your mass increases and the more fuel and energy you would need to go faster.Well if a ships mass is made up of the ship,propulsion system and fuel then wouldent it be safe to assume that as your mass increases so does the mass of your fuel and the mass of your propulsion system which would cancle out the effect as your power output would be increasing as well?

Mass has nothing to do with the energy which the fuel produces. The reaction of the fuel stays the same while the total (so also the fuel) weighs more. That is also why you get with E=MC2 an endless amount of mass, the energy which the fuel produces doesn't increase itself.

And don't forget you're discussing the math associated with accelerating to the speed of light... not the math associated with going faster than the speed of light.

As far as relativity is concerned, these are two very different concepts. While mass increases to infinity as an object accelerates from subluminal to luminal speeds, causing an impossible equation -- the math is not impossible when considering an object that is already superluminal, or spontaneously transitions from subluminal to superluminal speeds.

i diddent mean the fuel gives more energy i ment the engine gets bigger to and so the engines mass increases with the ship and the ammount of fuel increases so when they say the ships mass is infinity and youd need an infinate ammount of fuel the ship already has it.

that doesnt make much sense, how would you have infinite fuel?

If you were to travel the speed of light, you would have infinite mass. It's not possible, within the current laws of physics.

Also, the closer to the speed of light you get, the slower time around you passes. If you hit the speed of light, time would stop for you. As with photons, which do not experience time (not that I can comprehend that at all).

When you get to the speed of light, as Will already stated, mass equals infinity, so therefore, you'd have an impossible equation, unless the object was already at a luminal or superluminal speed. Oh yeah, then you have to put up with curved spacetime.

I think I got that right. I'm no physicist.

Edit: Got to it first zzub

[Edited on 28-11-2003 by mig12]

Originally posted by frostythesnowman
i diddent mean the fuel gives more energy i ment the engine gets bigger to and so the engines mass increases with the ship and the ammount of fuel increases so when they say the ships mass is infinity and youd need an infinate ammount of fuel the ship already has it.

No. The engines do not get "bigger", they have increasing mass. The volume does not change, only the mass as a result of relativistic speeds. If this straw-man were carried out, the energy resulting from the theoretical chemical reaction of the engines-and-fuel would still be the same, thus, requiring an ever higher-energy output to maintain acceleration of the increasing mass of the spaceship and engines and fuel.

Originally posted by William
And don't forget you're discussing the math associated with accelerating to the speed of light... not the math associated with going faster than the speed of light.

As far as relativity is concerned, these are two very different concepts. While mass increases to infinity as an object accelerates from subluminal to luminal speeds, causing an impossible equation -- the math is not impossible when considering an object that is already superluminal, or spontaneously transitions from subluminal to superluminal speeds.

William's point being...there is a discontinuity at the speed of light. While the equations show "reaching" the speed of light to be impossible, once you get there and past it is a completely different set of conditions.

I do want to revisit the originating post, however. Let's not completely poo-poo off what he is trying to say. If the mass of the fuel is increasing toward infinity, just as the mass of the ship is, you must carry this down to the micro-level. So now you have the atomic level of the fuel increasing toward infinity and therefore the latent energy of the fuel increasing toward infinity...and the "eflux", if you will, increasing toward infinity, which bears a little weight toward what he is trying to say.

I think this is an interesting point of view, myself.

When you do not have complete knowledge of the following:

elemental physics
quantum mechanics
interdimensionality
time itself
gravity

then how pray tell do you know the following:

what it is like to go at the speed of light?
whether one can go faster than the speed of light?

was I the only one that saw the announcement past few weeks where they discovered a new particle in an atom?

pay tell how do they really know?

a theory is that, a theory and nothing more.

people need to learn not only about science but about the meaning of words.

they also need to learn about the politics of science.

lastly they need an open mind and to access whatever creativity that the creator may have allotted them.

thank you.

over and out.

Originally posted by frostythesnowman
Einstien says that the closer you get to the speed of light the more your mass increases and the more fuel and energy you would need to go faster.Well if a ships mass is made up of the ship,propulsion system and fuel then wouldent it be safe to assume that as your mass increases so does the mass of your fuel and the mass of your propulsion system which would cancle out the effect as your power output would be increasing as well?

When you get to the speed of light according to that theory, everything about you reaches infinity, which isnt possible. Now that is what the theory says. It may be possible to travel faster than the speed of light someday. As far as things go now there is experimental evidence supporting this theory. Now the theory doesnt rule out objects that dont have to accelerate to that speed. I believe they are called tacheons. We cannot observe these objects, and as far as science is concerned at this point, they are a possibility based on a hole in the theory, but not fact.

I'll have to agree with Theneo on this one.

......... and Seapeople.... that name is from one of the funniest SouthPark episodes ever

Originally posted by Canuck
I'll have to agree with Theneo on this one.

......... and Seapeople.... that name is from one of the funniest SouthPark episodes ever

I Know! Nice taste in television bud!

Originally posted by Canuck
I'll have to agree with Theneo on this one.

How is that possible when it doesn't appear as though Theneo actually said anything?

When you say that the mass of the fuel is increasing you are making one serious flawed assumption, that with increasing mass of the fuel you will get more energy out of it.

The flaw lies in the fact that the amount of fuel itself does not increase as you approach infinity, just the mass of it does. I have no clue what your source of fuel would be, but lets say it is Uraninum and you are using a nuclear type reaction. If you have 3 billion atoms of Uranium at 100mph which for the sake of arguement weighs a ton and can produce X amount of energy before it is all consumed. Now as you try to approach the speed of light you will still have the same 3 billion atoms of Uranium except it will now have a mass that increases to infinity and it will still only produce the same X amount of energy before it is all consumed.



Edit: LeenBekkemaa already said this but you didn't understand what he meant. If my post doesn't explain it any further then you will just have to assume you don't have the scientific knowledge to begin to understand what Einstein is talking about. I assure you that your idea does not put Einstein's theory in any jeapordy.


[Edited on 28-11-2003 by greenkoolaid]

If I'm getting this correctly, bear with me now I'm new to physics, the mass of the fuel increases as speed increases as a direct result of forward momentum, correct?
But, mass in this perspective does not necessarily mean volume, the volume of the fuel is the same no matter what speed you are going, save for the fuel you burn?

Am I right? Just curious......

Originally posted by Canuck
But, mass in this perspective does not necessarily mean volume, the volume of the fuel is the same no matter what speed you are going, save for the fuel you burn?

Am I right? Just curious......

you are right, the volume will not change. If we are onboard the space ship that is approaching the speed of light, our mass will also approach infinity. But we do not grow infinitely large and we do not have more cells in our body.

Right, the volume would stay the same...the eflux volume would stay the same, but the mass would approach infinity and there for the mass flowrate would approach infinity - hence the thrust would approach infinity.

Hrm, I think the mass flowrate would stay the same. As the mass of the fuel (or whatever you are flinging out the back of the engines) increases. The amount by which it can be accelerated by the engines decreases, as the engines extract no more power from a fuel by it being more massive. This rate of slowing should be inversely proportional to the rate the mass of the fuel/reactionary mass is increasing. Thus the flowrate should remain the same?

I would think that eventaully you wouldn't even be able to fling the fuel out the back. The weight of the ship and the fuel itself would be so large that the energy from the combustion wouldn't even be able to move either one. I am not sure what would happen, maybe the fuel would simply get blocked up in the rocket.