This may sound dumb but.....

Originally posted by billybob
hey we're switchin' gears here, but what the hey...
what about lightsails? that's a cool concept. getting light to (gradually) push you up to light speed.
or what about a dimensional jump or wormhole to bypass the limits of three dee?

A dimensional jump or wormhole is always a possibility, far beyond us at the moment, but always a chance.

The light sail theory wouldn't work to get you to light speed. (Or it would, but it would take infinite time to get there). As the mass of the ship would still increase. It'd be like a sailing boat on earth getting heavier and heavier. Even though the wind stayed the same speed, the ship would accelerate slower and slower as its mass increased.

Originally posted by THENEO
Hey Billy did I ever tell you how cool your avatar is?

it is absolutely the coolest, cool. such a profound lttle drawing. the keys to the secrets of the multiverse in a simple symbol.
on behalf of god, i thank you.

Originally posted by Kano

A dimensional jump or wormhole is always a possibility, far beyond us at the moment, but always a chance.

The light sail theory wouldn't work to get you to light speed. (Or it would, but it would take infinite time to get there). As the mass of the ship would still increase. It'd be like a sailing boat on earth getting heavier and heavier. Even though the wind stayed the same speed, the ship would accelerate slower and slower as its mass increased.

i like transversing dimensions as the most promising concept. wormholes are too unstable.

Most of you seem to make the mistake that velocity is absolute. This isn't true, all velocity is relative. All frames of reference are equally good. You can go for an heliocentric frame of reference, in which the sun is always standing still. You can also choose the center of the milkyway, the earth or some far away quasar. You can't stop the universe, because there is no way to no which frame of reference does not move in the universe.

MOTION IS ALWAYS IN RELATIONSHIP TO SOMETHING ELSE. Because if a rock was observed in EMPTY space it would always seem at 'rest' even if it was going close(!) to light-speed. Only if another rock was there as reference one would be able to say if there was motion at all! When you add another rock you would be able to see which of the rocks is moving, but only if you took one rock as 'reference point' or 'rest-body'. Now the Universe is full of rocks so one can know how every rock is moving but only how it moves in relationship to the others. That is why the earth seems to stand still and the sun seems to move around it but when one takes the sun as rest-body the earth revolves around the sun. That is why the sun seems to stand still and the rest of the galaxy seems to move but when one takes the center of the galaxy as rest-body the sun moves around and up and down, for not only does the sun revolve around the axis of the
Milky Way, but if you would look at the Milky Way from the side the sun also makes a up and down motion through and out of the accretion-disk ( I believe with a period of 26,000 years). All matter in this galaxy revolves around the galaxy center.
The gravitational pull off this galaxy and others makes them move towards each other depending of what distance and weight they are relative to each other. This is the reason why galaxies are able to collide.
This is also why if you look at a bigger scale you see "walls" and "voids" made out of galaxies.
Gravity can still have this effect because it's the only fundamental force that acts over long distances. Even if two galaxies are very far apart this force can still be 'noticed'.
Well actually gravity is not the only fundamental force working at a large distance because of the dark or repulsive force which stretches out space, but not on macroscopic scale but on quantum-scale. So that means also the space inside atoms. This dark force together with gravity are the weakest fundamental forces.

Velocity is relative because time and space are.




Forget travelling with matter you can travel by mind.

yay relative to the observer! unless da gravity drags us along wif it to sum extent so it dont seem like its moving, which is probably the deal wif the universe and time.

[Edited on 11-2-2004 by quiksilver]

NO the sun doesn't revolve around the galaxy. Wtf, surfup? The Milky Way Galaxy is spiral shaped and our solar system rests in one of the spiral arms. The sun is one of countless stars in the galaxy, completely insignificant.