Remember when skeptics said it was impossible to break the lightspeed barrier?

So i had this thought, i know way am i a rocket scientist or nor do i know much about quantum physics, So feel free to correct me. we all know that mass gets heavier and heavier the closer it gets to reaching lightspeed. If Anti-gravity exists, (which i believe quantum theory supports) the issue with excellerating mass past the speed of light might not be so hard after all. If we can manipulate the gravity around a space craft, wouldnt you be able to mask the crafts mass by affecting the gravitational force around it??


Please this has been on my mind for sometime. someone plz comment,

and sorry for my spelling, i was about to leave work and was in a hurry.

I dont think it is that simple
But this is my opinion only, discount it if you dont like it.

Actually i think you have to manipulate the space around the vessel, not the vessel itself since it is space that is affecting the object and not the reverse

So basically, and only my own interpretation here, if we were able to create an anti grav device, that created a "bubble" around the vehicle. The buble would deal with the stress of lightspeed mass and the craft it self would be unaffected? Now if this is true it would makes sence that antigrav would ease faster than light travel. If all that is being affected is "the bubble" of antigrav/magnetic matter, I would think you are in the clear, as magnetism is not solid and is able to bend and stretch.

Hmmmm. I'd never really thought about it like that before, and it very well could be "that simple".... oh you know minus the whole building something than can do it part. I think thats kind of an engineering hurdle. But I like the thought. The only thing is, doesnt mass increase proportionally to gravity? So mass increases proportionally to both speed and gravity? This is taking a whole other spin on the topic and now my brain is just wondering here, so sorry to the OP. But what would happen if the earth approached the speed of light? Would we feel those effects here on earth? Would we all feel heavier? Or would the gravity on earth cancel out the effects on speed and we remained feeling the same? Which is the stronger force? If its gravity, your theory could work. If its speed... your still stuck back at the drawing board.

Practical spacetravel without the side effects will be the most difficult thing humans will ever do, and I dont think it'll come to just a simple "Oh here it is" explanation unfortunately.

Originally posted by midtown5dw
If Anti-gravity exists, (which i believe quantum theory supports) the issue with accelerating mass past the speed of light might not be so hard after all.

With anti-gravity, what you're basically talking about is "anti-mass," since mass and gravity are pretty closely linked together. And I don't really know what anti-mass could be. If anything, instead of bending space in such a way that it draws other mass toward it, it would "bulge" space such that it would repel other kinds of anti-mass. Like two "North" poles on two magnets, shoving each other apart.

I don't see how that would work.

Yeah, your best bet with the speed of light thing is to move in a dimension not directly linked to ordinary spacetime. What that might be or how you would get there is anybody's guess.

[edit on 19-3-2008 by Nohup]

Yeah, you're right it's mass would increase as it approached the speed of light, but gravity doesn't effect mass, it effects weight. Weight is an object's mass times it's acceleration. So by using anti-gravity you would be able to reduce the object's weight, but not it's mass. And since acceleration is force divided mass, changing the weight wouldn't allow it to get past the infinite mass barrier. And even if it DID effect the objects mass, infinity divided by 10 is still infinity. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Originally posted by midtown5dw
If Anti-gravity exists

Mate thats a massive "if" right there.

First we need to prove that gravity is a wave which may be affected.

Or we need a unified electrogravitic theory to allow anti-gravity technologies to exist.

There is this nice version of quantum physics that says that we might be able to reach 369 times the speed of light.

I do think the lightspeed barrier is just that a barrier not a unconquerable fortress.

All the more reason to do more research into bubbles, really...

*walks off singing "I've Been Blowing Bubbles!"*

There really is no lightspeed barrier. This supposed limit from Einstein's equations is based on the equation that states that an object's mass approaches infinity as the speed of that object approaches lightspeed, relative to an observer. The key concept here is the last part, hence the Theory of Relativity'.

Bryan Thornsberry hit on this in his post. Should the earth be moving at the speed of light, would we feel a change ion gravity? No, because it would not be moving at the speed of light relative to us. Now if someone in a super-duper spaceship flew by at the speed of light, it would appear to them that the earth was infinitely massive and had an infinite gravitational field to go along with it. But as long as we stay on the surface, moving slowly relative to the planet, we feel the mass of the earth via gravity just as we always did.

I do like your concept of the space 'bubble'. That's the same concept Gene Roddenberry thought up when he needed his fictional USS Enterprise to move faster than light. Anti-matter as a power source is a bit harder to justify, as Nohup is right in his assessment of how it would (probably) react with itself. Probably why we don't see big clumps of antimatter such as we see with matter. Still, keep thinking, maybe you're onto something. Science fact follows science fiction.

TheRedneck

Hi Midtown,
You and I seem to be on the same 'wavelength' so to speak. I have also been thinking about this stuff but possibly incorporating lightspeed with time travel of sorts. (I would appreciate your thoughts on
this )
Like you I am a self confessed rank amature on these matters but it is fun to think about it.
I totally agree. the lightspeed barrier is not unbreakable. Didnt we think the sound barrier was unbreakable once upon a time?
I was hoping to see you thoughts Redneck. I have done alot more reading since the above mentioned thread. Midtown, I would be inclinded to listen to Redneck before the naysaying Eisteinists. Einsteins works have been shown to be a little questionable of some matters so dont think his writings are the gospel according to quantam physics.

To all and any. On the matter of mass increasing @ lightspeed, if light consists of particles, and the particles are something solid/tangable (as tiny as they are) how small are the particles before they are sent as light?

Since it hasn't actually been done, isn't the concept of increasing mass only theory therfore not necessarily so? Also, isn't it only an apparent perceived increase in mass? Like rednecks analogy. the passing space ship would 'see' us as a hugh mass and gravity while we wouldn't.....
this is a good time to remind people...Rank Amature...just trying to get my head around it.

Originally posted by VIKINGANT
I was hoping to see you thoughts Redneck. I have done alot more reading since the above mentioned thread. Midtown, I would be inclinded to listen to Redneck before the naysaying Eisteinists. Einsteins works have been shown to be a little questionable of some matters so dont think his writings are the gospel according to quantam physics.

I am honored. But I must admit, I consider myself an 'Einsteinist'. I just read what the man said, not what others say he said.

To all and any. On the matter of mass increasing @ lightspeed, if light consists of particles, and the particles are something solid/tangable (as tiny as they are) how small are the particles before they are sent as light?

A very good question! The way I see it, since any object moving at the speed of light relative to an observer appears to have infinite mass, and light by definition is moving at the speed of light relative to us, and light has no mass (to speak of), light must have no mass period. It may have a mass-equivalent, since mass and energy are directly related (e=m c^2).

And I realize a lot of quantum theory advocates are about to flood me with reasons why this is not true. It always happens when I breach this subject. Maybe, just maybe, someone will change my mind this time. Lord knows I have waited for someone to do so for a very long time. Proof is required.

TheRedneck

Oh, and by the way. In answer to you original question 'Remember when skeptics said it was impossible to break the lightspeed barrier?'
There are still many skeptics saying it, no matter what you put in front of them.

this is all very interesting, and as an amateur myself, i have to say that there are a few things that people have forgotten about.
firstly, if we were able to get a space craft up to light speed, how would we do it? our current means of propulsion are no where near what is required for the task!
secondly, how long are the people onboard prepared to wait to get from zero to c? if we did have the technology to get to c, what would be a reasonable acceleration without killing everyone inside?
thirdly, if we break the lightspeed barrier, what about the causality violations that would occur?
OK, so the third pointmay be solved with some decent arguements, but to address the first two.
going back to the gene roddenbury thing, the best way to travel at such speeds is to not. by this i mean that the craft should move space around it. that way the 'speed' of the craft is zero, but its displacement is c or above. and with zero speed, we can avoid the arguements of mass increasing with speed close to c.

Reading all this I am tempted to throw in something I have been reading about and that is a device you've no doubt heard of before ?

The Nazi Bell device from Silesia during WW2.

It had two contra rotating centrifugal drums containing mercury. these drums spun around a ceramic container at the central axis inside which there were various compounds in amalgam with mercury.

Outside of the centrifuge from what I gather may have been toroidal electromagnets. As it was spun the mercury fluoresced into plasma and polarised the magnetic fields around the bell.

B-17 pilots reported huge magnetic disturbances to considerable altitudes flying over a test site for the bell and this was recorded in WW2 intelligence records. It was unfortunately lethal to most personnel within 150 metres.

My point about this is were such a device able to distort gravity fields around a space ship could this alter the mass of the vehicle ?

It would be amusing if something so simple turned out to be Scotty's warp drive ?

Sy,
G'day from the mainland. I have heard of the Nazi Bell but didnt know what it did or how it worked. However, having read or explanation, it sounds very much lke some so called anti gravity devices in the way it is constructed and works. Totally different? Related? I cant say but a very interesting device non the less.

ayame2008,
You asked about the time it wold take to reach c. Are you suggesting hours, days, weeks or longer? I dont thnk it would take too long. not instant mind you but quick enough to be feasable...should the tech be available of course


[edit on 20/3/2008 by VIKINGANT]

When you start to talk about moving a person to the speed of light, if the acceleration is not performed slowly enough, the person will be squashed by inertia. As ayame2008 said, that's a massive quandry. How quick could it be?

Now if we go Roddenberryesque with this dilemma and start to manipulate space itself, we get rid of the pesky notion of moving at light-speed completely. If you can condense 1LY of space into 1cm and move your ship across it at 1 kph, then expand the condensed space, you would be 1LY from where you started, 0.036 seconds later, without ever having travelled faster than 1 kph, and obviously not getting splatted by inertia. Obviously I'm just some guy who's watched too much Star Trek and The Sky at Night, and what I describe requires scientific principles we're simply not able to exercise, not to mention probably needing amounts of power greater than the human race has ever managed to generate, but it's just the contents of my head.

Of course if someone screams past at the speed of light and sneaks a peek, everything goes out the window :-P

ok mate, lets assume your in an f1 car, you want to go from zero to 100 mph in 3.5 sec. after a bit of calculation you would discover that that is an acceleration of 12.86m/s^2. now that is a pretty bone crushing acceleration. f1 drivers are some of the fittest people around and they need to be.
now lets use that figure as a benchmark. if you wanted to accelerate from zero to c (we'll take the figure 299,792,458 m/s as c), then the time taken would be: time = change in speed/ rate of change
=299,792,458/12.86
=23312010.73 sec

or 388533.51 mins
or 6475.56 hours
or 269.81 days
or 38.54 weeks
or roughly 8.9 months

could you wait that long under that acceleration. a woman could concieve and just about give birth in that time!

Originally posted by VIKINGANT
There are still many skeptics saying it, no matter what you put in front of them.

It's not skeptics. I would hardly call Einstein a "skeptic." Besides that, the question isn't about breaking a lightspeed "barrier," like you would the sound barrier. It's about the fundamental properties of mass and gravity in what we consider to be normal spacetime, and those properties are pretty well defined.

So unless you come up with a way to encapsulate yourself in your own personal bubble of spacetime, vector through virtual space or some sideways dimension we don't currently know about, or figure out some little translational trick (something involving less than all the energy available in the universe would be be good) you're not going to be traveling faster than light anytime soon.

I both agree and disagree. Yes it is very difficult almost to the point of impossible, based on what Eistein said, BUT he was only theorising as it has never been done. You say

what we consider to be normal spacetime, and those properties are pretty well defined.

defined by who? If it has never been attempted we dont know.
Many people seem to find it difficult to get thier head around the idea that because it is difficult it doesn't mean it cannot be done.