Light Speed

Can we ever travel faster than the speed of light? I know it is meant to be impossible but people have been wrong and it seems humans go beyond limits that were previously thought impossible.

You might want to look into Tacyon particles.

Tacyon (tak�eon��) , hypothetical elementary particle that travels only at speeds exceeding that of light. According to the theory of relativity, the speed of light is the limiting velocity for all ordinary material particles. Particles having nonzero rest mass can approach, but not reach, the speed of light, since their mass would become infinite at that speed. On the other hand, particles with zero rest mass, such as the photon and the neutrino, must always travel at the speed of light; they cannot be brought to rest or even slowed down. Theorists have argued that since nothing in principle prohibits the existence of a third class of particles that travel only at speeds exceeding that of light, such particles, called tachyons [Gr. tachys,=swift] may exist although no evidence for them has been found. In the terminology of the theory, the particles that travel only at the speed of light are called luxons, and those that travel at lesser speeds are called tardyons. Like the original theory of relativity, the theory of tachyons has several aspects that appear to contradict common sense but that are fully self-consistent. For example, a tachyon must have an imaginary (in the mathematical sense) rest mass, or proper mass, and it must travel faster rather than slow down when it loses energy.

education.yahoo.com...

In space anythings possible. Consider this... a spaceship moving with positive acceleration would eventually reach the speed of light, because it would keep speeding up. Stopping is a whole diffeent issue.

Originally posted by websurfer
In space anythings possible. Consider this... a spaceship moving with positive acceleration would eventually reach the speed of light, because it would keep speeding up. Stopping is a whole diffeent issue.

The problem with that is when things speed up (or rather heat up because that is essencially what happens) they also expand because of excited electrons jumping to elevated orbital levels. The larger that something is the more force that is needed for acceleration. With both increasing, eventually you get to the point where the force necessary to accelerate the object is impractible. Or at least that is how I recall it.

As physical mass accelerates to the speed of light (your body for example), the friction that occurs between the smallest microparticles increases exponentially. Thus, if you collided with something 1/1000 the size of a grain of sand, it would cause a small nuclear reaction and you'd be torn to pieces (in theory). This is similar to particle collisions in a particle accelerator.

Also, mass expands as it accelerates, also due to natural friction forces. If you accelerated to the speed of light, you'd essentially become infinitely wide. That's a problem.

What would happen if you were already travelling at the speed of light?

I really don't think that we (the human race) are going to get very far with FTL (faster than light) travel. At least not in the way of solid object travel. The whole thing needs to be looked at from a new angle. Wormholes seem to be the usual response to that statement.

The problem with approaching the speed of light is that your mass increases as you come closer and closer to that speed. Thus at the speed of light your mass would (theoretically) be infinite. If you can design an engine that increases its thrust as you speed up then you should be able to hit the speed of light, in theory.

Here is a little tutorial to help you out:

LINK

It's my understanding that time or dimensions of time can be looked at like a flat peice of paper and to pas to another time would involve folding that peice of paper and ending up on the other side. Any truth in that gibberish?

Originally posted by mpeake
It's my understanding that time or dimensions of time can be looked at like a flat peice of paper and to pas to another time would involve folding that peice of paper and ending up on the other side. Any truth in that gibberish?

Well, the idea is to look at space and distance in a new light. It is the idea that a short cut could be taken through space (as we normally perceive it) by way of a wormhole. This wormhole would then connect point A (starting line) to B (finish line) without having to transvers normal space and thus saving time.

Traveling faster than the speed of light= possible.
Accelerating faster than the speed of light= impossible.

[edit on 6-9-2004 by Illmatic67]

Why is accelarating faster impossible Illmatic? Maybe one day we might actully do it.

So then if you could bend/fold space/time and make Point A meet Point B is that what you would call the Wormhole?

Originally posted by Illmatic67
Traveling faster than the speed of light= possible.
Accelerating faster than the speed of light= impossible.

Moving faster than a speeding bullet to the bathroom after eating Mexican food= priceless.

any one know anything about Eisntein it self wrote in a pocket notebook some time before he dies, that he had realized that his theory was wrong, and that makes possible that "things>" can move faster then light?!, i have red that in 2 books about enstein 17 years ago, and i dint recall they'r names. acording to the books that notebook is in a small "museum" that was his last "bedroom" where he had lived for the last time.
any one can point a link to something related to his "museum" or this note in the notebook?

Originally posted by mpeake
So then if you could bend/fold space/time and make Point A meet Point B is that what you would call the Wormhole?

Basicly, yes. It is thought to be a kind of tunnel.

Blame it on Carl Sagan; everyone else does. When he was writing his book Contact, he needed a scientific theory which would carry his explorer across the universe and back again rapidly. The idea of flying into a black hole and out a "white hole" somewhere else in the universe was immediately rejected by his friends in the scientific community, but they did remember that Einstein's Theory of Relativity also predicted the possibility of "wormholes" which connected two points in space by a straight line through another, shorter, dimension. Thus Sagan had his solution, and scientific attention was directed toward the wormhole question for the first time.

www.mjyoung.net...

If you have ever seen Stargate, then you get the jist of it.

Originally posted by AD5673
Why is accelarating faster impossible Illmatic?

Maybe one day we might actully do it.

Impossible.

Why???
Thats what i want to know.

Originally posted by AD5673
Why???

Thats what i want to know.

Read the link I provided earlier, it should answer your questions. Then again I thought my explantion had cleared it up, but apparently it did not.

Light itself has been accelerated to speeds thousands of times faster than 'c'... I'm not sure on the principle on how it's done but it's been done thousands of times by scientists... Technically the light reaches the end point before it leaves the start point =p