Reaching the speed of light

I have a pretty simple example I like to think about when considering reaching the speed of light..

When you swing a baseball bat, the far end goes faster than the end your hands are on because it has more distance to go..

Well, what if you could make a pole that was, say, a few light years long, and you managed to swing it? The tip of the pole would exceed the speed of light if it was long enough wouldn't it?

We don't have the technology to build such a thing, but it is comprehensible.

And what do you think would happen if such a thing was constructed, and swung?
Would it break? Would you be able to swing it?

Ermmmm....dont know.....would be kinda like building a wormhole with our current technology. (too massive).

If we ever break light speed, it will be some VERY exotic form of transportation through space-time.

Nice concept, but i think a more reasonable one would be ,
creating a light-speed energy wave and catching a ride on it with a compatable ship
able to sustain the amounts of tension from such speed.
we are still very primative, without insight itll be alil bit more time till we figure this all out.

Interesting idea!

I imagine either the pole would bend or the amount of energy you'd need to swing it would be infinite and therefore impossible...that is if Einstein is right.

Originally posted by djohnsto77
I imagine either the pole would bend or the amount of energy you'd need to swing it would be infinite and therefore impossible...that is if Einstein is right.

You wouldnt really need all that much energy: You just put a rocket engine on the tip and let it rotate faster and faster until it reach the desired speed... Today we use "bat-less" swinging with planets

Though I think any future techs approaching lightspeed will involve anti gravity and bending space instead of swinging away at something.

Maybe we'll figure out one day how to spin say, a sphere, at and extreme speed..(just below the speed of light), INSIDE of another sphere ,spinning in the same axis, also at just under the speed of light. Essentially, the 'inside' sphere and all its components which are required to spin it, are also spun.....Wouldn't the inside spheres 'speed' be its own speed PLUS the outside spheres speed added?

I are tired now...me must put head down.

The tip would still be subject to relativity and would take infinite energy to reach light speed.

Now make the pole so dense it has gravity, a lot of gravity... black hole gravity, and spin it on its axis. You would be able to travel, along the exterior, from one end of the pole to the other at speeds that would appear to be faster than light to the rest of us, but technically you would still be at sub-light.

>
however you might arrive at the end before you left the beginning... which might be kinda awkward.

[edit on 21-9-2006 by apc]

I was thinking about that disc idea, and I think I like it even more! It seems to me that you could have multiple discs. If you tried to get it going wrong, the central discs would bear too much burden, but if you used the same tactic as trains do and applied all the right forces, it just might work. Getting it spinning without putting too much stress on each disc, seems the momentum would allow it. That could be done on a much smaller scale it seems, to me anyway.

Edit: Oh you said spheres, just replace where I said discs with spheres, same concept!

[edit on 21-9-2006 by Novise]

Yeah...I just mentioned the idea of 2 spheres..or disks...just to explain the idea quicker...but absolutely, a sphere inside of a sphere, inside of a sphere...perhaps, i don't know, 15-20 times, maybe more, would definately reduce this 'stress' you speak of on the objects....
...and, oh yeah...patent pending

The way i see things, if you can imagine it, it is possible. For interstellar exploration, we would need to break the light barrier and exceed it. Even at light speed, it would still take us a little over 4 years to get to the nearest star system Alpha Centauri, unacceptable.

I like the idea of riding among a beam of light and in fact it's an idea i've had for a while too. Since if light travels at 300,000 km, how can you use that light to propel you at such speeds?

Warp, hyperspace, wormhols, jumpdrives these are areas we have to put more study in. Imagine what would open up for mankind when we can colonise planets. The potential forgive the pun is astronomical.

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.

GoldEagle.

The computer would not be able to work by that theory, as the light/electrical signals would have the same problem. I think





No, I believe faster than light travel will come from warping space-time around the craft. We are already on the way manipulating space time,
see here, so given time, we should be able to break it

Originally posted by GoldEagle


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.

Hmmmm...the clock will 'jump' to the correct time you say?..I'm not sure of that. For this to happen, that would mean there is a set time in which everything is 'running' at. I'm thinking that our seconds and minutes are just an illusion of our own gravitational warp caused by earths own speed and mass in space.

I believe there was an experiment done in the 70's where scientists put an atomic clock in a jet plane and another atomic clock (set to precisely the same time ) on the ground. After sending the jet plane containing one of the clocks around the world at about 600 mph and landing at the place of original take-off,..(evidently, the plane would need to re-fuel in the air..I'm not sure if this was the case...).. the clocks showed a difference in time.....the clock in the jet DID NOT jump to the "correct" time once it landed. THERE IS NO CORRECT TIME...This effect is called 'time dilation'. Your physics prof is incorrect.

...this is just a very basic idea of Einstein's theory. The last paragraph explains the experiment. I'm sure there's more out there about the subject.
www.pbs.org...

I dont think the clock would freeze, since it would be moving in the same speed as the observer is, inside the ship everything would. Thus it would appear normal as the speed of light between the clock and the person is constant. In other words, Star Trek style, hehe.

But I'm no physics freak.

Time dilation is fact. Satellites in orbit have to have their clocks adjusted every few months to account for the difference in time.

An object moving quickly across the fabric of space experiences a slowing of the passage of time for that object relative to the passage of time for an object not travelling quickly across the fabric of space.

Conversely, if an object were to move very slowly relative to the fabric of space, almost at an absolute standstill (absolute zero), the passage of time for that object would near infinite speed. The object would instantly disintegrate from our perspective, long since decayed into its fundamental elements.

Originally posted by apc
Time dilation is fact. Satellites in orbit have to have their clocks adjusted every few months to account for the difference in time.

An object moving quickly across the fabric of space experiences a slowing of the passage of time for that object relative to the passage of time for an object not travelling quickly across the fabric of space.

Conversely, if an object were to move very slowly relative to the fabric of space, almost at an absolute standstill (absolute zero), the passage of time for that object would near infinite speed. The object would instantly disintegrate from our perspective, long since decayed into its fundamental elements.

...precisely...time dilation IS a fact. There's no effect where time 'jumps' to the correct time.....OR that the observer would see the clock stop, or any other thing that GoldEagle mentioned. I don't know what his physics prof was talking about..or maybe he just misunderstood the theory.

GoldEagle,
In case your prof failed to mention this, near light speeds aren't needed to observe the effects of time dilation. Like apc mentioned, this is observed regularly in orbiting satellites moving, on average, at a mere 28,000 KM/h.

dude i like your idea logically it makes sense but applying it might be a bit too hard for today's egg heads the problem is that we are more focused on what each other is doing than actually trying to achieve something, until the world focuses on space travel we are going to be stuck on earth. or in my more favorite scenario aliens will come and drop off one of their warp drives and then it will be used only by the military

Originally posted by kilcoo316
GoldEagle.

No, I believe faster than light travel will come from warping space-time around the craft. We are already on the way manipulating space time,
see here, so given time, we should be able to break it

1st off, I'm new here as of today, so bear with me if I do something incorrectly.

2nd, If you were to break the barrier of the speed of light, wouldn't that take us to time travel? Think about it. You stand out in your back yard on a nice clear evening. You look at the stars and you are actually looking into the past. If the speed of light is calculated by how far light can travel in a years time "light year", and the distance to a long away star... the star is, let's say for the sake of argument, 100,000,000 (one hundred million) light years away... would the star in question is actually being viewed from 100,000,000 years ago?

Infoholic

I guess I should read before I speak, eh?

According to the following link, if I understand right, it wouldn't be quite that far in historical time. But still just looking at the sun is 8 minutes into the past. But anyrate, you get my idea.


www.csmonitor.com...

If your space craft SOMEHOW got to the speed of light, would your brain freeze? Would a computer freeze? Would your mind work slow at 99% of the speed of light?

It's quiet amazing though, that if the sun were to somehow blow up we would only notice is around 9 minutes later.