Why we can't reach the speed of light?

[patrickg]

Why we can\'t reach the speed of light?

I hate to break it to ya but there is science and there is fiction and even science fiction but we can't, even with Mr. Scott doing the engineering repairs, reach the speed of light, much less pass it. We trekkies, I am an incurable one, sometimes have suspended disbelief to go along with going where no man or no one (old or new gen) has gone before. Perhaps so many times we forget it ain't real. I truly believe Ray Bradbury was a creative genius but
G E T R E A L
the only thing going the speed of light, is light (electromagnetic energy in free space). Matter can not attain the speed of light much less exceed it. I would be entertained to hear anyone cogently explain in a clear, concise, communicable manner, how the speed of light can be attained or surpassed by material things.

I'm waiting!

Patrick

 

[kubmech]

Re: Why we can\'t reach the speed of light?

O.K. I'll bite............

"Without going into details, the results of Einstein's calculations can be summed up simply. The improved law for adding up two velocities V1 and V2 is not v=(v1+V2) but rather V=(V1+V2) divided by (1+V1V2/c squared),where c is the speed of light. Because c is so big, 300,000 kilometers a second, for everyday velocities like 10 mph and 30 mph the number you divide by is indistinguishable from 1: The V1V2/c squared bit is virtually 0. But if you make one of the velocities, V1 or V2 (or even both of them), equal to c, strange things happen. You can never add up two velocities that are less than the speed of light and get an answer that is bigger than the speed of light"
John Gribbin

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Re: Why we can\'t reach the speed of light?

If you were traveling at the speed of light and turned on your headlights, what would happen? /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif

Seriously, if I remember my physics correctly, the closer you get to the SOL, the energy required to go 1/2 again as fast as you are traveling requires twice the energy you are currently expending. Just like a prop driven aircraft is unable to break the speed of sound because the faster you go the less effiencent the airfoil of the prop becomes.

One new theory is worm holes, seriously. In simple terms. Take a piece of paper and make marks 1" from each end. Now bend the paper in a "u" shape. Conventional wisdom says to go from point "A" to point "B" you must travel the length of the top of the paper, around the "u" then the length of the bottom of the paper until you reach point "B". The worm hole theory says the shortest distance between 2 points is a straight line going directly from the top of the paper ("A") to the bottom of the paper ("B").

Astrophysisists (sic?) believe that bending light to create worm holes for travel is much more plausable then propelling an object up to or exceeding the SOL because they have already successfully created "light shifts" lasting several nano-seconds.

Wise Guy

"I'm not a scientist, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn last night."

 

[RPM]

Re: Why we can\'t reach the speed of light?

... but Kubmech ... that's just arithmetic. I believe that patrickg is talking about how a body gets anywhere near 'c' (the speed of light in a vacuum) in the first place.

Geez, come to think of it, patrickg wasn't too specific here. You can actually SLOW DOWN LIGHT. You can 'freeze' (careful on definitions here) a light pulse in a Bose-Einstein condensate as recently reported ...

http://www.laurin.com/Content/Apr99/techCrawl.html

patrickg - I assume you mean in a vaccuum, no? This would be too easy otherwise.

Patrick

 

[kubmech]

Re: Why we can\'t reach the speed of light?

Wiseguy, It's not that the prop is "unable to break the speed of sound", it's that it would be inefficient at that speed.
Maybee that's what you said, sort of.......Cool worm hole analogy.

 

[kubmech]

Re: Why we can\'t reach the speed of light?

I was agreeing with patrickg (do the math)/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
Look at you gettin' off the subject, your talking c through mass-not mass traveling c.

 

[jimmoore]

Re: Why we can\'t reach the speed of light?

Warp 3, Spock!!

jim

 

[Wingnut]

Re: Why we can\'t reach the speed of light?

answer #1 ... mr. inquisitive ... is that science also said flight was impossible and that trains would kill us because the human body could not stands speeds in excess of 20 mph.

answer # 2 ... get a really, really good running start ...

too bad that common sense ain't

 

[Alan L.]

Re: Why we can\'t reach the speed of light?

I know that traveling at the speed of light is possible because I have experienced it first hand when I ask for volunteers to do the weedeating in 100 degree heat.

Traveling at the speed of light is hardly believable because everywhere you go you would get there before you left. This means you would meet yourself on the way. And if you could travel this fast what would keep you from going right splat into an asteriod or meteor something because you would get to it before the light reflecting from it got to you, or something like that.

Alan L., TX

 

[Harv]

Re: Why we can\'t reach the speed of light?

Not too ironic to discuss accelerating to the speed of light on a tractor forum. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Just down the road from me, at the Lawrence Livermore Labs, I was once privileged to take a tour of their Bevatron accelerator. I'm reaching back in memory here, but I believe at the time, they were trying to accelerate some atomic particles as close to the speed of light as they could. As Wise Guy already pointed out, it would take a humongous amount of energy to accomplish this, even if it were possible. What actually happened was to me, even more impressive. As the particles approached the speed of light, and they continued to pour more energy into them (magnetic fields), the particles did not speed up, they simply got bigger! /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

They actually wound up achieving energy-to-matter conversion! Of course, we're talking about just a few atomic particles and the increased "matter" that was created was totally unstable, so when they shut the thing down it was gone again, but ain't that a kick in the head?

But with regards to the Star Trek technology, of course you can't just "push" the Enterprise to the speed of light (impulse engines), you must create a time/space warp field around the craft, using your warp engines. This is actually based on some of Einstein's theories about the relationship between time and space. If you can truly grasp that 4th dimension (time) and relate it to the 3 we are more familiar with, it is theoretically possible to "bend" space in such a manner that you don't have to actually travel the normal distance to get from point A to point B. In other words, the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line in 4-dimensional space.

Do I really understand what I just said? Absolutely not! /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif But I do know that it is based on theories that have yet to be disproven.

BTW -- does anybody remember the "scientific" reasons presented as to why it would be impossible to accelerate a man faster than the speed of sound? That, of course, was before they up and did it. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif