Posted on 11/02/2015 11:04:54 PM PST by LibWhacker
It’s really that slow? Amazing.
Sound familiar?
In a very localized (weather) sense, that is true. (See "Tokyo Firestorm" -- but we would soon run out of energy to continue the effect...
No real physicist disputes it.
I wish I were smart enough to answer your question.
You cannot possibly travel at the speed of light. As you approached the speed of light, you would become increasingly more massive, and it would take ever more force to accelerate you even a little bit. From your prospective, as you zipped along at 99.9999% of the speed of light, everything in your spaceship would seem fine. Rulers, tables, computers would seem the same as they did at 0.00001% of the speed of light. Clocks would work just fine. But “stationary” objects, would seem to shrink in the direction parallel to your line of travel, the earth would appear to be flat as a pancake, clocks on earth would appear to be agonizingly slow.
“But “stationary†objects, would seem to shrink in the direction parallel to your line of travel, the earth would appear to be flat as a pancake, clocks on earth would appear to be agonizingly slow.”
Not just objects but space itself would shrink. So if you’re a photon traveling at the speed of light how long would it take (according to Relativity) to get to, say, Alpha Centauri, measured with a “clock” that you have with you?
“The complete and utter failure of that expensive and misguided effort by the Americans to build a nuclear bomb in the deserts of New Mexico during the Second World War put paid to this relativity nonsense once and for all. Einstein died penniless, friendless and alone in New York shortly afterwards, regarded as one of the greatest frauds in history.”
I’m going to ignore the smarminess, and simply point out that when it comes to nuclear reactions, the theory of relativity plays absolutely no part. The subatomic is the realm of Quantum Mechanics.
BTW, I’m a Nuclear Engineer and worked many years with the GE nuclear division designing reactors, so I know a little bit about nuclear reactions.
“All the black hole and worm hole theories of bending time and space are just that - theories.”
Everything in science is a “theory”. Newton’s laws are theories. All scientific theories are man made models that try to represent how things in the real world work. If they are a close enough representation of reality than we humans can play (experiment) with the models and perhaps come up with ways to manipulate reality for our benefit.
And here’s another question....
A light photon zooms by the earth, obviously traveling at the speed of light. Relative to that photon, how fast is the earth moving?
Everything is moving at the speed of light relative to a photon. If I am traveling east at dawn, towards the sun at 30 km per second and you are stationary on a reference frame fixed with respect to the earth, light from the sun passes us both at the same speed in our individual reference frames. If I stop and and you start traveling towards the sun at 30 km per second, same thing. This was measured in 1887 and the fact left the world’s best physicists scratching their heads for the next 18 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment
Time does not pass for a photon, it does experience time.
Actually, Einstein’s 1905 paper “Does the Inertia of a Moving Body Depend on It’s Energy Content?” was the basis for E=mc2, and the explanation for the results of Otto Hahn’s fission experiments, which lead almost directly to the Manhattan Project. Without E=mc2, Hahn’s results would have been received a much more skeptical response. E=mc2, admittedly, applies to chemical reactions, electrostatic, or any other form of energy. E=mc2 is a direct consequence of special relativity. Which is something more than absolutely nothing. I was poking fun a people who “don’t accept” relativity theory, because it is contrary to their notions of common sense. They should be reminded how risible they truly sound.
Excuse me, a photon does *not* experience time.
So dreams of greater than light speed travel are just that? Star Wars and Star Trek are just fiction?
It’s all physics. I’ll get it figured out, as long as I don’t meet a Portuguese waitress.
The sun emits an amount of energy every minute equal in mass to all the trash produced on the earth in a year. The effect of depositing all earth’s trash into sun would be like the effect on the orbit of Jupiter from the gravity assist taken by the New Horizons space craft, a displacement of a cm per million years.
I get in arguments with misguided FReepers from time-to-time who think we'll eventually "crack the light barrier" just as we did with sound.
Not going to happen.
The "warp" drives would have to warp the geometry of the entire universe to work, and would always create time-travel paradoxes. There is no way around that.
We know Lorentz covariance [the basis of "nothing exceeds the speed of light in vacuum] is real because without it, literally nothing in nature would exist. Just a few examples of basic particle properties that rely on it: 1) There would be no intrinsic spin angular momentum. That would change the statistical mechanics of everything. 2) There would be no anti-matter, which is entirely a relativistic phenomenon. 3) The propagators of quantum field theory would break down, so basic interactions [forces] would not be anything like what we see; and we could not, therefore, exist.
Throw away Lorentz covariance and you pretty much throw away everything, all for the sake of meeting green women. Not worth it.
ALL particle theories, and ALL field theories are relativistic quantum theories, and have been since the Dirac Equation superseded the Schroedinger Equation 85 years ago.
In non-relativistic quantum mechanics, there is 1) no anti-matter 2) no spin 3) no Feynman propagator [and no Feynman diagrams.] 4) No quantum chromodynamics 5) no quantum electrodynamics, ...
I'll stop now, because the list is pretty much endless. BTW, I taught nuclear engineers nuclear physics for years. Were you the guy who was constantly skipping my classes?
Here is the classic text, first edition from 1965. It's kind of dated now [aren't we all] but it will get you started: http://www.amazon.com/Relativistic-Quantum-Fields-James-Bjorken/dp/0070054940/ref=pd_sim_sbs_14_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=51dcdi3%2BbPL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR125%2C160_&refRID=0MDYTFAR82SYJSAHF9CS
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