ZOMBIE FORUMS

yeah... SupaFoo's explanation makes no sense to the rest to the coherent conversation that is taking place.

Where can a simple minded fellow like myself learn such things???

why must every other thread devolve into ethics or math.

'Cause it's the only way they can keep 'em alive after the topic's been exhausted.

And because of the massive amounts of information on the internet, we can all be experts!!!

Do what I do! Make shit up! Or go to the 399th link that google brings up and copy and paste....

The speed of light is always constant. Its just that when its travelling thru a substance its hitting atoms along the way (getting absorbed and re-emitted) which takes time away from getting where it wants to go.<br>None of those "If i'm going 90% the speed of light and I shine a torch in front of me" tricks work to exceed C. Time and space are relative to each other. They rearrange themselves so that light always moves at 300000km per second relative to the observer.<br>In other news: If you pour petrol on something, and light it, it burns (Kittens too)

If I remember correctly, what Einstein arrived at was that the speed of light is constant, no matter how fast you're moving. That's exactly why nothing can travel faster than it. No matter how fast you're travelling, you'll measure the speed of light to be c relative to you. Or physics teacher mentioned that someone (I wonder if it was some Australians) claimed to have proven Einstein wrong.

Like someone pointed out, we're talking about speed of light in vacuum. The speed of light in substances varies depending on the substance.

Note that the E=mc^2 equation is also the basis for the atomic bomb. Remember that it implies that mass and energy are equivalent. In an atomic bomb, atoms are split (fission bomb) or merged (fusion). In both cases, the combined mass after the reaction is larger than the combined mass before the reaction. The mass that has been "lost" has changed into energy.

Oh, and I can't guarantee my information is 100% right. For one thing I might have remembered something wrong, and we're not starting relativity theory until the next chapter in physics.

There's a really good children's book on this stuff called "Black holes and uncle Albert" which first got me itnerested, and actually explains all sorts of things, like time slowing down at high speeds, and mass warping space very well.

I wish I hadn't got rid of it.

Not sure if it's relevant to the topic, but it feels like it... they recently confirmed that changes in gravity propagate at c also.

Measured it in a neat way too -- they used a bunch of RF dishes to measure the distortion in the percieved position of a pulsar as Jupiter passed in front of it. From that, you can take Jupiter's known mass, velocity, and acceleration, and work backwards through general relativity...

from destroying overies to spcial physics, damn i love you guys.

in a, y'know, manly kind of way, umm, i, ..., ...., look! an eagle!

*runs*

On a forum with the perv-frequency of this one... You think anyone would raise an eyebrow if you came out of the closet?

Hang on, they would mind. That would mean a lack of appreciation for characters like Jordan and Meji.

Um, yeah. Travel for any of us beyind the speed of light is theoritcally impossible. Anything slower than the speed of light will never reach it, Light had constant speed, and anything faster can never go below.
As to the .9C torch, the answer there is that time and distance distort at high speeds. If I can remember correctly, Tr=T*sqr(1/(c^2-v^2)) Tr is Releative Time, T is time in the observers refrence frame, and v is the difference in speed between the observer and the object that Tr applied to. Distance is a simliar formula but with Dr and D in opposite positions in comparison to Tr and T. Thus, Time contracts and Distance dialates as higher speeds are attaineds.
Thus, if we were to watch a person in a car going .9c turn their headlights on and could actually track what's going on, it would look like the light from the headlights is creeping out ahead of the car, while the driver will see everything the headlights turn on all normal like (pardon the simplistic example, its what I was told several years ago by my HS physics teacher).
So yes, theoretically speaking, its pretty impractical to even thing about going to another star system, short of the human race learning how to quantum tunnel. To end with a joke: (note, Shroedinger is credited as the father of Quantum Mechanics, for those who don't know)
A man is walking around in heaven and sees Newton, Einstein, and Shroedinger talking. He goes up to them and lifts his hands infront of him, asking, "How far apart are my hands?"
Newton pulls out a tape measure and replies, "A foot and a half"
Einstein looks at him and replies, "Depends on the speed you are moving in relation to me, but to you, it will look like 1.5 feet."
Shroedinger doesn't even turn to look at the man and says, "Zero"

i get Newton's and Einstein's answers but i don't get Shroedinger's.

*sigh*

/me stuffs a irresistably cute (insert living organism of choice) in box.
/me adds time-locked cyanide capsule in box.
/me sets down box in the middle of the room.

Due to Quantum Tunneling, the technical shortest distance between any two points can be zero because there is the two points exist at the same point for a certain percentage of the time. Thus, Shroedinger

-Rae

It's "Schroedinger" where the 'oe' is actually 'ö'.

And Einstein also stated that for any object travelling at or above the speed of light, Mass expands to infinity, Volume decreases to infinity, (ie Density becomes infinite) and Time stops. (Time being a product of gravity (or vice versa), and gravity being produced by an objects density.)

These are also the conditions postulated for the singularity at the heart of a black hole, which makes sense if you think about it.

Hence speed of light travel is a bad idea, as it would create a black hole at the moment SOL travel was achieved.

Althought there are theories that so called "Universal" laws don't apply at different places in the actual universe. This came about through the discounting of Newton's laws, after space travel was acheived. (Newton's equations for the description of motion become astonishingly inaccurate once you leave the planet, despite the fact that they work very well down here.)

As Shakespeare said "There are more things in heaven and earth..."