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Why We Need to Reach the Stars (and We Will)
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05/10/09
05/10/09
Maybe I'm just thinking this out too much, but we have some theories about approaching the speed of light that just don't seem right to me...Again, not a physics major, barely passed physics in high school...
However, some things that kind of stood out to me:
1) Time is relative. We measure time by watching a clock and saying, "Ok, this length of time is a minute, or a second, or a nanosecond, etc." Yet not every clock is exact. Even our atomic clocks that we have aren't 100% accurate. Giz just posted about a new atomic clock that will be accurate over a couple thousand years, but eventually it will be out of sync. So, we can't actually measure speeds accurately, can we?
2) Einstein theorized that the closer we get to the speed of light, the more time slows down. Ok...So...If we measure speed by using time to gauge how long it takes us to move a measured distance, and time slows down as we go faster...How are we sure that we're really approaching 186,000 mi/sec? We can't actually measure that if we're moving faster and faster and time keeps getting slower and slower, right?
Sorry, this probably doesn't make any sense to anyone but me, but it just seems that if we have a finite speed for the speed of light, that it would therefore BE possible to go faster than that finite speed somehow...Otherwise, why are we measuring the speed of light to begin with?
05/10/09
Once you know "everything", there's no reason to move forward anymore.
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Unless this is some sort of sci-fi reference I'm missing or some sort of legitimate science that is way above my head. In which case I apologize.
05/10/09
in response to the great con seannery: perhaps a bounce of some sort. if we could harness some that with enough energy we could "bounce" off of we could achieve that instant acceleration at a point beyond the speed of light.
05/10/09
when will the next leap . . . be the leap home
05/10/09
Tardyons are massive particles, including most all particles you've probably heard about. They have real rest masses and are slower than light particles.
luxons are massless particles, such as photons. These have zero rest mass (both real and imaginary). These particles must always move at the speed of light.
Tachyons Are hypothetical have an imaginary rest mass (think imaginary numbers). These particles would travel at speeds faster than the speed of light.
Special Relativity states that nothing that is moving initially slower than the speed of light can be accelerated to exceed the speed of light. This is not strictly speaking the same as the statement that nothing can travel faster than light.
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