Moving faster than the speed of light

[Agen]

What would happen if you'd have a ship traveling at the speed of light and you where on it and you'd walk from the back side of the ship to the front side, then would'nt you be moving faster than the speed of light ?

 

Ok, and the second one goes like this: If you'd have a very long object and you would start spinning if from the back at the speed of light, would'nt the front side of this long object start moving faster than the speed of light?

[Boerseun]

What would happen if you'd have a ship traveling at the speed of light and you where on it and you'd walk from the back side of the ship to the front side, then would'nt you be moving faster than the speed of light ?

 

Ok, and the second one goes like this: If you'd have a very long object and you would start spinning if from the back at the speed of light, would'nt the front side of this long object start moving faster than the speed of light?

As far as your first question goes, the answer is pretty simple. If you were indeed travelling at the speed of light, and you walked forward in your ship, yes - you would've exceeded c. But the simple fact is that you can't travel at c,, so it's a non-sensical question.

For your second question, any force applied to your hypothetical object will be propagated through the object at the speed of sound. If your twist it, the twist will propagate through the medium at the speed a sound wave would.

[Edge]

That light speed is such a *****, it doesn't let us to travel faster than it... :hihi:

[Jay-qu]

and even if you did get your ship to travel at light speed you would experience so much time dilation that you wouldnt be able to walk :hihi:

[CraigD]

Ah, the Physics in this thread is no fun! :cup: Let’s change Agen’s question by a tiny amount, so that it can be answered with numbers, not just the phrase “you can’t travel at the speed of light.” :hihi:

Instead of

What would happen if you'd have a ship traveling at the speed of light and you where on it and you'd walk from the back side of the ship to the front side, then would'nt you be moving faster than the speed of light ?

let’s try

What would happen if you'd have a ship traveling at the speed of light © – 1 m/s and you where on it and you'd walk (at 2 m/s) from the back side of the ship to the front side, then wouldn’t you be moving faster than the speed of light?

Ignoring Relativity, you’d expect for an non-moving observer to see you moving ~ 299792457 + 2 m/s = ~ 1.000000004 c.

 

Instead, due to relativistic time dilation, the observer would see you moving at slightly less than 299792457 + 2*(1-(299792457/299792458)^2)^.5 = 299792457.0002 m/s = ~ .999999997 c

[CraigD]

and even if you did get your ship to travel at light speed you would experience so much time dilation that you wouldnt be able to walk :hihi:

Time dilation is an effect the non-moving observer perceives when observing the moving object (you). Relativity states that, within your own inertial frame, the laws of Physics are unchanged. So, regardless of your velocity relative to a non-moving observer, you wouldn’t have any problems doing whatever you can do when stationary relative to him.

 

According to Relativity, the actual effect of traveling at a speed approaching that of light is that, after returning to your point of origin and reducing you speed to 0, an amount of time approaching infinity will have passed there. You might term this “the extreme twins paradox”.

[dasraiser]

hi folks

 

wow thanks CraigD, I've been puzzling over the Lorentz Transformation and how it's used, i understand that it is a transformation of v in units of c into the perpendicular much the same as (1-cos^2)^0.5=sin, however it does pose this questions:-

 

if v is at c then the formula gives (1-(c/c)^2)^0.5=0c for the observer, how's this possible in regards to light?

 

look forward to your reply

 

regards

[arkain101]

I would just like to say the answers given to you are given according to a Theory.

 

Im looking for a good explanation of light. Ive asked around before and it goes something like this; Its a wave. A wave of what I ask?. A wave of energy!. energy of what form? energy of electromagnetic radiation! What exactly is that? its force of massless differing freqency waves that seems to travel at a constant of what we call C and can deliver energy to particles! Okay, So it is a massless electromagnetic energy wave of differing freqencies that has the ability to apply force to particles and transfer its massless energy into particles traveling through a medium of space that seems to only allow one speed, no less no more?

 

Is the only proof we have that you can not travel faster or as fast as C a equation on paper?

 

Particle accelerators move particles very close to C.

 

If it were possible to build a very small lazer beam device or somthing like a tiny nuclear particle gun that could be sent in a particle accelerator at .99 C and shine its lazer/shoot its particle in the direction of velocity it would be possible to make a very accurate test of this theory. Or even a very very small atomic clock that gets wipped around in a particle accelerator for a few days.

[Jay-qu]

particle accelerators do just that - accelerate particles not clocks and little lasers. Time dilation has already been proved by very accurate Caesium atomic clocks

[arkain101]

Yes they do, but you could design a multi velocity multiplying device that could send groups of particles or small devices to very high speeds. Or at least, I beleive it can be done.

 

I wouldnt call it proven with that experiment you are refering to.

 

We shouldnt be performing test anyways to prove or test theories as much as we should be doing them to study the results. If we enter the experiment with a biased outlook, it may result in a biased answer.

[dasraiser]

hi arkain101, thanks for your response. :friday:

 

Your quite right theories are just theories, but until i have a further understanding of the background underlying math, i'm not about to knock the greats such as Einstein, who at the present have (i believe) yet to be disproved.

 

For the most part the math constrain all objects to be less the speed of c, well at least for the Lorentz Transformation (i could be wrong here, they could have been imposed, i'm still chewing my way through Einsteins work) because of the (1-(v/c)^2)*0.5, if v>=c then the result is 0 or an impossible number ie sqrt(-n), I don't understand these constraints yet or there significants, but find a problem when used for light which in itself travels at c!!!! :friday:

 

Another point is because light has a constant speed this creates paradoxes; which from what i've read came about from using two+ frames, and a good way to overcome this problem is to warp spacetime or at least time.

 

Unfortunately i still have a great deal to learn, and the more i find on this subject the less i find i know and more confused i get. :friday:

 

regards

[Tormod]

Another point is because light has a constant speed this creates paradoxes; which from what i've read came about from using two+ frames, and a good way to overcome this problem is to warp spacetime or at least time.

 

The beauty of relativity theory lies exactly there: in the insight that if the speed of light had a finite limit, something else would have to change in order for the physics to work. That "something" was time (or space-time depending on what perspective you take).