Shoutbox

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Originally posted by ShawnZ
Not that we would see the spaceship, because our eyes don't even capture images that fast.

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That's why they call it a THEORY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity_for_beginners

That one might help, though it still isn't very easy.

I saw a nice documentary about Einstein a week ago. Everything was explained quite clear, except the most important thing: 'Spacetime'. There was a nice animation though showing mercurius & the sun and some kind of spacetime-grid...

Edit: it looked someting like this:

Our science teacher had a thing on tape from a TV program basically about Einstein's E=mc2...  It branched off into many other scientists that aided in all the basics of the equation. A few of the ways they portrayed it on the video were.

Einstein and his wife were sitting on a bench next to a river. Watching a small boat with a woman on it go by. From where Einstein was sitting, it looked as if the waves were traveling faster than the boat and that there was more than one.    From the lady riding the boats perspective, it was a single wave, that was motionless because it traveled the speed of the boat.

What they got outta that was basically, if they were to be in a car traveling the speed of light, they would see the waves of light moving alongside the car, which they proved untrue because no matter how fast your going, light is still going an equal speed away... Therefore you seem to be catching up to light, but you're just slowing down time.

From my understanding the only thing that can go faster than the speed of light, is light itself. Which makes little sense to me still... But I'm very interested in this... It's the only interesting thing in science as far as I'm concerened.

It got me to thinking if a black hole in space, is just a place where the light cannot escape the gravitational forces... if we were to make something (ourselves or something else) go faster than light itself, we'd disappear?


To tell you the truth *again*... I don't like science much at all.... except for things that we can't completely explain... such as this.



EDIT: Although now I know I'm not even near completely correct... I found  website on the television program my teacher showed us. Take a look at it here!

i was watching "how william shatner changed the world" on sunday, thats where i got the eholr idea about this. It said that you might be able to travel fasteer than light. It was something like removing space infront of you, and putting it behind you, didn't really make much sense tho...

and like qgrossel, this is one of the few things in science i'm intersted in

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Originally posted by Supersonicdarky
It said that you might be able to travel faster than light. It was something like removing space infront of you, and putting it behind you, didn't really make much sense tho...

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Yeah I heard about that too, it involves bending the space around you or something.

This is one of the articles of the website I showed at the end of my previous post. This explains my boat theory much better .... haha... It's like the same thing.... Except I think I might've been backwards?

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Imagine a police officer chasing after a speeding motorist. If he drives fast enough, the officer knows that he can catch the motorist. Anyone who has ever gotten a ticket for speeding knows that. But if we now replace the speeding motorist with a light beam, and an observer witnesses the whole thing, then the observer concludes that the officer is speeding just behind the light beam, traveling almost as fast as light. We are confident that the officer knows he is traveling neck and neck with the light beam.

But later, when we interview him, we hear a strange tale. He claims that instead of riding alongside the light beam as we just witnessed, it sped away from him, leaving him in the dust. He says that no matter how much he gunned his engines, the light beam sped away at precisely the same velocity. In fact, he swears that he could not even make a dent in catching up to the light beam. No matter how fast he traveled, the light beam traveled away from him at the speed of light, as if he were stationary instead of speeding in a police car.

But when you insist that you saw the police officer speeding neck and neck with the light beam, within a hairsbreadth of catching up to it, he says you are crazy; he never even got close. To Einstein, this was the central, nagging mystery: How was it possible for two people to see the same event in such totally different ways? If the speed of light was really a constant of nature, then how could a witness claim that the officer was neck and neck with the light beam, yet the officer swears that he never even got close?

Einstein had realized earlier that the Newtonian picture (where velocities can be added and subtracted) and the Maxwellian picture (where the speed of light was constant) were in total contradiction. Newtonian theory was a self-contained system, resting on a few assumptions. If only one of these assumptions were changed, it would unravel the entire theory in the same way that a loose thread can unravel a sweater. That thread would be Einstein's daydream of racing a light beam.

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EDIT:... Now I found why reaching the speed of light is impossible. It's a bit confusing... But useful none the less.

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Einstein then pushed further and made the next fateful leap. He wrote a small paper, almost a footnote, late in 1905 that would change world history. If meter sticks and clocks became distorted the faster you moved, then everything you can measure with meter sticks and clocks must also change, including matter and energy. In fact, matter and energy could change into each other. For example, Einstein could show that the mass of an object increased the faster it moved. (Its mass would in fact become infinite if you hit the speed of light—which is impossible, which proves the unattainability of the speed of light.) This meant that the energy of motion was somehow being transformed into increasing the mass of the object. Thus, matter and energy are interchangeable.

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Originally posted by qgroessl
From my understanding the only thing that can go faster than the speed of light, is light itself. Which makes little sense to me still... But I'm very interested in this... It's the only interesting thing in science as far as I'm concerened.

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The only thing that can travel faster than light is space. In a black hole space is being sucked in faster than light travels, so light itself cannot escape. Very simple explination.

Einstein also concluded that gravity was not a force but a warping of space and time. Light itself is susceptible to gravity.

Also as velocity increases so does mass. If velocity is at the speed of light (c) then mass is infinate.

As velocity increases time relative to the person experiencing the velocity slows down. If velocity is at the speed of light (c) then time relative to the observer stops.

Thus to reach the speed of light is impossible. Mass would be infinate and time would stop.

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Originally posted by Underlord

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Originally posted by qgroessl
From my understanding the only thing that can go faster than the speed of light, is light itself. Which makes little sense to me still... But I'm very interested in this... It's the only interesting thing in science as far as I'm concerened.

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The only thing that can travel faster than light is space. In a black hole space is being sucked in faster than light travels, so light itself cannot escape. Very simple explination.

Einstein also concluded that gravity was not a force but a warping of space and time. Light itself is susceptible to gravity.

Also as velocity increases so does mass. If velocity is at the speed of light then mass is infinate.

As velocity increases time relative to the person experiencing the velocity slows down. If velocity is at the speed of light then time relative to the observer stops.

Thus to reach the speed of light is impossible. Mass would be infinate and time would stop.

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not really, it's not faster than the speed of light, it has a huge gravity, thats why light can't escape


i also wonder if there is something non-physical that can travel faster than light...

Im in high school, and i live in mexico, here the science isnt very advance and in high school we dont learn this things, but i investigate myself, as far as i know E=mc2 means that any mass going to the square of the speed of light then it would transform into enrgy. about the black hole thingy, well if you go to speed of lght, nothing will actually happens to you, because the light itself travels at speed of light and nothing happens to it. now i think that einstein didnt knew the actual speed of light and he was just supposing that the speed of light is the quickest thing in the world. maybe as far as we know is the quickest thing but what about all the types of light that exist beside the visible light? also why would exactly the speed of light would make something to change, the speed is just the mesurement to know how much distance you travel in certain time. and as far as i know the black holes are formed when suns explode and die. nothing to do with speed of light. and for the spacetime, as far as i know it is like another dimension intead of having time and distance separeeted they are in just 1 dimension. and thats why einstein said that gravity isnt actually a force like newton said, it is a curve spacetime that the planet creates and also the sun and that makes the gravity. i saw that picture with spacetime grid too. but all of this is just an opinion of a 17 year old guy in mexico, i might be, very very wrong or very very right.

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Originally posted by superjugy
if you go to speed of lght, nothing will actually happens to you, because the light itself travels at speed of light and nothing happens to it.

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You can't go to the speed of light... Light will always be traveling just as fast away from you whether your standing still, or running at 5 miles per hour.

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Originally posted by Underlord
The only thing that can travel faster than light is space. In a black hole space is being sucked in faster than light travels, so light itself cannot escape. Very simple explination.

Einstein also concluded that gravity was not a force but a warping of space and time. Light itself is susceptible to gravity.

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Einstein might have concluded gravity was not a force, but really it is... Gravitational forces are technically forces. If the force is so great that light cannot escape it, then all it's really doing, is not allowing any light to be seen coming from it, stopping time.

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Originally posted by superjugy
and as far as i know the black holes are formed when suns explode and die. nothing to do with speed of light. and for the spacetime, as far as i know it is like another dimension intead of having time and distance separeeted they are in just 1 dimension.

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You are correct in saying how black holes are formed... But they wouldn't be they'd be just, gone, if it had nothing to do with light. For it not to have anything to do with light, it would have to just dissappear. And the thing about the 1 dimension could be correct... it could be incorrect... We won't really ever know I don't think. I doubt it would be 1-dimensional... if anything it would be 4-D... Somehow...

this has gotten a bit off topic...

and I'm not helping it much!