quote:
Originally posted by SpunkyLoveMuff
Exactly! If it takes 8 minutes for light to get from the Sun to Earth, then it would take more than just a few seconds to go "anywhere" in the universe. Then you also have to factor in that it would be near impossible to get between 2 points in the universe without running into an obstacle, be it a planet, star or black hole etc..
Sigh, learn physics and learn Special Relativity, at 0.99999999 times the speed of light it would only take 5.2066272
HOURS to reach the nearest star, if you were travelling at the 0.999999999999999999999999999999999999 times the speed of light (to a very large number of decimal places) it would take only a few seconds to reach
any point in the universe (
THIS IS WHAT SPECIAL RELATIVITY IS ABOUT).
In case you havent realised, objects dont behave the same as light. I posted about this on the page before, read the thread before posting incorrect info.
EDIT: As for hitting objects, travelling 'faster than light' in Newtonian Physics (that is, ignoring Special Relativity) it would have exactly the same dilemma, unfortunately you would not enter some type of weird protective worm hole in a different dimension or anything crazy like that just by travelling at any speed (faster or slower than light) and hence you are just as likely to collide with any objects.
quote:
Originally posted by John Anderton
I never understood why when I travel at v->c will everyone else on the earth age? 
Special relativity thingo 
explanation? 
This is related to why it only takes a couple of seconds to reach any point in the universe at a speed just below 'c'.
The fact is that for the people on earth, they see you travelling at 0.99...9c, and observing you, they see that you reach your destination in (distance / 0.99....9c) seconds (just like Newtonian Physics would predict). However, due to the effects of time dilation (that is, a moving object passes through time more slowly), time for you (on the spaceship) is passing 'slower', meaning that for every one of your seconds, you're actually covering more distance than for every one second on earth. So therefore according to you (on the spaceship) it has taken significantly less time to travel to your destination than it has as observed from Earth (because your time elapsed slower than time on Earth), therefore you have only aged by however long it took you to reach your destination (as observed from the spaceship) whereas Earth (and the people on it) has aged by however long it took you to reach your destination as they observed it - clearly [i hope] you can see that you have aged less than those on earth as more time has elapsed on Earth than on your spaceship.
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