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tomfr62
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When or if an object exceeds the speed of light what will the reaction be a) in our atmosphere, b) in space?
Thank you in advance
Tom F
Thank you in advance
Tom F
Pupil said:No objects travel faster than light. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformations or Google 'speed of light'.
nasu said:No, if the speed of light in a medium is c' (where c' is less than the speed of light in vacuum) an object cam move faster than c'.
The phenomenon is not uncommon for elementary particle and is used to build detectors.
When the particle moves faster than c' there is a "flash" of light that can be observed - Cerenkov effect.
tomfr62 said:Thank you, I am aware that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, I am just curious as to what would be the result if an object could exceed that speed.
Byllie said:It is physically possible to travel faster than the speed of light by invoking general relativity, that is by either warping or ripping space-time. Think about it if we rip or warp space time so that an object is closer to us, it's going to take us a shorter amount of time to reach it, and therefore we're going to travel faster than light (if we want to). Similarly the shortest distance between two points is a worm hole rather than a straight line, so it is possible to travel faster than light this way aswell. However both these methods require elusive negative energy of which I know very little about, and is way beyond anything we can achieve in the foreseeable future. With regards to traveling through space faster than light, its handy to look at the highly theological Alcubierre drive (he dreamt it up via star trek) which uses negative energy rather than postive energy to power the body, as opposed to the positive energy used today to travel at lower than speed of light speeds. What you would effectively see, traveling faster than the speed of light according to Alcubierre is this "In front of the ship, stars would become long lines, streaks. At the back, nothing would be seen as light from previous stars wouldn't be traveling fast enough to keep up". Basically like the millenium falcon out of star wars.
How true that is I don't know, just out of this Kaku book I've been reading
Pupil said:None of these sound like faster-than-light travel: they sound like finding-shortcut travel.
Byllie said:But even so, if you can get from A to B faster than light, is that not faster than light travel?
Pupil said:Are you talking about velocity or speed?
The speed of light is approximately 299,792,458 meters per second in a vacuum. This is considered to be the fastest speed at which any object can travel in the universe.
According to the theory of relativity, no object with mass can reach the speed of light. As an object approaches the speed of light, its mass increases infinitely and it requires an infinite amount of energy to accelerate it further.
As light travels through the atmosphere, it is affected by various factors such as air density, temperature, and humidity. These factors can cause light to bend, scatter, and be absorbed, which can impact our perception of objects and their colors in the atmosphere.
If an object were to travel at the speed of light in space, time would slow down for that object according to the theory of relativity. This is known as time dilation and it means that the object would experience time passing slower compared to objects moving at slower speeds.
Based on our current understanding of physics, it is not possible for humans to travel at the speed of light. The amount of energy required to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light is beyond our current technology and would also have significant effects on the human body.