Many years ago, even as late as the 1940's and 1950's, people used to think that breaking the sound barrier would have some dire or extreme consequenses such as traveling through time, or causing some catastrophic event. It was also widely believed that breaking the sound barrier would be impossible.
Today, it seems that a lot of both scientists and laypeople believe some similar things about the speed of light! Do you think that 50 or 100 years from now if/when we break the "light barrier" that people will look back and laugh about what we believed to be true?
2006-08-04 03:20:14 · 4 answers · asked by CJP 3 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
First of all, I think you will find that in the 40's and 50's it was known amongst engineers and scientists that going faster than sound in air was possible. For instance, the wing tips of fighter aircraft in WWII could break the sound barrier in very tight turns.
On to the problem of light.......
In science, and hence in engineering, we build models in mathematics and in pictures to attempt to describe and explain what we observe. We also use our models to quantify effects and form predictions so that we can design machines and experiments.
We have a problem with light. We can explain some of it's behavior by modeling as a nice transverse electromagnetic wave but not all. We can model some of it's behavior by saying it is a particle, but not all. This would indicate that we need to come up with a single unified model. That is just what we are searching for, the one unified theory to explain everything.
When we achieve, or at least get closer to, this, we will find that some of the assumptions or statements that we have made will be true and others will be false. That is the nature of science and our exploration of the universe(s).
We need to keep open minds. Let us say that "at the moment all indications are that c is a speed limit in the universe but.........".
2006-08-04 04:26:30 · answer #1 · answered by Stewart H 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No. Science progresses quickly and I believe we have reached a final conclusion on that subject.
Breaking the sound barrier was only though to cause dire consequences by people with no scientific background. It was one of those 'unknowns', and there was no math behind the assumption, just fear and superstition.
We have equations that are repeatable in a lab, that show us that something will need zero mass to reach the speed of light (i.e. EM radiation). The question is settled. The only speculation in time travel is not that we will someday go faster than the speed of light, but that we might be able to create a 'wormhole' through spacetime to connect two physical points that are far away by a short distance in time. But we still won't be going faster than 3.0X10^8 m/s.
2006-08-04 10:28:08 · answer #2 · answered by Steve S 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Look the time concept which I have just answered here depends heavily on light and breaking the so called "light barrier" is not possible if we observe life as such.
However speculation may go on forever.
2006-08-04 10:34:03 · answer #3 · answered by Jatta 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
no
scientists have sort of proven that traveling near the speed of light has consequences.
they put a sample of radioactive material in a rocket that went very fast.
the radio active material actualy decayed slower than the other sample that was left on earth.
2006-08-04 10:32:07 · answer #4 · answered by Rajan 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋