Faster then Light?

Question

I'm worthless mathwise but follow astronomy avidly: If I'm understanding Einstine correctly, FTL is impossibile because mass increases with speed and exceeding it would cause you to reach infinate mass, needing infinate power to move...

My problem here: That's to an observer, for you (moving that fast) your mass is constant and thus no problem, right?

Seem more likely you simply couldn't DETECT something going faster then light. Besides, there is a glaring hole here. LIGHT goes the speed of light.

Regardless, I'm sure there's a way to do it. People said you couldn't break the sound barrier and before that most physisists said you'd be flayed-alive by wind-sheer if you hit 60mph.

Answer 1

Some information....the special theory of relativity rests on two assumptions: 1. the laws of nature are the same to all non-accelerated observers 2. there is a finite speed of causality (2 is usually stated that the speed of light is a constant, but the way I stated it is equivalent from a physics standpoint since light always travels at the speed of causality and I think it drives home the meaning better) From these two assumptions (and a lot of mathmatics which I will leave out) all sorts of weird phenomena result...i.e. length contraction, time dilation. Assuming you believe in cause and effect, then faster than light travel is impossible by definition in special relativity. If something could go faster than light, then the assumptions of special relativity would be invalid and we would have to throw out the theory. Either that or we would have to give up the notion of cause and effect. I should note that all the reasons that people give why you can't go faster than light (increasing "mass" and non galilean addition of velocities) are just reflections of the fundamental assumption.

Answer 2

You are very slightly mistaken in your understandings.

You cannot CROSS the light barrier. You can forever travel faster than, slower then or at light speed but you cannot accelerate or decelerate through the light speed barrier.

To the observer, yes your mass is constant, but you experience a spacetime dilation effect which makes the rest of the universe contract around you and appear to be moving at a different rate in time.

Light has no mass and therefore can easily move at the speed of light - it never accelerates so there is no problem here.

Answer 3

"People said you couldn't break the sound barrier and before that most physisists said you'd be flayed-alive by wind-sheer if you hit 60mph."

Maybe true about the sound barrier, though I doubt the 'most physicists' part about 60 mph. Either way, nobody said that NOTHING could go faster than 60 mph or the sound barrier, we knew that bullets went faster than sound, and so did rockets. Thus these limits were limits of technology or endurance, not limits imposed by the physical laws of the universe. The speed of light limit is a limit imposed by the laws of the universe as we currently know them. Thus your analogy is quite flawed.

Answer 4

The explanation against faster than light (FTL) travel that involves momentum increase is pervasive, but not necessary to rule out FTL travel.

An equal (even larger?) concern is that FTL travel involves violation of causality, or backward-in-time travel. The reason for this is rather involved, and has nothing to do with a common explanation that involves passing photons you have emitted.

In general, 2 events occur at different times with respect to one another depending on your velocity. As long as your velocity is below c (light speed), this doesn't cause any problems. But if you exceed c, event A that CAUSES event B can come after it in your reference frame. Thus, the "event" of you arriving after a trip could come before the "event" of you leaving for the trip. Nobody likes thinking about this stuff, so it must be impossible.

Answer 5

I don't think you understand what mass is, here is a definition I got from the net.
In classical mechanics, there are three types of mass or properties called mass:

Inertial mass is a measure of an object's resistance to changing its state of motion when a force is applied. An object with small inertial mass changes its motion more readily, and an object with large inertial mass does so less readily.
Passive gravitational mass is a measure of the strength of an object's interaction with the gravitational field. Within the same gravitational field, an object with a smaller passive gravitational mass experiences a smaller force than an object with a larger passive gravitational mass. (This force is called the weight of the object. In informal usage, the word "weight" is often used synonymously with "mass", because the strength of the gravitational field is roughly constant everywhere on the surface of the Earth. In physics, the two terms are distinct: an object will have a larger weight if it is placed in a stronger gravitational field, but its passive gravitational mass remains unchanged.)
Active gravitational mass is a measure of the strength of the gravitational field due to a particular object. For example, the gravitational field that one experiences on the Moon is weaker than that of the Earth because the Moon has less active gravitational mass.
Although inertial mass, passive gravitational mass and active gravitational mass are conceptually distinct, no experiment has ever unambiguously demonstrated any difference between them. This empirical observation leads to the equivalence principle of general relativity. The weak form of the equivalence principle states that this correspondence between inertial and gravitational masses is not accidental, and that no experiment will ever detect a difference between them.

When Einstein said we couldn’t go faster than the speed of light he was talking about Inertial mass. He calculated there wasn’t enough energy in the universe to move an object faster than light. Think of a car as it go faster it becomes harder and harder to turn. It also takes more and more horsepower to go faster. I don’t know the exact figures but at say 50 miles per hour it takes a small amount of HP to go 55 MPH. But a car moving at say 550 MPH wants to go 555 MPH would require a great deal of hours power to increase that same 5 MPH.

Answer 6

This problem is one that has been mulled over by science fiction writers for decades. The most popular FTL device that every one (who isn't living under a rock) knows about: the warp engine. The whole idea was to go past the speed of light without having to *go* the speed of light. By thinking of the space-time continuum as a piece of paper, if you could bend, or warp, the paper to bring two separate parts of the paper closer to each other, you would effectively more FTL without having to travel the speed of light. It's a dodge that assumes that there is a higher dimension that we could go to and survive, and that there could exist a device that would allow us to leave normal space and enter hyperspace (or subspace, or whatever the latest scifi trend is to call it).

Answer 7

Electromagnetic waves can't boost up because it has no mass. subsequently no idea of strengthen in this is speed might want to be verified. also basic can't come out of the black hollow.because it would want to not in any respect have sufficient skill skill to conquer the gravitational skill of a black hollow. something going faster than the speed of sunshine dis-obeys all guidelines of physics and doubt exist if the substances of the wave can carry mutually .

Answer 8

It has been proven that light can travel faster then the speed of light read about it in the link

Answer 9

if you were traveling at the speed of light and turned on your headlights, what would happen? a few years ago a woman slowed light down to less than 100 miles a second, it didnt shrink. electrons move faster than light