Black holes & speed of light?

Question

Although the general and main thinking is that nothing can go faster than light; are black holes not proof that it is possible to go faster than light?Albeit it would be light that's going faster than it's self, it still shows that it is possible to go faster than 186,000 m\s.

Becuase the speed of light alone doesnt cause blackholes. The light has to be accelerated fast enough too cuase a tear in the universe

We though the sound barrier couldnt be broken, and obviously we have planes that faster than sound. More than likely eventually someone will come up for a design for a vehicle that can go faster than light.

Agree or disagree? Why or why not?

Answer 1

It is impossible to go faster than the speed of llight, and this has been proven mathematically using the Lorentz Equation.

The equation looks like this: M=km

The M is the amount the mass an object has when it is travelling at a speed of v.
m is the rest mass.
k is the coefficient of the increase

k=1/ sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)

With "v=velocity of an object with mass" and "c=speed of light in a vacuum".

If you look at this, it would show that nothing can go the speed of light because it would end up being 1/ sqrt(1-1) = 1/0, which is impossible. The same with going faster than light. It would equal 1/ sqrt(-x), which is an imaginary number.

In short, Light is a universal speed limit. Nothing can go faster than it.

Answer 2

Disagree. Here's why: first of all, light does not cause black holes. A black hole is caused by the collapse of a star. Secondly, the faster something goes the more mass it has. The more mass it has, the more energy it takes to make it go a little faster. When it goes a little faster it has still more mass. Now it take even more energy to make it go faster. This continues until the amount of energy required to make something go faster would be equal to or greater than all the energy available in the entire universe. At this point it is no long possible to go any faster. This point occurrs prior to reaching the speed of light. Nothing will ever go faster than light. Einstein was right.

Answer 3

A black hole is a region of space time from which nothing can escape, even light.

To see why this happens, imagine throwing a tennis ball into the air. The harder you throw the tennis ball, the faster it is travelling when it leaves your hand and the higher the ball will go before turning back. If you throw it hard enough it will never return, the gravitational attraction will not be able to pull it back down. The velocity the ball must have to escape is known as the escape velocity and for the earth is about 7 miles a second.

As a body is crushed into a smaller and smaller volume, the gravitational attraction increases, and hence the escape velocity gets bigger. Things have to be thrown harder and harder to escape. Eventually a point is reached when even light, which travels at 186 thousand miles a second, is not travelling fast enough to escape. At this point, nothing can get out as nothing can travel faster than light. This is a black hole.

the speed of light = 299 792 458 m / s

Answer 4

Einstien proved that as objects increase in speed, they also increase in mass. An object that is traveling the speed of light has infinite mass. Because nothing is greater than infinitity, nothing can go faster the speed of light.

HOWEVER......in theory it is possible to beat light in a race. Light cannot travel in subspace and thus move from point A to point B in the shortest distance possible. But a superly massive object like a black hole can bend space in such a way to where point A and point B in space exist ontop of one another. In theory, a person (With the miraculous power to escape a black hole) could travel from point A to point B without traversing the distance between them. It would appear as if they person had instantly jumped from one point to the other while light is still trying to get there.

Also, I don't think you understand how black holes are formed. You imply that accelerated light causes a tear in the universe. This is not true, light has nothing to do with the formation of black holes. Rather, it is gravity that does it. An extremely massive star about 500 times larger than our own, collapses under its own gravity. Because the star doesn't lose any mass, its own gravity does not diminish. Unlike white dwarves whose gravity reaches an equalibrium with its volume, the super gravity of a red giant star breaks the equilibrium and creates a black hole.

Yes, I believe in the future people will find a way to transport themselves great distances, but I do not think it will be by way of "breaking the light barrier".

Hope that helps

Answer 5

Many agree with Einstein, in that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Indeed, by determining the amount of energy needed to go beyond the speed of light, this seems to hold true. However, rather than following a linear line, it could be that once you reach a certain threshold, the amount of energy required to reach higher levels of speed may drop off and start to flatten out. In such a case, it may very well be possible to reach the speed of light.

Time will tell as we advance far enough along in technology to accurately test if Einstein's theories were right. Though I have much respect for the man, I think it would be interesting if he were wrong on this one and we actually could travel beyond the speed of light.

Answer 6

Nothing can exceed the speed of light.if it does than the mass is converted into energy...according to the Einstein relation of E=mc(sq)

Answer 7

You have a good consensus of answers to your question.
Light is a barrier that will never be broken.
A black hole is a theoretical entity whose many flaws doom it to nonexistence

Answer 8

Black holes are the evolutionary endpoints of stars at least 10 to 15 times as massive as the Sun. If a star that massive or larger undergoes a supernova explosion, it may leave behind a fairly massive burned out stellar remnant. With no outward forces to oppose gravitational forces, the remnant will collapse in on itself. The star eventually collapses to the point of zero volume and infinite density, creating what is known as a " singularity ". As the density increases, the path of light rays emitted from the star are bent and eventually wrapped irrevocably around the star. Any emitted photons are trapped into an orbit by the intense gravitational field; they will never leave it. Because no light escapes after the star reaches this infinite density, it is called a black hole.

But contrary to popular myth, a black hole is not a cosmic vacuum cleaner. If our Sun was suddenly replaced with a black hole of the same mass, the earth's orbit around the Sun would be unchanged. (Of course the Earth's temperature would change, and there would be no solar wind or solar magnetic storms affecting us.) To be "sucked" into a black hole, one has to cross inside the Schwarzschild radius. At this radius, the escape speed is equal to the speed of light, and once light passes through, even it cannot escape.

The Schwarzschild radius can be calculated using the equation for escape speed.


vesc = (2GM/R)1/2

For photons, or objects with no mass, we can substitute c (the speed of light) for Vesc and find the Schwarzschild radius, R, to be

R = 2GM/c2
If the Sun was replaced with a black hole that had the same mass as the Sun, the Schwarzschild radius would be 3 km (compared to the Sun's radius of nearly 700,000 km). Hence the Earth would have to get very close to get sucked into a black hole at the center of our solar system.

If We Can't See Them, How Do We Know They're There?

Since black holes are small (only a few to a few tens of kilometers in size), and light that would allow us to see them cannot escape, a black hole floating alone in space would be hard, if not impossible, to see. For instance, the photograph above shows the optical companion star to the (invisible) black hole candidate Cyg X-1.

However, if a black hole passes through a cloud of interstellar matter, or is close to another "normal" star, the black hole can accrete matter into itself. As the matter falls or is pulled towards the black hole, it gains kinetic energy, heats up and is squeezed by tidal forces. The heating ionizes the atoms, and when the atoms reach a few million degrees Kelvin, they emit X-rays. The X-rays are sent off into space before the matter crosses the Schwarzschild radius and crashes into the singularity. Thus we can see this X-ray emission.

Binary X-ray sources are also places to find strong black hole candidates. A companion star is a perfect source of infalling material for a black hole. A binary system also allows the calculation of the black hole candidate's mass. Once the mass is found, it can be determined if the candidate is a neutron star or a black hole, since neutron stars always have masses of about 1.5 times the mass of the sun. Another sign of the presence of a black hole is random variation of emitted X-rays. The infalling matter that emits X-rays does not fall into the black hole at a steady rate, but rather more sporadically, which causes an observable variation in X-ray intensity. Additionally, if the X-ray source is in a binary system, the X-rays will be periodically cut off as the source is eclipsed by the companion star. When looking for black hole candidates, all these things are taken into account. Many X-ray satellites have scanned the skies for X-ray sources that might be possible black hole candidates.

Cygnus X-1 is the longest known of the black hole candidates. It is a highly variable and irregular source with X-ray emission that flickers in hundredths of a second. An object cannot flicker faster than the time required for light to travel across the object. In a hundredth of a second, light travels 3000 kilometers. This is one fourth of Earth's diameter! So the region emitting the x-rays around Cygnus X-1 is rather small. Its companion star, HDE 226868 is a B0 supergiant with a surface temperature of about 31,000 K. Spectroscopic observations show that the spectral lines of HDE 226868 shift back and forth with a period of 5.6 days. From the mass-luminosity relation, the mass of this supergiant is calculated as 30 times the mass of the Sun. Cyg X-1 must have a mass of about 7 solar masses or else it would not exert enough gravitational pull to cause the wobble in the spectral lines of HDE 226868. Since 7 solar masses is too large to be a white dwarf or neutron star, it must be a black hole.

However, there are arguments against Cyg X-1 being a black hole. HDE 226868 might be undermassive for its spectral type, which would make Cyg X-1 less massive than previously calculated. In addition, uncertainties in the distance to the binary system would also influence mass calculations. All of these uncertainties can make a case for Cyg X-1 having only 3 solar masses, thus allowing for the possibility that it is a neutron star.

Nonetheless, there are now about 10 binaries for which the evidence for a black hole is much stronger than in Cygnus X-1. The first of these, an X-ray transient called A0620-00, was discovered in 1975, and the mass of the compact object was determined in the mid-1980's to be greater than 3.5 solar masses. This very clearly excludes a neutron star, which has a mass near 1.5 solar masses, even allowing for all known theoretical uncertainties. The best case for a black hole is probably V404 Cygni, whose compact star is at least 10 solar masses. With improved instrumentation, the pace of discovery has accelerated over the last five years or so, and the list of dynamically confirmed black hole binaries is growing rapidly.

What about all the Wormhole Stuff?
Unfortunately, worm holes are more science fiction than they are science fact. A wormhole is a theoretical opening in space-time that one could use to travel to far away places very quickly. The wormhole itself is two copies of the black hole geometry connected by a throat - the throat, or passageway, is called an Einstein-Rosen bridge. It has never been proved that worm holes exist and there is no experimental evidence for them, but it is fun to think about the possibilities their existence might create.

Answer 9

Maybe they do bend time/space enough that they are essentially "doors" to the unknown... Other collaborations of time and/or sections of the cosmos.