look at the aircraft CONCORDE for ex.(correct me if I mispell concorde). It can travel twice the speed of sound.
2006-12-27 13:26:19 · 14 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
I mean ships or other vehicle to travel from planet to planet that takes a light years to reach.
2006-12-27 13:59:42 · update #1
There is a huge gap between the speed of light and the speed of sound. The speed of light is usually 670,616,629 mph while the speed of sound is 770 mph. It is doubtful that scientists will create something that will "travel" at the speed of sound. There are, however, loopholes to travel, such as black holes and worm holes that bypass distance. Today we are working on solar sails(light sails) and they theoritically could help us travel quickly...though not at the speed of light. Also, I believe that transporters are being studied by some universities so people can "travel" at the speed of light possibly...though that technology is only now being studied. In 1998, physicists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), along with two European groups, turned the IBM ideas into reality by successfully teleporting a photon, a particle of energy that carries light.
In 2002, researchers at the Australian National University successfully teleported a laser beam.
The most recent successful teleportation experiment took place on October 4, 2006 at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark. Dr. Eugene Polzik and his team teleported information stored in a laser beam into a cloud of atoms.
We are years away from the development of a teleportation machine like the transporter room on Star Trek's Enterprise spaceship. The laws of physics may even make it impossible to create a transporter that enables a person to be sent instantaneously to another location, which would require travel at the speed of light.
For a person to be transported, a machine would have to be built that can pinpoint and analyze all of the 10^28 atoms that make up the human body. That's more than a trillion trillion atoms. This machine would then have to send this information to another location, where the person's body would be reconstructed with exact precision. Molecules couldn't be even a millimeter out of place, lest the person arrive with some severe neurological or physiological defect.
In the Star Trek episodes, and the spin-off series that followed it, teleportation was performed by a machine called a transporter. This was basically a platform that the characters stood on, while Scotty adjusted switches on the transporter room control boards. The transporter machine then locked onto each atom of each person on the platform, and used a transporter carrier wave to transmit those molecules to wherever the crew wanted to go. Viewers watching at home witnessed Captain Kirk and his crew dissolving into a shiny glitter before disappearing, rematerializing instantly on some distant planet.
If such a machine were possible, it's unlikely that the person being transported would actually be "transported." It would work more like a fax machine -- a duplicate of the person would be made at the receiving end, but with much greater precision than a fax machine. But what would happen to the original? One theory suggests that teleportation would combine genetic cloning with digitization.
In this biodigital cloning, tele-travelers would have to die, in a sense. Their original mind and body would no longer exist. Instead, their atomic structure would be recreated in another location, and digitization would recreate the travelers' memories, emotions, hopes and dreams. So the travelers would still exist, but they would do so in a new body, of the same atomic structure as the original body, programmed with the same information.
2006-12-27 13:38:14 · answer #1 · answered by jackshengtan 2 · 2⤊ 7⤋
The speed of light is 186,282.393 miles per second. In order to go that fast the ship would have to be physically removed from this universe because of the increase in mass and the time dilation effect. The Concorde travels nowhere near the speed of light. Sound travels at a miserable 680 mph.
2006-12-27 13:30:57 · answer #2 · answered by kevpet2005 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Create or discover?
We already have somethings that travel at the speed of light, including light and tachyons, but they have no mass.
According to the rules of relativity, anything with mass can not reach the speed of light because it gets more and more massive as it approaches the speed of light, requiring more and more energy to accelerate it closer. And we know this is true because we can measure the results in small particles accelerated to high speed and we have to design particle accelerating rings to match the increase in weight.
The speed of the Concord at Mach 2 or of other planes at Mach 3 or space craft at 25,000 mph (about Mach 250) are trivial compared to the speed of light. which is 669 600 000 mph or about Mach 1,000,000
2006-12-27 13:35:59 · answer #3 · answered by Mike1942f 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
There is a HUGE difference between traveling at (or faster than) the speed of sound and the speed of light.
The sound barrier was an engineering problem.
The light barrier is a fundamental law of physics as we understand it today.
The Theory of Relativity....which has passed every test it has been given....forbids anything with a rest mass from ever reaching the speed of light. Unless and until our understanding of the basic laws of physics change, we will never have anything that can travel at light speed.
2006-12-27 13:30:53 · answer #4 · answered by nwolfe35 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Radio, T.V, Statelite communication, Micro wave, Infra red radiations, Bulbs emitting light, Xrays are all have in common the elecrto magnetic radiation produced artificially by men which travel with the speed of light.
2006-12-27 14:12:08 · answer #5 · answered by Pearlsawme 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes and No.
Laser light travels at the velocity of light. So do electrons, Microwaves and Radio-waves. With the Internet, scientists create new things every day that travel at the velocity of light. These are Ideas. Ideas can travel at the velocity of light.
If you mean something physical, something with a rest mass that is accelerated, then the answer is No. The velocity of light is a physical limit for our universe. To travel as fast or faster and still have mass would mean leaving the physical universe.
2006-12-27 13:59:52 · answer #6 · answered by Richard 7 · 15⤊ 0⤋
Heck, *I* can make something travel at the speed of light - Light! I turn the switch on and photons start moving around in the room at the speed of light.
Anything of substantial size? Not in our lifetime.
2006-12-27 13:35:54 · answer #7 · answered by jmwildenthal 2 · 1⤊ 1⤋
I already have a device that can produce something that travels at the speed of light. It's called a flashlight.
2006-12-27 13:30:56 · answer #8 · answered by Incoherent Fool 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
i don't think its possible to create anything that can travel greater than the speed of light. To travel great than the speed of light you need infinite energy.
2006-12-27 13:35:52 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
Sure. I have one in my tool chest now!
It produces an electromagnetic beam that travels at the speed of light.
It is called a flashlight.
2006-12-27 15:46:25 · answer #10 · answered by Jerry P 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋