It is said we cannot go beyond the speed of light. Our mass will equal 0, do we really have mass?

Question

I have see that we cannot go the speed of light because we will have 0 mass, and another says we will have infinate mass. If our mass is reduced anyway in velocity, who is to say it cannot be reduced to 0. It is confirmed we cannot go the speed of light? Could it not be as when they are "beamed up" matter is reorganized and then returned to o/state? I feel it is rather bold to make this statement. I realize it is not theoretically possible to "beam" because original is copied, etc, but what if same matter is traveling this fast, do we really understand what happens to it?

Answer 1

This is simply because light is massless. If you yourself were turned into light you could move as fast as it. However you do not need to go the universal speed limit to get places. There wouldn't be a whole lot of benefit from going 99% the speed of light as opposed to say 95%. No your mass would not equal 0 because you can move near the speed of light without being massless.

Answer 2

The stuff sci fi is made of is fun stuff, but usually without true scientific basis. The prime reason we can't travel at several warp speeds (Star Trek) is because it would take more energy than available in the universe to actually bend space (the warp) to the point were the Enterprise would pop out of one side of space and pop into the other side some many light years away.

The disassembly/assembly sequence used to transport objects through a stargate (Stargate) is an attempt to work around the speed of light limits for mass. Energy has no such limit because it is unaffected by the speed at which it travels. So in Stargate, they convert all the mass into energy and reassemble that energy into a perfectly copied mass on the other side of the galaxy. The problem with this attempt is that it, too, is limited by the amount of energy it would require, let alone the issue of tearing apart and reassembling a mass made up of countless particles.

Do we understand what happens to mass at near light speed? Yes. Countless experiments have been done that verify the Lorenz Transform L(v) = 1/sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2) which clearly shows that mass, in L(v)mc^2, and time, in t' = tL(v) approach infinity as v --> c the speed of light. This is true because L(v) --> infinity as v --> c.

One of the reasons so much energy is required to accelerate particles in the colliders (e.g., the Large Hadron Collider) is because as those particles approach light speed, their inertial mass M = L(v)m approaches infinity. So it takes more and more energy to accelerate those particles having increasing inertial mass.

One final note, m --> infinity, not zero, as some others have pointed out. Check out the Lorenz Transform carefully and you'll see why.

Answer 3

Mass increases, not decreases, under acceleration. Even at speeds much slower than light, the mass of, say, a bullet, is pretty darn significant when it hits something after being fired from a gun. At lightspeed, relativity equations yield infinite mass for anything that has any mass to begin with. I don't see how it could ever be possible to accelerate something to superluminal speeds, but a few chinks in Einstein's cosmic speed limit have appeared in scientific experiments with light moving through something other than a vacuum, so I wouldn't rule it out. Even if you were able to disintegrate a human a-la-Star Trek, and reassemble them elsewhere, their individual atoms would still have to be "beamed" at less than light speed, since atoms have mass. Folding 4 dimensional spacetime into navigable sheets may not be ruled out by string theory, but that's like saying we can't rule out that little green men live on the surface of a neutron. It's just highly unlikely.

Answer 4

This really isn't an answer, but it is impossible to go the speed of light, but it is possible to go right under the speed of light, as it has been proven by a famous English scientist, though I forgot his name.

Answer 5

Try not to listen to scientists, or people who think they are scientists. They generally go by a set group of parameters for testing these things out.
As it is said, you need to think outside the box. Human beings limit themselves by their supposedly educated statements of what can and cannot be achieved. We as a species know so little in the whole scheme of things.

Answer 6

Not true...as you approach the speed of light your mass approaches the infinite

Answer 7

mass becomes infinite at C
therefore photons do not have a mass to be capable to travel at C

the problem is that matter cannot travel that fast because it HAS already mass in unaccelerated state.