question about the speed of light?

Question

since the inside of a circle travels slower than the outside, if the inside was traveling at just below the speed of light, wouldnt the outside be treaveling faster than light? and the middle at the speed of light?

Answer 1

Space-time dilation would take care of anything physical that travels anywhere near the speed of light, in addition to the reality that you can't get any physical to actually go at the speed of light.

However, if you want something that travels faster than the speed of light, just consider the output signal from pulsars, particularly those that have rotation periods on the order of milliseconds.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar

That means that their signals sweep across space at many times the speed of light at our location in space. Not much you can do with that, but it's definitely something that moves faster than light.

Answer 2

There is some good information about the questions that I think you are posing in the link below.

Basically, the speed of light is an absolute limit for our universe. You definitely cannot rotate a disk (or box or sphere or anything else) such that the outer edge exceeds the speed of light. You cannot accelerate the matter that forms the edge of the disk (or box or sphere) up to or beyond the speed of light. Its mass will grow larger and larger and thus resist the accelerating force.

I believe that this means that you cannot accelerate the mid-point of a radius (for example) to half the speed of light. However, I am not absolutely sure that this is true. Weird things happen at that end of the speed spectrum!

Answer 3

I don't think it would be possible. I think the inside of the box would dictate the pace that the box travels. Saying this, it would be impossible for the outside of the box to travel that close to the speed of light.

Answer 4

If you are interested in light, you should visit http://www.nw-pktn.org