Do any objects move at close to light speed?

Question

Is it possible for a natural object in space to move at near light speed or would it be impossible due to other matter slowing it?

Answer 1

This is the most bad science I've ever seen on one page. Electrons go nowhere near lightspeed around any nucleus. Leptons aren't massless and aren't photons. There are protons zipping around at near light speed everywhere. Them hitting the atmosphere is the main source of cosmic radiation. Supernovas and black hole jets can accelerate particles to near light speed. If you consider massless things like photons objects, they always travel at lightspeed.

Answer 2

An object in space can potentially move without being slowed by anything.

My guess would be matter falling into a black hole. I mean, since light can't escape, and it moves at the speed of light.....

Answer 3

The massless particles called "leptons" can move at the speed of light. (Photons are leptons too.) Baryons can be accelerated to near the speed of light with a lot of energy applied to them. Larger objects like stellar ejecta from a supernova might move at a large percentage of the speed of light, perhaps 50%, but probably not "near" light speed. It takes an imponderable amount of energy.

Answer 4

I am not quite sure what you mean by a 'natural object'?

You can accelerate anything to near the speed of light if you have the energy to do it.

In space, there is no 'matter' as you say to slow it down with friction.

Answer 5

The electrons in the K-shells of mercury and gold move at near light speed according to Newtonian mechanics, to keep from falling into the nucleus. There is a Prof. Schmidbauer in Germany who has explained the liquidity of mercury and the "yellow" color of gold on these bases. The thing is that the innermost electrons of these atoms are incompletely shielded from the full + charge of the nucleus. So they must orbit their nuclei at 10% of the speed of light. This increases their mass. Such massive negatively-charged particles must affect the other electrons and so the physical and chemical properties of the atom.

Answer 6

This may surprise you, but everything, us included, are moving at the speed of light already. Be warned, this involves an interpretation of time which is a bit hard to understand, since we are 'wired' to see time in a particular way.
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This curious answer has its roots in Einstein's theories of relativity and four-dimensional space-time. Remember E=MC2? This formula says energy and matter are the same thing.
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All energy, like light, travels at the speed of light. We are made out of matter. Matter is made out of energy. So we are made out of energy. We are made out of light. We are traveling at the speed of light right now. Everything we see on Earth is simply traveling with us. Most of our velocity is taking us into the time dimension, the fourth dimension of spacetime.
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This is why relativity predicts that time passes differently when a traveler accelerates away from Earth at a high rate of speed. Earth continues on its time vector, while the traveler accelerates away in a different direction. If you look out the car window on a freeway at the car next to you, it appears to be still. When you take the exit ramp, and look back at the same car, it is now accelerating past you. This would be the way time passes at different rates for different travelers.
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This interpretation says that there is only one speed at which everything, light, energy, and matter moves. All that changes is the direction of that motion. The only part of that motion that you can see is the component of motion away from the time vector.

Answer 7

if there's no matter in it's path i think it's possible.