going the speed of light is possible?

Question

ok they say you cant go the speed of light because you would become infinite, thus you would need infinite energy.
However if you were on a ship and got to the speed of light wouldnt your fuel source(being with you at the point you went light speed) alo become infinite no matter how little you had left?

Answer 1

Its not that you become infinite. As you increase your speed your mass also increases. E= mc^2. as you approach the speed of light your mass increases to the point where it is infinite. This would require an infinite amount of energy to continue acceleration. Therefore as you cannot produce an infinite amount of energy, you cannot exceed the speed of light.

Answer 2

Your question is a either rhetorical or is a paradox. You say that to reach the speed of light, you would need to have an infinite energy source. Then you present an argument where a ship can travel in the speed of light, and ask where it gets its infinite fuel source.

And to answer the topic, no, achieving speed of light is still impossible.

Answer 3

Your mass becomes infinite. Thus if you had at rest 100 Tonnes of fuel, it is possible to calculate exactly what percentage of the speed of light that fuel would take you to with assumptions for container weight and human weight (lets imagine 100 kilos each). Lets imagine that we stop just a bit short, when 1 volume of fuel equal to original 1 kilo is left. Do we now, because of increase in mass (not yet infinity) have enough fuel to take the mass of the fuel, plus the mass of the person, plus the mass of the container (billions of tonnes total, perhaps, but fuel is 1/200th of that) to the speed of light - no, because it doesn't go up fast enough to overcome the other forces. You can't just jump to infinity and hope - infinity is 1 divided by 0 and that is why we can't divide by zero in math.

Answer 4

Interesting perspective, gave me a mental smile. :-)

You argue that the faster you go, the more inertial mass you have. The more inertial mass your fuel has, the more fuel you have. You use this more fuel to go even faster. Giving you more inertial mass. Sounds like a perpetual motion machine, or a no energy in but still energy out line of thinking, which is a nice twist, but sadly, seems to indicate an incorrect line of thought.

Answer 5

according to Einstein, no object can ever reach the speed of light. if you know something about the Lorentz transformations, using the sqrt(1 - v^2/C^2) as you can see this factor makes it impossible to have v=c.. because this factor is in the denominator of the transformation making the denominator equal t zero, which of course make the mass the object in question equal to infinity... which is absurd..
so, NO!

Answer 6

thats assuming that you could get to the speed of light in the first place. in chemical reactions, even if you have the potential to become incredibly stable by reacting in some way, there is still that activation energy you must overcome in order to react. the same would hold true in this case except your activation energy would be infinitely high!

Answer 7

Or you can just warp the space/time fabric and beat the light to wherever it is going without actually exceeding speed of light.

Answer 8

Why wonder about fuel quantity? Light speed if you talk of anything other than light is nonsense.

Answer 9

You don't become infinite.

As you approach the speed of light, your mass approached infinity. So it takes more and more energy to accelerate you faster toward the speed of light.

You can never get to the speed of light unless you have no mass to start with.

Viola! The photon!

Answer 10

Whatever you've heard from people is false.

It is not possible to travel at the speed of light YET.