Could the light speed barrier be the same as the sound barrier?

Question

I mean the sound barrier can be broken if you hit it fast enough. Can the light barrier possible hold the same out come? Einstein also said the the universe was contracting and it is expanding so don't quote that idiot.

Answer 1

No, the "sound barrier" is approximately 750 miles per hour. We have many jets that can break that easily now days. Mach 1 represents the speed of a jet at the speed of sound. Mach 2 represents the speed of a jet at twice the speed of sound and Mach 3, 4, 5, etc... follows suit with the same multipliation of the speed of sound. When breaking the sound barrier, jets produce what is termed a "sonic boom" which is the sound of the compressed sound wave when jets fly faster than the speed of sound.

The "light speed barrier" is much harder to break as it is the speed of light which is approximately 186,282 miles per second. It is theorized that it cannot be broken, as it is believed that as you approach that speed so does your mass increase and you cannot create enough power to overcome the infinite mass that is created the closer you get to the speed of light.

Answer 2

No. The sound barrier is a function of air compressibility because without air, or a gaseous medium, there cannot be any sound. This assumes you want to consider only the mediums through which an object can pass. Sound will pass through almost any material including rock, wood, and water to name a few. The sound barrier was simply that point at which an airplane began moving faster than the air would compress. A little oversimplified, but the critical point is that sound requires a medium for transfer. We hear sound because the air is vibrating to transmit it. Light, however, does not require a medium for transport. It travels quite well through a vacuum while sound will not.

Answer 3

I'm guessing that what you really mean is, "Could the light speed barrier be _broken_, like the sound barrier was?"

The two are really different. It's not just that the speed of light is much (much) faster than the speed of sound; there's more to it than that.

Breaking the sound barrier was essentially an engineering and technology problem. It didn't overturn any laws of physics; it just required scientists to deal with a lot of new cases (of _existing_ laws of physics) that they hadn't much dealt with before.

The light barrier is different. It's related to the nature of time and space itself. When you break the sound barrier, you manage to precede your own sound waves. But when you break the _light_ barrier, you manage to precede your own _existence_. Nobody is quite sure what that means, or if it has a meaning. So the usual interpretation is, since the idea leads to a logical absurdity, it must be impossible.

Of course, it may be that we just need to broaden our concepts so that "preceding our own existence" and "effects occurring before causes" make some kind of logical sense. But that would mean more than just fast space ships--it would mean a whole different kind of reality.

Answer 4

Not as far as we know. Accurate measurements confirm Einstein's theory of relativity, which says that the energy needed to accelerate a massive object (an object with mass) to light speed is infinite. Anything is possible, but all signs currently point to massive objects being restricted to less than light speed.

The sound 'barrier' is simply a speed at which sound waves pile up in front of you, leading to large vibrations.

Answer 5

Absolutely not ...go back and reread your physics textbook or check out your library!

Light waves 186,000 miles per second

Sound waves some figure much much lower less than a 1000 k anyway!

Answer 6

Why yes, of course it could! Why should light and sound travel at different speeds just because they've been observed to do so? I think you are on to something here.

Answer 7

No because light and sound travel at very very different speeds.

Answer 8

no