what is the reason that it is impossible or difficult for an object to travel at the speed of light?

Question

If you say ..as the speed of an object reaches the speed of light.... its mass increases infinitely... I will say ...we have been told that the mass of an object is constant wherever you take it? so what is the problem here? why sudden increase in mass...infinitely? doesnt this ideas contradict...or enlighten me with something...because I am curious.

Answer 1

You could say that it is one of the debts incurred on matter when it got converted from energy. It gave up it's ability to reach light speed. But in the trade it got gravity, time and momentum. Not a bad trade if you ask me.

In addition to the weight issue, there's the length issue (its length would decrease to 0) and time would stand still. which means it would stop being matter.

Answer 2

Mass is considered constant in classical mechanics. Relativity says ONLY the OBSERVED speed of light is constant, and many things we consider as constant must change, including time, space and mass, to make light speed constant. This is supported by the fact that light is never seen to move faster or slower than 186,000 miles per second (in a vacuum), even if you are yourself flying toward or away from the source of light. Relativity was made up (yes, like all theories, it is just made up) to explain that measured fact. It could be there is another theory that would explain how you could move toward a light at 10 miles per second and not see the speed of that light coming at you go up to 186,010 miles per second, but nobody has made it up yet.

The reason we don't notice mass or time changing is that the changes are EXTREMELY small at everyday speeds, and they increase in a non-linear way as speed increases until at speeds very near light they get really large and at the speed of light they become infinite.

By the way, there are special cases where light may seem to move a little faster when not in a vacuum, but that is a special case, and anyway the difference is small and explained by the present theories.

Answer 3

Mass of ordinary everyday objects change so little it is literally undetectable.

Mass of objects accelerated to relativistic velocities can be measured as increasing.

For instance the mass of a particle such as an electron or proton accelerated to 86% the speed of light DOUBLES.

It's all relative to the speed of light.

Even the space shuttle at 17,500 mph (5 miles per second)
is not a relativistic speed.

Answer 4

No. somebody requested a surprisingly much comparable question the different day, yet on a practice. undergo in strategies that the fee of sunshine travels at precisely the comparable velocity regardless of ways speedily an merchandise is travelling. So no count number while you're in a automobile going 0.0000000000001% of the fee of sunshine, or a spaceship going ninety 9.ninety 9% of it - the sunshine you produce will race away at precisely the comparable velocity. it particularly is straight forward, and organic, to assume that while you're travelling at a velocity equivalent to that of sunshine, that the sunshine is in simple terms quite in front of you. it particularly is no longer - it particularly is as far in front of you as in case you have been status nonetheless. it continuously travels at precisely the comparable velocity. The unusual issues that happen the swifter you bypass are basically obtrusive to an observer - it particularly is relative.

Answer 5

To accelerate any mass up to the speed of light would require infinite energy. That's like all the energy in the universe..!

Answer 6

The idea that the speed of light is a universal speed limit and not source-dependent is a falsity that was proven wrong back in the sixties when powerful radar signals were bounced off the planet Venus from multiple radar stations around the globe simultaneously. As Bryan G. Wallace showed, signals from the side of the earth rotating towards Venus came back sooner than those from the side rotating away, to a degree that fits source-dependent models: http://www.ritz-btr.narod.ru/wallace.pdf

This suggests that [as common sense would have it] the speed of light is additive, i.e. light emitted from a source with velocity v, will have a velocity of c+v on emission. Light is capable of travelling through space with differing velocities. Wallace's observation refutes relativity but unfortunately, by this time relativity had already become more like a religion than science. No career-minded physicist could be seen to be paying heed to a "relativity-denier", so Wallace's paper did not get the attention it deserved and no further investigation was made. The mainstream scientific community carried on believing in the fallacy that the speed of light is always constant.

There have been other astronomical observations that suggest source-dependence too like this: http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8364
But such observations are seen as some minor curiosity and the theorists will bend over backwards to invent any kind of fantastical nonsense to explain them so that they can avoid ditching relativity.

The time-dilation seen in type 1a supernova is likely down to light being source-dependent too (rather than expanding spacetime!). And, many apparently variable stars may well be binaries in which light bunching is occurring as faster light emitted from a star moving at it's maximum velocity towards us in it's orbit, catches up with slower light it emitted later: http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/binaries.htm

Experiments on earth can give the illusion of source-independence but that is due to the EM fields of the earth's matter interfering and effectively normalizing the speed of light from a moving source (i.e. slowing it down to c almost as soon as it is emitted). You have to look at astronomical and interplanetary observations to see how light really behaves. It's planet-bound behaviour is the special case.

There is no mass increase with velocity either. It is only charged particles in a particle accelerator that become more diffcult to accelerate with increasing velocity, i.e. as they approach the propagation speed of the accelerating field (c with respect to the static accelerator). Nothing to do with increasing mass though — this page gives the common sense explanation: http://www.alternativephysics.org/book/RelativisticMass.htm (specifically the "Wind Tunnel" section)

Travelling faster than light is theoretically possible (as long as you aren't using invalid theories). Interstellar travel at such speeds would be very difficult though as the interstellar medium would do a good job of slowing a craft down at velocities approaching c, kind of like earth's atmosphere does for re-entering space craft.

Answer 7

As you go faster you get heavier,more weight means more fuel to keep pace, and we presently dont have an infinite fuel supply.