Is it possible to reach infinite speed in a vacum?

Question

Is there such a thing as frictionless surfaces?

Answer 1

I go pretty quick when I hoover..........
But not that quick!

Answer 2

No, one cannot reach INFINITE speed. The speed of light is the maximum speed achievable by ANYTHING in the universe, and that only if the object has 0 rest mass (such as a photon).

And no, there is no such thing as a frictionless surface. This is a simplification made for physics thought experiments. However, in the depth of space, friction is reduced to the point of being negligible, so if we fire a space probe into the depths of space, it will continue traveling in a straight path essentially forever (such as the Voyager probe which has by now traveled beyond the furthest reaches of the solar system, and is about to traverse the outermost point of influence of the sun -- heliopause; where the solar wind meets with and becomes part of the general interstellar particle wind).

Answer 3

No. But you can go very, very fast if you have the motive power (thrust) to do so.

Just look at the various satelites and the ISS with all the
junk hanging off of them. It is not aerodynamic at all. Why,
because in space there is no air (air friction) to contend with.

Frictionless surfaces are not really a subject for discussion in regard to space travel. They would, however, be of prime importance in aircraft designs within the atmosphere or on shuttle type space craft where the vehicle spends part of its time in the Earth's atmosphere.

Moving through various densities of air, objects have air flowing over and around them. The object of airfoil design
is to make this air flow smoothly over the surface of the vehicle reducing turbulence (i.e. friction/drag). Numerous
designs have been produced and all designs are optimized for a particular speed of flight. Airfoils designed for high speed flight will not work well at low speeds (landing and approach phases of flight) so some other features are required to fix this problem...here we enter into discussions of things like flaps, and adjustable wing shapes. Recently there have been designs which vent gases along the skin of aircraft to solve the skin friction problem and some of those might be the answer to almost frictionless flight on very specialized aircraft. Other than that I do not know of anything that is frictionless.

Answer 4

No, because there's no such thing as infinite speed in a finite universe such as ours.

Anyway, as Einstein showed, nothing of mass can travel faster than light, even in a vacuum.

Answer 5

The speed of light cannot be exceeded by an object of finite mass unless the space around it is distorted, and the only way this is possible at the moment is through the expansion of space.

There are frictionless surfaces, as with superfluids, but this is not relevant to the question.

Answer 6

No. As you go closer to the speed of light your mass will increase.

Yes there are frictionless "surfaces". Helium-3 has super cold temperatures has such a behaviour. (You can even search You Tube for it).

Answer 7

Reaching infinite speed?
Mmmm. No, and... yes.

The fastest anything can go in the Universe appears to be "the speed of light in a vacuum". This speed is represented by the symbol c.

It is possible to go faster than the speed of light in some media. For example, in water, light can only go at 0.75 c. If a particle enters the water at a speed greater than 0.75 c (which is allowed since it is still less than c), it will cause Cerenkov radiation. This kind of radiation has been observed,

Back to our speed in vacuum.

According to Lorentz time dilation formula, the time flow changes with the reference speed of the observer. If you go faster and faster, you will appear to us (the ones stuck here, at slow speed) to live slower and slower.

D'(t) = D(t) * SQRT(1 - v^2)

If you are going at 0.99 c, and if you travel to a star located at 10 light years from here, then for us you will seem to take 10.1 years (10 divided by .99).

However, for you, only 1.425 years will have passed. By your calculation, you would have maintained a speed of:
10 light-years divided 1.425 years = 7 c

However, this would be an after-the-fact calculation when you'd see that the distance is 10 light-years in our frame of reference (i.e., distance according to the atlas published by astronomers at rest on Earth). For you, the total distance in your fast-moving frame of reference would have been 1.4107 light-years (using Lorentz transformation for distances).

I agree that you cannot really reach the speed of light if you have any rest-mass. However, let's pretend.

If you could go at exactly the speed of light c (compared to any other frame of reference, including ours), then the time elapsed going from A to B (whatever the A and B) would be, for you, exactly zero. In other words, you'd be in both places simultaneously (equivalent to infinite speed).

However, since our brain needs time to perceive anything (it is like a slow computer with very powerful parallel processing, working around 10 to 20 Hz -- not MegaHertz, just Hertz), then you would not be able to perceive anything and you would not be able to sense your movement. Any trip would be shorter than one flop of the brain.

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A frictionless surface is a different question. In practice there is no such thing. Even magnetic levitation does have a tiny bit of energy exchange as the virtual photons from the rail react with the virtual photons from the magnet in the vehicle. If you had a perfectly level magnetic levitation rail inside a perfect-vacuum tube, and you pushed a levitating machine forward, it would eventually stop (it may take a very long time...).

Answer 8

Who knows?

Infinite speed would be considered 3x10^8 m/s
(the speed of light)

As far as we know, no object of mass may accelerate to the speed of light, however light does display some of the properties of an object with mass. Thats about as much as I know on the subject, High School Physics doesn't really go into much detail on this...

Answer 9

That is mans quest, to be able to reach such speeds without being killed trying to do it,, Maybe in a thousand years give or take a couple we will be able to do it,

Answer 10

Mass does not incredibly advance in each and every experience. We used to chat approximately "relativistic mass" advance yet those days i think of maximum physicists decide to chat approximately mass being unchanging. (Wait, you're saying. the two it incredibly is or that is not. How can they only go with that? i'm going to get to that.) i've got faith even Einstein dropped the "relativistic mass" terminology for the duration of his lifetime. you could comprehend of the definition of momentum = m*v. nicely in relativity, momentum = gamma*m*v the place gamma is the relativistic element a million/sqrt(a million - v^2/c^2). This quantity is amazingly on the factor of a million for many velocities. it incredibly is in basic terms while v gets on the factor of c that it starts off turning out to be. And it may develop infinitely super. If v is amazingly cloes to c, like 0.99999c, then v^2/c^2 is 0.99999^2 and (a million - v^2/c^2) is amazingly on the factor of 0. So gamma that's the reciprocal of that quantity is amazingly super. If v = 0.99999999c, that is even better. there is not any shrink to how super gamma could be, on a similar time as v remains under c. What this suggests is that the momentum gets better and larger, without shrink, as v gets nearer to c. And the kinetic potential has a matching habit. every time you pump greater potential and momentum into the shifting particle, it in basic terms gets a tiny bit nearer to c without accomplishing it. Gamma in basic terms gets somewhat better. So what's "relativistic mass"? that is gamma * m. This was once lumped collectively as an "equivalent" mass, call it m_R. in case you do this, then you could write momentum = m_R*v which looks lots like the common m*v. in spite of the fact that that is not probable a solid description of what's happening. The gravitational stress does not get any better. once you communicate approximately "relativistic mass" all you're doing is giving a particular call to the quantity gamma * m. the total volume of momentum is the comparable whether you do this or not. yet you could go with whether or to not use this "relativistic mass" terminology. you have probable heard of E = mc^2. in case you drop the belief of "relativistic mass", then for comparable motives the marvelous formula turns into E = gamma*mc^2.

Answer 11

Nope. The operative word is "reach"

E=MC2 right? Energy = mass, the energy to accelerate to c2 would be infinite, as would the mass. It can be approached but not achieved, just like absolute zero