I've had this discussion with my friends every once in awhile and we don't really get anywhere. Say you were traveling at or near the speed of light, what exactly would you see? Would it be a big shade of white infront of you and complete darkness behind you? or something comletely differnet
travelling at/near the speed of light?
Well, I don't think you would survive that trip to tell the difference.
But hypotheticaly you would continously smash into light in front of you so that direction should be bright as ever but here's the tricky bit. Since you are travelling at really high speed all the frequencies should skyrocket in front of you and be null behind you. The human eye only recognise a small spectra o frequencies which would leave you to see a very faint band of light around you somewhere between the front and back. Relative to earth this light consists of everything from radiowaves to gamma-rays and beyond hitting you from the side but relative to you these are in the spectra you can see depending on their incoming angle. Very little light would hit just your spectra so dont get your hopes up to see anything.
And also in case you would like to go and try this. dont! light carries kinetic energy! Seeing the incoming light infront of you would fry you quicker than any nuclear bomb. At the center of the blast!
But hypotheticaly you would continously smash into light in front of you so that direction should be bright as ever but here's the tricky bit. Since you are travelling at really high speed all the frequencies should skyrocket in front of you and be null behind you. The human eye only recognise a small spectra o frequencies which would leave you to see a very faint band of light around you somewhere between the front and back. Relative to earth this light consists of everything from radiowaves to gamma-rays and beyond hitting you from the side but relative to you these are in the spectra you can see depending on their incoming angle. Very little light would hit just your spectra so dont get your hopes up to see anything.
And also in case you would like to go and try this. dont! light carries kinetic energy! Seeing the incoming light infront of you would fry you quicker than any nuclear bomb. At the center of the blast!
| s43ros wrote: |
| I've had this discussion with my friends every once in awhile and we don't really get anywhere. Say you were traveling at or near the speed of light, what exactly would you see? Would it be a big shade of white infront of you and complete darkness behind you? or something comletely differnet |
OK...We can answer that one.
1st colours would all be blue shifted so everything would look more blue than it would if stationary.
Better yet...here's a simulated movie of flying at proportions of c:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/flythru.html
Regards
Chris
regarding this same subject I was wondering....Einstein said that you can not travel faster than the speed of light because when you aproach to that speed you become energy, light:), however I was thinking since a black hole sucks everything even light, and pulls light to it's center with a great force, because of it's enormous density, so would it make light travel faster while sucking it???
| kch0rr0 wrote: |
| regarding this same subject I was wondering....Einstein said that you can not travel faster than the speed of light because when you aproach to that speed you become energy, light:), however I was thinking since a black hole sucks everything even light, and pulls light to it's center with a great force, because of it's enormous density, so would it make light travel faster while sucking it??? |
Well light always travels at the same velocity through any medium, at c. it's just that it's gravity is great enough to bend the light into it's center. I think, if you positioned light at just the right point around the black hole, traveling tangent to it at first, is it possible light could go into orbit around a blackhole. But to answer your question, i believe that gravity merely bends light rather than pulls or sucks. This also happens when when we see light from a star on the other side of a galaxy at multiple points around the galaxy, feel free to correct me if i misunderstood any of this.
I also wondered (and this may exist elswhere on this board), but if you were to somehow move faster than light, would you time travel? I guess it sounds stupid after re-reading it, but still, I wonder what if...
| Soulfire wrote: |
| I also wondered (and this may exist elswhere on this board), but if you were to somehow move faster than light, would you time travel? I guess it sounds stupid after re-reading it, but still, I wonder what if... |
That is what happens, yes.
The whole of moern cosmology is built around Relativity - both Special and General.
Special Relativity (SR) is Einstein's first and links light with space and time.
General Relativity (GR) is the later addition which links gravity into the scheme.
Special is concerned with the effects of speed. The theories use the conept of a 'frame of reference' since an important first realisation is that movement (and gravity) are meaningles without a reference point to measure against.
Special relarivity starts simple - 1. The laws of physics apply in every frame of reference. So far so good.
Next, though, is the mind expander. You can easily picture people/objects all wizzing around in their own 'frame of reference' which means you can measure realtive velocities and distances and such. The next posit in SR, however is simply this : 2. The speed of light (c) is the same for all frames of reference, no matter how they are moving relative to each other. If you consider that for a moment you will see the 'problem'.
If I am moving towards you at high speed and I switch a torch on pointed towards you then intuition would indicate that the light (to me) will be going faster than it is to you. Likewise, moving away would be the reverse. We experience this in daily life with the 'doppler' shift as sounds move towards or away from us, the wavelength either stretches or contracts and we hear this as a pitch change.
Consider point 2, though. That says that the light photons will actually be the same speed for me as for you - even if you are moving away from me at a very high speed....
Newtonian concepts now break down. If we both see a photon at the same speed and we are both moving apart at high speed then something has to give...if time is constant and distance is constant then this simply doesn't work. What 'gives' is time itself. Time is different, depending on your relative speed, but light is constant. That, in a nutshell is SR.
The implications, however, need some thought
Chris.
You cannot see the complete dark behind you, because the light is actually travelling, even if you are moving near the speed of light, at the speed of light. Its not an easy question what you will be seeing around you. But it should be contracted and slightly rotated. what you will see in front of you and behind you should be not affected by the relativity.
| kch0rr0 wrote: |
| Einstein said that you can not travel faster than the speed of light because when you aproach to that speed you become energy, light |
didn't he also say something about not being able to reach that speed because the closer you get to light speed the more energy you need and if you want to go faster then the speed of light you would need an infined amount of energy?
| Quote: |
| didn't he also say something about not being able to reach that speed because the closer you get to light speed the more energy you need and if you want to go faster then the speed of light you would need an infined amount of energy? |
Yes that is true because as your speed increases close to that of a speed of light your mass increases also. Theoreticaly when you reach c (if you could) then your mass would be infinite and so you would need infinite amount of energy to move such a mass.
| Revvion wrote: | ||
didn't he also say something about not being able to reach that speed because the closer you get to light speed the more energy you need and if you want to go faster then the speed of light you would need an infined amount of energy? |
Exactly correct. Luka has also given the reason for this acording to theory.
The formula is :
Regards
Chris
Only light and Electromagnetic radiation can make such a trip, plus the second you break the light barriar I think you will go back in time.
Next time I see the Flash I'll ask him for you
Next time I see the Flash I'll ask him for you
| reddishblue wrote: |
| Only light and Electromagnetic radiation can make such a trip, plus the second you break the light barriar I think you will go back in time.
Next time I see the Flash I'll ask him for you |
Light and EM are examples of the same thing - manifestations of photons at different energies (or wavelengths or frequencies - it all adds up to the same).
As for faster than light....here is an interesting link on this:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/FTL.html
Regards
Chris
I've discussed the topic of traveling at light speed with some people I know. But the conversation always leads me to wonder what the point of it all is. Even if we do ever come to the technological peak of being able to travel that fast with no negative consequences, it will still take us a very long time to travel even the shortest distances. The closest star is light-years away. Light-years! Of course thats still a whole lot better than having to waste 60 some years to get to Pluto, its not as effective at getting to our goal: traveling to other civilized planets.
I've always thought a better solution would be to find an area of space inconceivable to mind. I think some people call it hyper space or similar. We need to find a level of travel that we cannot see but is out there. It will probably need a completely different method of travel but would create a shorter distance between any two points. And we can always double this with travel at light speed in order to get to places even faster.
Does anybody have any thoughts on this? Or maybe someone has some reading material related to this subject I can take a look at?
I've always thought a better solution would be to find an area of space inconceivable to mind. I think some people call it hyper space or similar. We need to find a level of travel that we cannot see but is out there. It will probably need a completely different method of travel but would create a shorter distance between any two points. And we can always double this with travel at light speed in order to get to places even faster.
Does anybody have any thoughts on this? Or maybe someone has some reading material related to this subject I can take a look at?
| UApilot wrote: |
| I've discussed the topic of traveling at light speed with some people I know. But the conversation always leads me to wonder what the point of it all is. Even if we do ever come to the technological peak of being able to travel that fast with no negative consequences, it will still take us a very long time to travel even the shortest distances. The closest star is light-years away. Light-years! Of course thats still a whole lot better than having to waste 60 some years to get to Pluto, its not as effective at getting to our goal: traveling to other civilized planets.
I've always thought a better solution would be to find an area of space inconceivable to mind. I think some people call it hyper space or similar. We need to find a level of travel that we cannot see but is out there. It will probably need a completely different method of travel but would create a shorter distance between any two points. And we can always double this with travel at light speed in order to get to places even faster. Does anybody have any thoughts on this? Or maybe someone has some reading material related to this subject I can take a look at? |
I suspect you may be thinking of either Wormholes - I wrote a posting on it earlier on...I'll just find it.....
Here we go
....snip....
The problem is that most theories involving multiple dimensions model them as very tiny and screwed up on themselves - a bit like a rolled up piece of paper but very very small (atomic size or even planck sized).
The wormhole hypotheses posit opening up a hole in spacetime and jumping across a shortcut, or bending spacetime around to form a shortcut. There are two types - Lorentzian and Schwarzschild wormholes. Lorentzian wormholes rely on solutions to General relativity, but, from memory, I think all such solutions required the use of 'exotic' matter - a theoretical form of matter with negative energy density.
Schwarzschild wormholes use a vacuum solution to the Einstein field equations. Essentially it links a black hole and a white hole. You could not travel through such a thing because both ends have an event horizon and, by definition, you can only pass through one event horizon. You would, therefore, get stuck in the middle.
Regards
Although I have thought about wormholes, what I had in mind was less a direct link between two points and more of a shorter distance. Or a dimension in which the craft traveling has a zero speed that is faster than it is in our dimension (where it is truly zero). This way wouldn't rely on black and white holes as putting a craft into another dimension doesn't need an entry point. I was thinking maybe some device on the ship would dimensions to the ship that would automatically put it into another dimension based on the properties of that dimension.
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