Going faster than the speed of light?
You should watch my pension checks at bill pay time, that's fast.
Faster than the speed of creditors!
Thank God for no rent payments, no credit card bills either.
celttooth
P.S. The server has been down longer than this before.

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JFTR c means the speed at which light (including all EM radiation, whatever the frequency) propagates in vacuo. In air or water, for example, massive particles can exceed the speed of light in that medium, giving rise to the phenomenon known as “Cerenkov radiation”.

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Everybody should know by now, laws are meant to be broken. ;)

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

Alpha Camelopardalis seems to zipping through space at an astonishing speed between 1.5 and 9.4 million mph; and Alpha Camelopardalis is classiefied as supergiant type star,way more massive than our Sun. If such a massive object can travel so fast, then imagine a spacecraft going at that speed, if that craft was going towards Alpha Centauri,it would get there really fast.

Everybody should know by now, laws are meant to be broken. ;)

I agree, its up to ourselves to find ways to break the current laws of science!

John.

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Not sure if the laws of physics can be broken, they seem to apply to inside a blackhole enviroment, conditions of spacetime get weird.

Alpha Camelopardalis seems to zipping through space at an astonishing speed between 1.5 and 9.4 million mph; and Alpha Camelopardalis is classiefied as supergiant type star,way more massive than our Sun. If such a massive object can travel so fast, then imagine a spacecraft going at that speed, if that craft was going towards Alpha Centauri,it would get there really fast.

It would take 300 years

That is faster than sending a rocket on chemical propultion, no living tissue would survice such a voyage. NASA and other agencies in conjuction with private indrustry; have to get way from chemical based rockets to other propulsion systems, such as ION engines. At this pace,the only space research will be confined to local space, the Solar System; if humans want to colonize other worlds, will have to be beyond the Solar System. When the Sun's fusion process runs out, life as we know it on Earh will cease to exist, the red giant faze of the Sun will include Earth, meaning that Earth will be toasted, literally. NASA and other space agencies seem to spend their time on the exploration of the Solar system, would be best if they put their research funds on things like fusion propulsion research, antimatter propulsion, this ideas might seem radical, but if the human race ever wants to colonize other worlds, then radical space research has be done. NASA and the European Space Agency have to push the envelope when it comes to space exploration.

A powerful alien radio telescope, optical telescope, or Infrared telescope, would any of these divices be able to capture Earth's radio signature? Earth satelites, and electrical grids, could give off artificial radio signature to powerful alien radio receivers, optical telescopes. Earth must stand out in the Solar system in terms of radio signature. The only know planet with inteligent life so far, Earth is is like a supped up car, might be detectable by powerful alien receivers.

A powerful alien radio telescope, optical telescope, or Infrared telescope, would any of these divices be able to capture Earth's radio signature? Earth satelites, and electrical grids, could give off artificial radio signature to powerful alien radio receivers, optical telescopes. Earth must stand out in the Solar system in terms of radio signature. The only know planet with inteligent life so far, Earth is is like a supped up car, might be detectable by powerful alien receivers.

I think at the vast distances involved only a carrier wave maybe could be dectec ted. Maybe some maxican radio stations might be heard I could recieve them in michagan clearly. But the chance of someone listening in on our transmissions would have to have radio capability. We just have to have the right frequency that they are on and be listening at the right time. The voyager spacecraft are now beyond 58 AUs from earth and we can recieve its radio signals from its 70 watt transmitter. I have no idea what frequency its on but it works over a rather great distance. Once we figure out what freq they are on then maybe we will listen only and not attempt communication.

Interesting. Maybe future probes like Kepler and others should be fitted with radio receivers for scanning possible non-celestial and non-terrestial radio signals. Any candidate signals captured by space telescopes, probes would be sent to SETI, NASA for anylesis. More emphasis should be given in the examination of the Alpha Centauri system, is there any effort going on now trying to determine if the Sun's closest star system has planets?

Interesting. Maybe future probes like Kepler and others should be fitted with radio receivers for scanning possible non-celestial and non-terrestial radio signals. Any candidate signals captured by space telescopes, probes would be sent to SETI, NASA for anylesis. More emphasis should be given in the examination of the Alpha Centauri system, is there any effort going on now trying to determine if the Sun's closest star system has planets?

We communicate with relitively large distance and can detect a 70 watt transmission from voyager.Voyager is now 58 UAs from earth. These frequencies work fine for solor system exploration. Now in these wavelengths wouldnt they transmit over even vaster distances. If so could other beings with the same technologies be able to hear these commands, if only on the right frequency at the right time is the key.

Acceleration to light speed could you physically stand the force. It could take years to reach that velocity. As for fuel your tank would be the size of a galaxy. Fusion isnt achievible yet, that could be a century down the road. Acceleration should it be slowly come to speed or rocket to speed, fuel would limit this. Another big question how do you test it. At light speed its faster than signals to the craft. A paradox maybe a 12 year mathmatation has it in his mind. All this is well beyond what we can do but in the future should man survive he might have to leave this world to survive.

Acceleration to light speed could you physically stand the force. It could take years to reach that velocity. As for fuel your tank would be the size of a galaxy. Fusion isnt achievible yet, that could be a century down the road. Acceleration should it be slowly come to speed or rocket to speed, fuel would limit this. Another big question how do you test it. At light speed its faster than signals to the craft. A paradox maybe a 12 year mathmatation has it in his mind. All this is well beyond what we can do but in the future should man survive he might have to leave this world to survive.

Conventional rockets, even fusion ones, will never get you to the speed of light. As you approach light speed, your mass increases and time slows down. At light speed, your mass would be infinite, meaning it would take an infinite amount of thrust (and fuel) to go faster. Also, time slow and, at light speed, would stop. With no passage of time there can be no acceleration. For these two reasons (plus a whole lot of engineering issues) light-speed and beyond is impossible.

why exactly would my mass increase. Mass is pretty constant. it's the speed and energy needed to push the mass at that speed that causes the increased energy need

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Inertial mass is resistance to acceleration. Gravitational mass is another thing and Einstein postulated that the two are equal, hence general relativity.
Galileo demonstrated this by making objects of different weight (hence mass) fall from the Pisa Leaning Tower in the same time.
Tullio

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Your apparent mass would increase since the Newtonian notion of F=MA or M=F/A would no longer be a linear relationship where the mass were constant. It would take disproportionately more force to achieve the next unit of acceleration (1/(1-V^2/c^2)). where c is the speed of light in free space. Einstein simply allowed the notion that mass is not a constant so when he did a thought experiment with the change in momentum after a collision, he took the total derivative as if mass (M) were not a constant but rather a variable. I.e dm/dv=m(dv) +v(dm).
This resulted in E=mc^2.

Thus your resistance to acceleration would increase and we would say that the effect is that your mass has increased.
As your speed approaches the speed of light the force required to accelerate becomes infinite or undefined as you divide by zero .

I like the idea of Star trek for light speed travel. Where a bubble is created and allows the mass inside to travel as if it were a beam of light

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

I like the idea of Star trek for light speed travel. Where a bubble is created and allows the mass inside to travel as if it were a beam of light

We can already do that... Except that it takes a ridiculous amount of energy to do so!


Aside: Very good summaries there for the basis for E = mc^2

Keep searchin,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Agree even with fusion, rocket propulsion would not reach even 20 percent ligh speed, that is fast compared to today's chemical rockets however. Antimatter propulsion would the fastest propulsion method that one day could techonologically be feasible, unless someone comes up with a way of using wormholes,more appropriately womholes that could actually be crossed, knows as traversable worholes, and that would be only if exotic matter with negative anergy density could be used to stabilize them. So wormholes as means of interstaler travel will stay in the theoretical physics realm still. That means then that antimatter propulsion will be the fastest way humans will ever do one day, and the feat of using antimatter as a means of propulsion, will be one of the greatest techonological discoveries.