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Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
#11
RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
(December 12, 2016 at 10:32 am)Alex K Wrote: It's basically a fundamental property of nature that doesn't currently have a much deeper explanation. It's one of the direct consequences of the laws of special relativit and can be derived from the axiom that the speed of light is the same for all observers and sources, something that appears to be true.

@abaris: The OPERA superluminal neutrino thing was just a lose cable...
It's one of those typical examples that everyone reads the overhyped articles, and barely anyone the retraction Smile
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#12
RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
Mass and energy are interchangeable, i.e. E=mc².

When something is moving, it has more energy - the kinetic energy of its motion. 
Therefore it has more mass.
Skepticism is not a position; it is an approach to claims.
Science is not a subject, but a method.
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#13
RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
(December 12, 2016 at 10:32 am)chimp3 Wrote:
(December 12, 2016 at 10:30 am)Stimbo Wrote: The same way Oprah does as she approaches the end of the cake shipment.

Angel

Whether this response is to my post above or Rhondavous's above that does not matter. It works either way.

It does, doesn't it? Big Grin

Accident or design, we will never know.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist.  This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair.  Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second.  That means there's a situation vacant.'
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#14
RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
Wasn't it Einstein that said that mass is just energy?
How did it go?
E = m c^2

The faster you go, the more energy... and the more mass your thing carries.
That 'm' in there is special. It's the so-called relativistic mass.

m = m0 / sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)

With m0 being the mass of the object, at rest.
v is the object's speed and c is the good old constant... oh... wait... no... it's a speed... the speed of electromagnetic waves (light) - for relativity came out of trying to figure out the relative motion of electromagnetic waves, as described by Maxwell's equations.

What happens when v becomes c? square-root of zero on the denominator? zero on the denominator?! ARHGHGHG
You get a poorly behaved equation... we don't like dividing by zero... nor does nature... But Nature cheats, it seems - and sets the mass of the electromagnetic wave at zero, too.

What happens if you get something with a v greater than c? square-root of a negative number? An imaginary number? Imaginary mass?
Ai ai ai!
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#15
RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
btw it's not customary any more to call it relativistic mass, usually people simply talk about the energy of the moving object E, and instead of "relativistic mass", it's just E/c^2
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition

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#16
RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
(December 12, 2016 at 10:45 am)Alex K Wrote: btw it's not customary any more to call it relativistic mass, usually people simply talk about the energy of the moving object E, and instead of "relativistic mass", it's just E/c^2

AH!
Call me an old hag!
Cranky
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#17
RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
(December 12, 2016 at 10:45 am)Alex K Wrote: btw it's not customary any more to call it relativistic mass, usually people simply talk about the energy of the moving object E, and instead of "relativistic mass", it's just E/c^2

and it's my understanding we experience it everyday despite our and the materials we interact with not traveling at near lightspeed,


how is this possible ?

the constituent particles of all our neutron and protons, the elusive quarks, are inside their respective atomic innards  zipping around at enormous velocities, sufficient to pork them up like 40% or so.


So when you pick something up, like ~60% of your effort is expended in lofting 'true' mass, LOL, and ~40% is applied to the ersatz, cheap imitation, fake designer good 'mass' that is just a side effect of stuff going to damn fast for it's own good.

Tongue
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#18
RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
(December 12, 2016 at 9:33 am)Rhondazvous Wrote: [...] since in a vacuum where there is no gravity

Just wanted to say, there is indeed gravity in a vacuum; that's why the Earth orbits the Sun, why galaxies coalesced, etc.

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#19
RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
screaming, on the other hand . . .
 The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it. 




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#20
RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
Quantum entangled thingies separated by distance spooky action?

Get out of my head tonylang!
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem.
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