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RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
December 12, 2016 at 10:34 am
(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  Huzzah! The physicists are here!
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RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
December 12, 2016 at 10:35 am
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.
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RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
December 12, 2016 at 10:35 am
(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.
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? 
Accident or design, we will never know.
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RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
December 12, 2016 at 10:42 am
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?
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RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
December 12, 2016 at 10:45 am
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
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RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
December 12, 2016 at 10:47 am
(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!
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RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
December 12, 2016 at 11:37 am
(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.
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RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
December 12, 2016 at 11:48 am
(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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RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
December 12, 2016 at 11:57 am
screaming, on the other hand . . .
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RE: Why Can't Anything Travel Faster than Light?
December 12, 2016 at 2:56 pm
Quantum entangled thingies separated by distance spooky action?
Get out of my head tonylang!
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