Will humans ever achieve light speed?
 

Possible??

Everything seems to turn into a wave at the speed of light, so they would not be coming back.

What were you smoking last night?

Ahhh, but what trip!

No, because it won't be necessary (not to mention physically impossible). The distance between the stars will never be traversed by sheer speed, but there are other ways...the world of quantum mechanics is intriguing ;)

Only in the movies...

Are you in a hurry to get somewhere??

No, for a simple and verifiable reason: If you look at Einstein's equation, E=MC2, as body approaches the speed of light, it will increase to infinite mass, implying that you would need a power source of infinite energy in order to push it past the speed of light, which therefore becomes a physical impossibility.

There was a time when we believed the world was flat and that you would hit a wall as you broke through the sound barrier. What is impossible today often becomes possible as we learn more. Who know?

"Learning more" is not going to help violate the laws of physics......

Like in The Fly???

There's no reason why you couldn't get so close as to be essentially the speed of light.

99.9999999999999% is possible (though would require epic amounts of energy). That said, accelerating to large fractions of the speed of light in a conventional manner is not the solution to travel large distances in cosmic terms!

The mathematics implies that to obtain and sustain just 50% of light speed in a vessel massive enough to be practical for inter galactic travel, the total amount of propulsive energy needed would become staggering to the point of absurdity.

Depends on how much Plasti-Dip is needed.

Theoretical laws?

I would hardly call Einstein's equations "theoretical"; people have been trying to prove them wrong for over a hundred and ten years, and every challenge only to end up reconfirming their validity............

Even the concepts those equations predicted way back then that were considered "wildly unrealistic dreaming", like black holes and dark energy, have come to pass.

when i was a kid my science teacher told me there were nine planets. now their are eight. the laws of physics can change. these laws are really just best guesses presented as fact. Ask Newton, ask Archimedes. their laws were once inviolate also. the problem is that we want to believe whatever we are told, as we are a product of a system designed to produce unquestioning obedience (did school teach you to question authority, or to seek the answer that would best please the teacher?). we should think critically and ask more questions. unfortunately, the same system that has trained us to blindly believe has also trained us to shout down those that do not.

lightspeed? mebbe, but a whole lotta energy for little return. most likely a workaround is the best bet, as per mr. wave. read 'flatland', written in 1884, to get the brain thinking about some of the options that may exist.

The number of planets is not "a law of physics", it is a human interpretation of the definition of what constitutes a planet. And none of Einstein's equations predicted the existence of Pluto, that was the astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who found Pluto on February 18, 1930.

As for overturning the concepts Einstein developed, by all means, go out there and prove him wrong.........if you can. A lot of very intelligent people have tried for a very long time, which is why his principal's are considered "laws" that are uniform across the cosmos.

Is this another 3.2S vs Boxster base thread?

No, but it is a rather brisk and interesting discussion of non-Newtonian physics............

With enough mods, an S can get close to Warp speed, but I've never claimed it can get to light speed.

Or is that a Delorian I'm thinking of......

Great thread. Unfortunately, the vehicle that can do it will probably experience an IMS failure first and LN/Raby will have to sort things out before we get there.

Nah, the AOS would crap out first................

sorry, didn't mean to insinuate that the number of planets is a law of physics or that Einstein was involved in the uncertain status of pluto. rather, my intent was to make the point that things are presented to us as certainties that are not necessarily so.

further, i'm not presumptive enough to say Einstein is wrong. newton's f=ma still works in most cases and is still taught in school (as an infallible law, that you don't discover isn't so until you get to university). Newtonian physics falls apart when certain things are asked of it, however. perhaps the appropriate things have yet to be asked of relativity or quantum mechanics - you don't know what you don't know.

as such, the pragmatic approach is to assume the law is fallible until proven otherwise. to thieve from Wikipedia:

"a proof must demonstrate that a statement is always true, rather than enumerate many confirmatory cases."

ie, just because no one has proven something wrong, don't make it necessarily so.

Only if you gave your car a Feminine name, had unusual luggage in tow with the "Greatest Guitar Riffs" CD blaring over the stereo, your wife / girlfriend / SO gave you prior written approval and lastly you were young in years since we all know that “Anything really new is invented only in one’s youth. Later, one becomes more experienced, more famous – and more stupid.”....................:cheers:

Unfortunately, I can not agree with Wikipedia's rather unusual position; in my world, the more challenges to a widely accepted concept that ultimately fall apart, only end up ultimately making the original concept that much stronger, as they end up demonstrating yet again that the unsuccessfully challenged concept is remains true...........

Believe it or not, that was the man's response in the 1950's to a reporter's question about why he had not done anything important lately..........:eek:

the wiki quote was just a convenient source for the standard definition of 'mathematical proof'. the same definition applies to physics (physics and chemistry all turn into math in the end anyway) only the variables are much much more. as such, one could postulate that any 'law' of physics is never truly proven and is always waiting for the one exception that destroys the rule. possible? who knows. until then they remain the 'best guesses' we have. my point is that we don't treat these things as best guesses subject to change, but rather as laws and rules and how things are so accept it. someone wants to break the speed of light? i say go for it; let me know how you make out.

apologies for hung-over rambling, hack-science gobbledygook, and any hijack that may have occurred as a result!

Believe it or I actually knew that lol......More contemporary guys that I read / follow are Timothy Ferris and Michio Kaku. They have an innate ability to relate theories in terms for an everyday-man like me to catch on to.

But yet the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics could not be reconciled without a complete revision like string theory.

Einstein was great but he is not the end all of science. Lets face it the guy dumped his wife and married his cousin. He is not perfect he just points the way. And he did a very good job of that but I for one hope that science does not stop and say "It's all been discovered, let's go home". It hasn't and laws of physics change as we discover new evidence.

My other two thread ideas were :

At what point does a fly turn upside down before landing on the ceiling?

Or

Does the technology and do the needed materials exist to build a light saber?

And the lack of congruity between relativity and quantum theory in no way disproves either theory, it simply points to a transitional gap in our understanding; perhaps string theory, or perhaps something else yet to be tested.

You left out the DIY 10 hp exhaust mod.

This could go on all night, with various vapid or circular arguments; to wit: The speed of light is supposed to be the highest velocity obtainable in the universe; but whenever light arrives, it arrives in an already dark place, which implies that darkness is quicker because it got there first.......... Or how about how many angels can do the lindy on the head of a pin?

Sorry guys, but I have to go home for dinner.

of course not - we'll be lucky to be alive ( our species) in 40 years

speed of light is not constant
 

So, to mess things up a lot, we are all taught that the speed of light is a constant. Look it up. It is changing, very slowly it is slowing down. Some theorize that it is a at the bottom end of a plot that would suggest that the speed of light was exponentially faster in the past, when you incorporate this into the equation, things get pretty strange to say the least. If the speed of light as considerably faster in the past than it is now, how much have the constellations changed over the millennium? Now, about us travelling at the speed of light or faster...isn't it pompous for us to assume that we got it all right the first time? Quantum physics wasn't a part of the equation all that long ago. We learn more about science and we learn that we don't know as much as we thought we did. That's a given. :)

All y'alls are looking at it all wrong. If I could step from my living room into yours with one step, how fast would I be going? Answer? Walking speed. Google JSC warp engine.

Wow. I go race for a weekend and you guys end up debating the infinite universe. :)

My take: We really know very little about the universe and how it works. For example, the universe is expanding but the density remains close to constant. It seems that "new universe" is continually being created.

Ok, I'm going back to Boxster stuff now that my head hurts .... Who wanted to debate S models vs base?

Nah, this is the string theory string. Bell's inequality theorem anyone?

I will tell you after I get a good run in the turbo and see it hit full boost. Great thread by the way.