h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The speed of light is the only true constant in the universe (3x10^8m/s).

Nothing with mass can travel at the speed of light. Light has no mass and hence can ignore this rule.

As an object approaches the speed of light time in the universe, relative to the object, slows down, length contracts, mass dilates. Hence if an object with mass did travel at the speed of light the universe would become infinitely small, the object would become infinitely massive time would pass infinitely fast.

Although object with mas cant travel at the speed of light they may be able to travel faster than the speed of light, tachyons use this principle. (The good thing about tachyons is that aswell as traveling faster than the speed of light, they also travel back in time, which is cool).


Just some hard facts from an undergraduate Physics with Astrophysics student.

If you achieve infinate mass wouldn't you be able to cover the whole galaxy at the same time ? Thus solving
the problem of traveling all togather exept for the fact of knowing where to stop at what place and time.

Time travel with regards to going back in time and seeing yourself doing stuff
is absolutly impossible due to the fact that that would require
our past to be an independant entity rather than the only possible sequence of
events that led to the precise state of affairs that exists in this particular reality,
(That's just an opinion it's in no way based on fact).

Time Travel...
Presumably something to do with the M25 then...?

I think life is complicated enough without having my Great-great-great-great-Grandson appearing and telling me
I shouldn't have caught the 3:45 train to Vauxhall next Wednesday..

Life is complicated enough, but don't fool yourself my friend, it will always get more complicated. Life also does not care how this is done. If it takes your great-great-great-great-Grandson appearing and telling you that you shouldn't have caught the 3:45 train to Vauxhall next Wednesday to make your life more complicated, than this is exactly what life will do to you.

Just be glad your great, great, great, great Grandson didn't shoot you, philosophy would have been so much more relevant, thus spawning a new generation of bone idle thinkers. Believe it or not I actually like philosophy.

my guess is that he only believes in what the 3 dementions tells him

If you were to travel close to the speed of light would you become bigger fatter faster Dan? Do you think slowing down is the key to becoming smaller (speaking in terms of mass)? Could Richie Simmons take advantage of this principle?
The new Slow Down Weight Loss program - become almost motionless and lose almost all your mass.

It probably doesn't work like that. But why not?

Belief is a dangerous thing.

ahh the rational of his statement is his . What are we to determine other that what he has said?

The sci fi delema and the hopefulls dreams to find out what the world is like in the future and the past at
almost the same time because you can't be in two places at once. Keep working on it and let me know
about your progress. Continue on with your reasearch prove it can be done and show humanity that
thier not what they make themselves to be.

Actually, the plan in the works has been put forth by the Mars Society and and the chapter from Berkley. www.marssosiety.org. Looks like 2014 to get manned mission to Mars.

Actually, if you shoot the light through an ionized sodium vapor it slows to 38 miles per hour. I can pedal a bicycle faster than that on a good hill and not even work up a sweat.

Well......? Dan you forget to mention that there are examples of things that go faster than the speed of light. We're all familiar with black holes? So dense not even light can escape the gravity of one. However, at the event horizon 2 things DO escape in a pulsing manner.

One electron, I believe it is, and one anti electron. They speed up to the event horizon and then promptly destrory each othere. On occasion though, one or the other escapes the gravity well while the other gets sucked back down. The escaped particle is therefore traveling faster than the speed of light.

That is, of course, in theory.

The time of a Grumf eating a Dylf, is another true constant in the universe. Time in earthtime=1.9991 sec.

This all sounds very interesting, but what about this Hyperspace thing. It seems to be a nice way of getting round the speed of light issue (if it exists, and if it exists, does it know that it exits, and more importantly does it know of any good parties)

AAAh, but why do WE have to travel at all. Why don't we stand still and bring the destination towards us, like pulling a long rug along a polished floor. We could create an artificial gravity 'well' powerful enough to bend space, bringing our destination closer. When the destination is close enough, attach ourselves near to it and then let go! Hopefully, all the space behind us will snap back into shape. If not, the effect will be like pulling the rug from beneath the whole universe!

Yeees, but. In those thousands of years we spend slumbering our way to the distant planet, back at home things have been brewing. The march of science has never ceased, new and fantastic ways of travelling have been invented. When we arrive at Epsilon Eridani or wherever, we could find that cosmic boy racers have overtaken us and arrived hundreds of years before us. We would be the dusty relics arriving at pleasure planet 19 and due to inflation, the thousand or so people on the ship with us, if we pooled our vast fortunes, would just about be able to afford a sirius chocolate bar.

There was a theory a while back that if you could manipulate Gravitons then you could create a local "Gravity Gradient". The ship would then travel "down" this gradient gaining speed as it does so.

Apparently this is the theory behind the Warp drive in Star Trek so it may just be a load of arse.