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

Of course hitchhiking at faster than the speed of light requires a highly developed improbability drive. However with a bit of imagination
(and if imagination is real then it is real : discuss in another forum such 'Its all in the mind but my mind is as real and as large as a minor planet ')
As all good space cyclists know the outside of a bike wheel travels faster than the hub in a circular direction . Imagine a very , very large wheel which would inhabit the best part of the Milky Way. If the inner part of the wheel were to be accelerated to a faction of the speed of light , then if the diameter of the wheel was large enough then the outer perimeter of the wheel would be at greater than the speed of light.

Why not..?

Apparently, as your speed increases toward the speed of light, your mass increases and therefore your accelleration decreases. Or so I have been informed (whilst in the pub, or the hub of philosiphy).

On the other hand, if light has a “constant speed” then which colour..? i.e. is “Blue” going faster than the speed of light (well the speed of red anyway). And in that case what is the mass of a blue photon compared to the mass of a red photon..?

Yeah, eventually it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate the wheel, even the hub, that fast. Like how its easier to make a frisbee spin than, say, a crane. takes more energy. Due to general relativity, as the matter of the outside of the wheel accelerates closer to c, the mass increases, as does the energy it would take.

And the "speed of light" that is commonly used as the fastest thing ever, is a slight misnomer. Very slight. As far as I know, c can be defined as the speed of light in a vacuum. Light travels slower in air, or in a diamond, or in water, than it does in a vacuum (which is why looking into a pond distorts the view). As far as i remember from physics class, all light (be it visible, gamma rays, infrared, whatever) travels the same speed in an absolute vacuum, but only in air do the respective colours slow down.

oh yeah, and photons don't have mass

yes but then neither do quasars so in theory couldnt u ride a quasar explsion and reach lite speed and i.e stopping time which would probably bring about the end of the universe while ur moving and its not so the end of the universe is done basicly in an instant but if u jumped abord ship and left the quasar say by passing through it theoreticly couldnt u travel vast distances forward in time? this is me thinking so if im wrong plz say so

If you accelerated the hub of the wheel up you'd have to bear in mind that you'd also be accelerating the rim of the wheel. As the rim accelerated it's mass would increase, increasing the mass of the wheel, preventing you from getting the rim to reach light speed. You're only looking at the effect of the hub on the rim, and ignoring the effect of the rim on the hub (every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction).

All light has the same speed in a vacuum (3x10^6 m/s)ish, but I think you're confusing speed with frequency. The speed of light is equal to frequency x wavelength, and although blue light has a higher frequency than red, it has a smaller wavelength, so travels at the same speed.

Phobos, if you reached light speed then time would appear to stop for you outside your frame of reference. However, even by riding on a quasar you would still have mass yourself, which would mean you couldn't reach light speed, as would need infinite energy.

Paul T

To even equal let alone surpass the speed of light you would need something of infinitismal mass otherwise as you approached "the barrier" the mass of the speeding object (as someone else pointed out)would grow at such a rate to increasingly kill acceleration. Thus you don't want heavy speed but LIGHT speed.

In advanced physics research into light speed phenomena there is talk of "information" transfer that is a prerequisite characteristic of any proposed or observable hyper light speed transfer. Suppose it were found that some people have an ability through training and\or innately to transmit or receive certain clear well defined "thoughts" - this is something that could be tested quite easilly if one subject was on earth and the other was say on a space mission at such distance that it would take light longer to reach either subject that human reaction time. Even on a moon mission this would be easilly testable as the moon is roughly 250,000 miles away and given that the speed of light is around 186,000 miles per second this means for someone at or near the moon light would take well over one second to traverse either direction and human reaction time is well under one second. A faster than light comms is not the same as faster than light travel for massive objects (like humans say)but I'd moot it could be very useful the further "out there" we go.