Registered: Mar 2001
Location: England
Posts: 17

Tachyons are a theory, they aint been proven last I heard.

As a mass accelerates towards the speed of light, to an observer of that mass it appears to gain mass and time slows down.
For that accelerating mass looking out, everything ELSE appears to be accelerating, slowing down and gaining mass.

As the objects mass increases, so does the ammount of energy needed to move it. Its said you cant go the speed of light, because by then you would need infinite energy, and have infinite mass to move.

And the speed of light is a constant no matter your inertial frame of reference, work out what that means folks.

As for length contraction?

Here is an example.

Muons are small particles with a half life of about 20 nano-seconds (I think) moving a large fraction of the speed of light. The time it takes for them to move through the Earths atmosphere and reach sea level due to the distance means that at sea level there should be hardly any detectable. However you can infact detect a hell of a lot. Why?
One is time dialation. The observer sees time for the muons slow down.
Second is length contraction. For the muon (I think) the distance appears less, so it doesn't need a long time to go the distance.

Lalala. I think thats right. I havn't dont much on this since I finished my Physics A level a few months back.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Z'ha'dum
Posts: 186

Its pronounced Takyons,not tachons,thats a game. And Takyons are purly theoretical nothing more, the only thing capable of going faster than the speed of light is light itself,which was done a few years ago. Also I might add is the speed of light cant be accuratly calculated, exept in deep space were there is no gravity so that light is not slowed

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: South Australia,Australia,Sol
Posts: 1185

Weight is only in the picture if gravity is applied, weigh yourself on the moon and you will be six times lighter but you have the same mass. But at the speed of light your mass would be so great that you would be crushed by it and besides all this as the mass of everthing is increased so is the fuel comsumption and that is what physicist say now...

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: The Rugged Grains of Shaolin Soil
Posts: 32

quote:

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Originally posted by Sigma957
Weight is only in the picture if gravity is applied, weigh yourself on the moon and you will be six times lighter but you have the same mass. But at the speed of light your mass would be so great that you would be crushed by it and besides all this as the mass of everthing is increased so is the fuel comsumption and that is what physicist say now...

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Edinburgh
Posts: 23

Hi,

Tachyons are indeed a theoretica particle but, even if they are proven to exist they don't prove anything about the speed of light as a limit as they are a fundamentally different type of particle to those composing normal matter. Also, some of you may be forgetting this, relativity is named so because of the importance of where you are observing from. From the observers point of view it is always everything else that changes. Londo, and possibly NegspectahDek seem to be in better positions to explain this than I so I'll leave it to them to go into details if they are needed. After all I'm an Astrophysicist not a Theoretical Physicist, though that will mean I'll get terribly deep into relativity in my next year.

Bye,

Dave

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Registered: Jun 2001
Location: New Jersey
Posts: 3

well in sixth grade i asked a physics teacher. there is no set speed limit for space craft, thats why they never mention it in space, what would be a speed like factor would be exceleration time in combination with fuel. you could use all your fuel to accelerate but you have to decelerate aswell. anyway you could do a full burn or percentage of burn l9ike they say on b5 but the only thing that would slow you down in space would be gravitational bodies and nebula's. so there is not speed limit, they only do that for games beacuse the designers dont want to think that hard and they dont want to confuse the players.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: The Rugged Grains of Shaolin Soil
Posts: 32

you're talkin about delta V (delta vee or however you wanna write it.) its the best way to measure how far you can go in the solar system on a space craft with limited fuel

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Sheffield UK
Posts: 1913

i believe the next try of drive will be the ion drive, follwed by solar sails....according to today...this can all change


But worm holes will eventually be the way to travel, when we're advanced enough and can create the power sources required.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Z'ha'dum
Posts: 186

They already have ion engines, I think the way to travel someday will be something like hyperspace or subspace, it does exist but when I try to prove it to someone they just dont want to listen. To discribe its simply a plane of existance below this one, there are probably an infinite number of planes above and below this one. The UFO's people claim to see probably use this type of drive.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: The Rugged Grains of Shaolin Soil
Posts: 32

quote:

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Originally posted by zoobafoo
They already have ion engines, I think the way to travel someday will be something like hyperspace or subspace, it does exist but when I try to prove it to someone they just dont want to listen. To discribe its simply a plane of existance below this one, there are probably an infinite number of planes above and below this one. The UFO's people claim to see probably use this type of drive.

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Burnley England
Posts: 177

From what i have heard warp speed is actually impossible, cos the faster u travel the slower time gets for u, so when u reack light speed time stopps, and when u go faster is reverses and u go back in time (the theory says around light speed).
Looking from today and what we currently know about space theories (like 30 years ago no one would of everthought of a worm hole) i think ships would use one of 3 possible ways, hyperspace, folding space or wormholes. But that is at least hundreds of years away with like the power needed, fusion wouldn't be enough for it (probably)

And what are Ion engines suppose to be like, i've heard of them for years but still don't know.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: The Rugged Grains of Shaolin Soil
Posts: 32

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/files/releases/ioneng.txt

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/deep_space_1_010404.html

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: The Cold Northland!
Posts: 8392

quote:

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From what i have heard warp speed is actually impossible, cos the faster u travel the slower time gets for u, so when u reack light speed time stopps, and when u go faster is reverses and u go back in time.

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Warp speed in the Star Trek sense means bending space around your craft and stretching it from point A to point B. Mathematically apparently its possible. It also apparently doesn't need as much energy as they thought it would in Star Trek...according to some articles I read a while back. Too bad I can't find them.

Traveling faster than light speed is impossible...unless your made of pure energy. Warp speed doesn't break the speed limit, it just takes a shortcut.

The whole Subspace/Hyperspace thing of Babylon 5 and FreeSpace 2 is apparently fairly realistic according to some theories that have been presented. The subspace thing deals with the resonance frequency of the spacecraft and I think hyperspace is more of a gravity kind of thing, but I can't remember exactly

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Posts: 1218

Hmm if you travel very fast and your speed converges to light speed you gain mass and your getting harder to accelarate but from your point of view this is not noticeable so for your plain of reference you can accelarate and gain speed as much as you wish. This a paradox as some of you said before on this thread at the pint when you supposedly go past the light speed you also go back in time. This is one of the flaws of the relativity. No one can explain why light can go arround objects and cause difraction, look at the moon during an ecclypse, even though the sun is bloked you can see some light( coronna).

Also theres a theory that if you travel biilion of years through the universe youll end up returning to the poin of departure. Just the same way Maggelan (Actually is a Portuguese navigator and his real name is Fernão magalhães the english language 'simplifies' it to magellan) he did the travel arround the worl for the first time.

So it leads to one funny hypothesys. We are not in a spatial 3rd dimention actualy it is a 4th dimention and the last one is evading our perception. This can explain the probable existance of wormholes (analogy: dig a hole from here to china and save few thousands of miles) and why electron jump from one orbital tho the next without APPARENTLY crossing the space between the 2 orbitals.

Last edited by haderak on 08-29-2001 at 09:21 PM

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location:
Posts: 238

magellan didn't make it arround the world... his ship did. He got eaten about half-way by canibals

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