Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

I've read it is impossible to exceed the speed of light. Why? If we put a nuclear engine in a spaceship and had it continue to accelerate for say a month, why couldn't the speed of light be surpassed?

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Your spaceship has mass. As it increases in speed, so does the amount of energy that it has, this energy is referred to as an increase in inertial mass. Since an object approaches infinite kinetic energy when it approaches the speed of light, it, therefore, has infinite inertial mass as well. Thus, it would require an infinite amount of force to accelerate an infinite inertial mass. This, theoretically, limits the velocity of any mass to just shy of the speed of light.
--Bob

Lucasdv123

One of my teacher when I was in middle school told us that there is something faster than light.light takes between 3 and 22 minutes to reach the planet Mars depending on where it is located on its orbit.our minds are faster than the speed of light.we can imagine we are on Mars and that would certainly be quicker than 3 minutes.

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

Thanks for that answer. It certainly answers why I have read such as I mentioned, but I notice you said theoretically. Obviously it is such as no one has come close to actually testing this. Maybe we should do a test by putting a small nuclear rocket into space and try to attain the kind of speed that would prove or disprove that theory. Eventually, if God allows us to continue living on this planet, many future generations from now will understand the need to find a new home. While it may take a few million years for the Sun to die, it will , so will we just cease to exist? I've read where man's knowledge doubled every 2000 or so years until the mid 1500s when it began doubling every hundred years, then around 1900 it was down to 50 years, by the 70s 10 years, then to five. I wonder how accelerated learning can advance? With the increase in knowledge at that pace, maybe someone will be able to solve some of the questions that today limits our abilities to visit outside our own solar system.

pmorin Loc: Huntington Beach, Palm Springs

When our sun star destroys itself the first thing to affect our planet will be when our star expands and burns up our atmosphere. No life on earth will survive that.

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

You are right! We wouldn't have to worry about being sucked into a black hole since the sun would blow out before collapsing back in and the earth would be perhaps melted by that time. At least everything on the surface would be burned off.

Wallen Loc: Middle Earth

That do not make sense to me as it is against the laws of matter & energy conservation.
Besides, electrons & photons i believe do not increase or decrease in mass as they change speed.
Then there are also those who believe that light from the stars at the edge of the big bang would never reach the earth. Which can only happen if the earth and that star are moving away from each other at a speed faster than light. Or maybe they are so far the earth is already gone by the time they reach the earth's location.

But i'm not deep into those so most probably i'm wrong.

pmorin Loc: Huntington Beach, Palm Springs

As to speed faster than light, there are theories concerning that, like in this link about warp drives:

https://news.yahoo.com/warp-drives-physicists-chances-faster-173833579.html

tradio Loc: Oxford, Ohio

She came from planet Clair, she drove a Plymouth Satellite faster than the speed of light- B52's

Dipper

I did hear that there is one thing that travels faster than the speed of light, that is darkness.
No matter how fast light travels, darkness always gets there first.

Dannj

But if something traveled faster than light we wouldn’t see it until the light caught up with it. That would explain why we see things and say: “How the heck did that get there?” Maybe it just got there before we saw it!!😳

f8lee Loc: New Mexico

Actually, this relates to Einstein's theory of relativity, which as it happens has been proven experimentally to something like seventeen decimal points of precision.

As speed increases, time slows down (remember, "speed of light" - 300K Kilometers per second, so the time component is fundamental to it) - and in fact that has been proven by placing one atomic clock in a jet plane with a twin clock staying on the ground, flying the plane around the globe at high speed, and comparing the times on the clocks - the one in the plane ends up being fractions of a second behind the twin. Thus the theory that if one could fly at the speed of light, this "time dilation" would be such that an astronaut in a ship flying to Andromeda, which is 4 million light years distant, would only age something like 40 years while that 4 million years would pass here.

That said, there yet might be something that travels, literally, instantaneously - and that is the connection between what are called "entangled particles" in quantum physics. This too has been experimentally proven; in essence, when two subatomic particles (say, electrons) go their separate ways and a quantum measurement (like spin) that is unknown until the measure is taken, if the local electron is measured and found to have a spin of +1 then at that instant the entangled particle will also collapse into the appropriate spin (I think -1 in that case, but not sure). That happens instantly, even if they are separated by any number of light years. THis is what Einstein referred to as "spooky action at a distance".

At least, that's the best way I can describe this stuff

cdayton

Check out the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction for the answer (kinda).

bob7fred

I like the way theories become absolutes.

Schoee Loc: Europe

Relativity has been tested extensively and found to be correct. Just search a bit on theory of relativity or special relativity. Einstein was a smart cookie.