[built_to_last]

If a spaceship reaches speed of light, it will do so in an infinite amount of time from a stationary observer's POV but to the spaceship's occupants, they will reach speed of light in about 10 years accelerating at 1G.

By then, they would've reached infinite distance away from where they started, but relative mass became infinite as well.

My questions now, since the relative mass became infinite, will this create a gravitational field of infinite force?
-What will happen to the occupants?
-Will this destroy the whole universe or wherever this spaceship is at, in any case, it will take an infinite amount of time before that happens?

Which makes this post, absolutely pointless.

But I'd like to know what you're thoughts on this. Is relativity flawed?

[HPM]

42

[eaglewing7]

What..............................???

I think we need a team of the geekiest members of the entire world to answer that one.

eagle

[MarsCraft]

Well, one way to get around the infinite mass problem is to convert oneself, and one's conveyance, to light, which seems to get around nicely without much mass.

Also, the infinite mass bugaboo is a biggee. That's why all the serious LS researchers are looking into the FTL technique of point-to-point transfer, since all things are interconnected simultaneously anyway. And, you'll save 10 years to boot!

[michael2]

a case of the E=m*c2 equation i guess infinite mass will be infinite energy *c2 but usually physics is almost true so i dont think they will reach the speed of light but close to it besides they should need extremely large amounts of energy to get there i heard of an effect though if that would be possible imagine this you is going into a room and sitting down on a chair a minute later while sitting on the chair you will see your self do exactly the same thing that you did a few minutes ago some kind of physical resistance i guess if i am wrong please tell me and why

[built_to_last]

@MarsCraft, that's how UFO's do it, so I've read, we watch it in Star Trek episodes. But somehow, even in the series, they never tackled the consequences of reaching speed of light conventionally.

Practically, I'd not even touch that subject, even in Star Trek, when not in warp, they limit their ships to 25% lightspeed, they obviously wouldn't want to mess with relativity, lol! But experimentally, it really arouses curiousity to the consequences.

There are actually many instances in Star Trek where they could put relativity to work(when they accidentally got blast into past)

@Michael2, if relativity is correct(and those who work with them isn't hiding anything, lol!)

There is no physical resistance. To the crew of the ship, they will reach speed of light as scheduled in about 10 years, accelerating constantly in 1G.

You shouldn't be seeing yourself do events in the past... Unless you've gone beyond the speed of light, but it's highly hypothetical scenario.

In my scenario, you only need to go light speed flat and see if your ship becomes a mega blackhole consuming everything, the whole universe with it.

This post has been edited by built_to_last: 12 May 2008 - 04:12 PM

[Guy]

Hal is right: 42 is the correct answer.

My hat is off to him for finding this so fast. Did take me almost 2 hours.

[AndrewMcGregor]

Relativity isn't flawed, your understanding of it is.

Actually, relativity *is* limited, but not at this level.

So, if you accelerate at 1G, that implies a certain (constant) force applied, correct?

Momentum is still conserved in special relativity, so that constant force implies a constant rate of change of momentum.

But the momentum is different in relativity: p = m_0 v / sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)

Where m_0 is the rest mass, v is velocity and c is the speed of light.

In effect, the mass increases very rapidly as you approach the speed of light, and so a constant force gives you an ever-decreasing acceleration. So the velocity approaches but never exceeds the speed of light.

And yes, it does follow that the mass might become high enough for your vehicle to become a black hole. That's one of the limiting points of special relativity, where the situation exceeds the assumptions of the theory. Some other theory is needed to explain that kind of situation.

[brian young]

Another "limiting" point, which could ruin your day at least as effectively as the mass thing, is the time thing - IIRC, if you ever could reach actual "Lightspeed", then at the instant at which you did so, the rest of the slow-coach Universe would reach Heat-Death. Decelerating immediately when you reached C would do nothing do change this.

42 seems perfectly reasonable in comparison (and in addition).

[HPM]

Basically it seems to me that one should never travel faster than 299 792 457.5 m/s. Pushing for that extra 50 cm/s will really spoil everyone's day. I will seek to remember this next time I'm going down the street to the chemist