Flies in the ointment: Special Relativity

Lotto Cheatah · Post by **Lotto Cheatah** » 01-04-2003 05:38 PM

According the the special theory of relativity, the faster you go the slower time moves and the more massive you become (relative to the observer).

The theory states that you hit the wall somewhat shy of the speed of light. Reason: At the speed of light time stops and mass becomes infinite. Since infinity is an impossiblity.. well, you get the picture.

The fly:
The equation E=MC^2 suggests otherwise. Expressed as MC/E=1/C it states that mass (M) travelling at the speed of light (C) would still experience that passage of time which is 1/C that of the observer.

In otherwords, upon a craft launched from Earth travelling at the speed of light, for every tick of the clock that passes aboard the craft, C-ticks would pass on Earth.

benner · Post by **benner** » 02-14-2003 11:36 AM

Maybe I don't understand the question, but I was under the impression that the 'speed limit' imposed by SR was because mass would approach infinity (with anything more substantial than a photon) as the speed of light was neared. This has more to do with acceleration as you would have to put more and more energy into the object to keep accelerating it as the mass increased, quickly reaching a point when the amount of energy needed to maintain acceleration far outstripped the energy possible to impart to the object.

I am going to check this out, been a while...

Kenia · Post by **Kenia** » 02-16-2003 02:18 AM

Just a queston here. You assume that light
is the speed of the universe..
But what does light fill as it expands ?
It cannot be expansion into nothing as light has to be in something..thus something beat light to the city limits. Thus something is faster than light.

Kenia
I gotta go check this out too benner, but
it's going to take me about 1000 light-years to understand it .....

benner · Post by **benner** » 02-17-2003 08:33 AM

You got it Kenia - good question. My answer is that the only thing one can say about the quality of the thing the light is filling is in the absence of things filling it.

Space is where the "light will be" once it gets there

Kenia · Post by **Kenia** » 02-18-2003 04:08 AM

Space is where the "light will be" once it gets there ---- B

My point exacally, conversly without a place to go there is no light. So it stands that
light has to have a place to go to be, but
it's redundant to say a place needs a place to go to be. A place is, later comes light.
How did place get there? Why does light
have to travel to get to space ,unless space was there ahead of light? thus could there
be something faster than light ?
It seems there has to be if you allow for
the existance of light.
Kenia
Opps, I lost that dam flashlight again...

benner · Post by **benner** » 02-18-2003 09:33 AM

Ah yes, but 'space' can only exist in relation to something else. Therefore, once light is there, you can say that there 'is a space'. With no matter present, there is no way of saying anything about that 'space' (my ontology regarding space is that it is a theoretical entity, it does not exist other than as a thought experiment). Objects may only be described in their relation to something else. When there is nothing else, how can one say that nothing is something?

As far as faster than light travel, if we see space as a 'container' as I think you are Kenia, why a need for it to move at all? If 'space' is an all-encompassing medium which encapsulates and 'supports' matter, I see no need for it to move.

An interesting problem to illustrate this is, imagine a single molecule flying through hypothetical empty space. How could we describe it's motion? Or acceleration? There would be no background to measure velocity against, no judging point to see how far away it is. One of the grand old debates to science is the postulation of a 'fixed' universe, where the 'firmament' of space is fixed, and therefore alleviates this observational quandry of not being able to judge factors such as speed and acceleration. Enter relativity theory, which obviates the need for this mythical 'fixed space' by only allowing observations to be made against another object.