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Space and time at the speed of light
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Space and time at the speed of light
Hi thx nb At light speed you would be every where at once. At light
speed you would weigh as much as the universe,and your inertia would be infinite. However this is not reality,and that is why Einstien gave us the SR theory. Electrons have been pushed to 99.999999999 of light speed. They are made 20,000 times heavier. A greater accelerator can make them go faster(add another 9) but never can an electron go at the speed of a photon. Since objects foreshorten in the direction they are moving,at close to light speed you would look like a playing card,and be dead. Here you see fast accelerating motion,and gravity being equivalent,for going into a blackhole you would be stretched out like spaghetti Einstien told all this to us going on a 100 years ago. Bert |
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Space and time at the speed of light
Jonathan Silverlight wrote:
If that's the one I think it is, it's a different problem and still mysterious. Some cosmic rays have so much energy they should be interacting with the cosmic microwave background and losing the energy. So either they come from quite close by - millions of light years, not billions - or there is some new physics going on. But you're right; we see mesons in cosmic rays because of time dilation. I'm not sure whether it's a meson or some other particle, but I believe the time-dilation effect was first observed in short-lived 'debris' from collisions of cosmic rays with nuclei in the atmosphere. We don't usually have any way of knowing how far or how long particles coming 'straight from deep space' have travelled. --Odysseus |
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Space and time at the speed of light
Odysseus wrote:
wrote: I seem to recall reading somewhere that if a photon or, for that matter, any sentient being travelling at the spped of light would experience a complete contraction of space and time. That is a photon would be "everywhere in the universe" at the speed of time. I know I am putting this badly, but unfortunately this is the best I can do. Can anyone care to comment on this. What WOULD be the experience of time and space for someone travelling at the speed of light?? You've answered your own question. From the point of view of a photon time is infinitely dilated, so it experiences no delay between leaving point A and arriving at point B. An alternative description of the situation is to say that to a photon the universe appears infinitely compressed, becoming a plane perpendicular to its direction of travel -- so any segment of its path is infinitely short. Of course a sentient being travelling at the speed of light must have a means of leaving all of its mass behind! A nicely illustrated description of the relativistic effects experienced by high-speed (but not quite light-speed) observers, from the Usenet Physics FAQ, may be found at http://tinyurl.com/hvk7. --Odysseus Thanks very much. The URL was very helpful. I take it that this is the reason why certain elementary particles that have very short lifetimes, but are travelling at relativistic speeds, are actually detected on earth. In particular, John Walker at CERN talks about the detection of an "Oh my God" particle that should have never been detected on earth, but since it was travelling at very high speeds made it all the way down. thx nb |
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