Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: sharkeyandgeorge on 25/06/2005 22:49:46
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i understand that it is accepted that noting can travel faster than the speed of light what i want to know is why?.
not why cant we exceed the speed of light i understand the theory but why is it so accepted as the truth?. for hundreds of years the earth was flat then it was the center of the universe whats to stop someone else coming along and disproving this 'truth' is there anything and if so what?.
Giggidy Giggidy Goo
The philosopher Q man
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science cant actually prove anything 100% but it can give good reasons to believe the theorys
Firstly the speed of light is dependent on what material light is moving through.
But the reason nothing with mass can travel faster than the speed of light in a VACUUM which is 186,282.4 miles per second is because it would require infinite energy.
Basically the faster a body moves the more mass that body obtains in the form of energy,
Mass and energy are like the same thing, so if you put energy into an object by accelerating it and as long as it dosnt slow down through friction or any other external force it will retain that energy as mass
so the more you accelerate it the more energy is then required to accelerate the mass aquired through acceleration,
and pretty soon your mass would become infinite so the the energy required to accelerate it would become infinite.
This part i think is right
However just for arguments sake if you were on an object moving 2 miles a hour slower than the speed of light(186,282.4) and walked along it at 3miles an hour you would move faster than the speed of light but a light from a torch shone behind you would still pass you at 186,282.4 miles per second faster than you. And anyone looking at you who was not on the object with you would see your speed as less than 186.282.4