I know of the fact as you get closer, mass gets more, you wont have enough energy to push yourself to and thru the actually Speed of light.
However, what screws with my mind is the fact, you can travel very near it (semi hypothetically) and you perceive time slower.
so if your going from point X (lets say earth ) to point Y ( lets say a random planet 450 light years away) you could get in your super awesome futuristic space ship and get there in ~~ 450.1+ light years. ( coming close, but not passing)
HOWEVER, you yourself only perceive this as a matter of days, so you travled this distance of 450 ly, in a matter of what you thought was days...
so in your view, you just travled this huge distance, many many many light years, in days.
so from your view, you broke the speed of light, by a lot....
SO it would be as if there was a speedometer on the ship, speed= distance/time
your distance 450lr/5 days= much >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> speed of light
i know this view is 'wrong'
but can someone explain why. ty

In addition to time dilation and the relativistic mass increase, you also have length contraction in the direction that you're traveling. So you'll see yourself travelling at whatever speed that you're traveling at, and you'll see yourself travel a shorter distance in a shorter time compared to what the "at rest" distance and "at rest" time actually were.

Isn't relativity funky?

space/time continum

think of the space/time continum as a trampoline

think of anything with a large enough mass as being a super heavy bowling ball.

place that bowlig ball on the trampoline

as you can tell the space/time continum has been disrupted.

now we know that energy and mass can be related.

by increased the speed of an object you're increasing it's kinetic energy

you are therefore increasing the mass.

you're spaceship has become like that black hole which distorts the space/time continum

This post was edited by zeratul87 on Apr 6 2011 01:02am

so your saying, even near to speed of light travel is impossible?
so whats the actual cutoff?
because for what im saying, this is to the outside world, sub SOL traveling.

so your saying all the stuff your wizzing by will appear, thinner/smaller? and that your 'shrinking' the distance your traveling?

the problem is that the mass gets too much for the object to stay in it's normal state. i don't know enough about the alloy the ship is made from to make a direct assertion.

it's nowhere even close to the speed of light though. at least not according to any kind of material we've discovered or even hypothesized to exist.

space travel to another galaxy (andromeda) for instance is not physically possible in less than around 100k years.

this is obv hypothical in near every way.
i know the amount strength the materal will need to have is insane, along with the power, but impossbile to acheive? absolutely not in my opinion. ( in a given amount of time ofc)
im asking for an explination on the fact that in your perspective, you ARE breaking the SOL, due to traveling that insane distance, in your eyes, a matter of not thattt long.

unless you go with






This post was edited by djeb081292 on Apr 6 2011 01:13am

well considering not even photons can escape a black hole. chances are that there is NO material that could do 1.5x10^6 m/s or half the speed of light.

im not trying to go on chances or what not.
even if your going lets say 2/5 of SOL. you are still going to observe your distance in a shorter time than the outside world no?
unless there is a certain physical number you can not pass because if you do you will perceive a FTL speed, then what your saying is not pertaining to what im trying to propose

oh yeah. ok. i'm sorry just skimmed your post. i couldn't perform the necessary calculations to tell you at what fraction of sol you'd have to perform in order to notice affects from time dilation