Alright so this is (as far as I'm aware) impossible, but if something were able to go faster than light, would it be invisible?
I know any answer can essentially only be speculation, but I wanna hear what you guys have to say because a lot of you fuckers are really smart.

I just don't think anything can go faster than the speed of light,
if somehow something could, you could not see it.

depends on which way it's moving

if it's moving away, the light coming off of it towards you never reach you, sort of like the doppler effect

This post was edited by zero_infinity on Dec 27 2008 01:43pm

It most likely would be invisible if its velocity exceeds light. Kind of like when a jet breaks the sound barrier, you may see the jet but you do not hear it. Only until the jet has past do you hear the sound passing. The same principle applies to light.

Can you elaborate? Kinda hard because it's a lot of guessing, but you're smart enough to come up with something that can explain it with more detail.


Then wouldn't you see the object where it was instead of where it is, like when you're hearing a jet where it was, not where it is?
I guess I'm thinking of the object as moving from left to right, but it should apply to front to back as well (note: that was entirely baseless).

Im not saying its just like the sound barrier just similar in principle.

Oh. My mistake.

na, that was sort of a guess

watch this, it says something interesting about inflation:



as galaxies move away, they also emit light

that light(wavelength) becomes stretched, and looks red when it reaches us(red shift)


if the mass is moving faster than light away from you.. then my mind gets fucked. i don't know

This post was edited by infinitum on Dec 27 2008 03:27pm

I would think that it would continue redshifting, but because it's going faster than light, it moves past the visible spectrum and moves into infrared, so it would be invisible to us. Likewise with coming toward you, it would blueshift itself into ultraviolet.
But since my knowledge of the doppler effect is close to nil, those are complete guesses.

that sounds reasonable, but would the same still hold true if the mass is moving at speeds >c ?

moving into different spectrums of light would still happen if it's going fast enough..

This post was edited by infinitum on Dec 27 2008 03:52pm