mentholated

Einstein was wrong. Period. At the speed of light matter cannot exist, therefore, it ceases to exist. Remember, light is relative to our dimension.

2) All matter is ultimately reducible to electromagnetic radiation (or light). 3) Time ceases to exist at light speed.

Matter cannot be measured without time.

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It's said the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It is with the same good intentions that we blindly place our trust in those with power, the architects of our future and all to often, the manipulators of our ultimate fate.

leejo

Relativity predicts that as a particle with mass >0 is accelerated toward the speed of light, its mass increases. This has been confirmed through testing. At the speed of light the mass would become infinite. It would also require an infinite amount of energy to accelerate the nearly-infinite mass particle from just below C to C.

So it's not correct to say that at C matter will cease to exist. It is correct to say that any particle with mass cannot travel at C.

mentholated

It would be correct, then, to say that at C all matter ceases to exist in this dimension.

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It's said the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It is with the same good intentions that we blindly place our trust in those with power, the architects of our future and all to often, the manipulators of our ultimate fate.

Gambit7

There is no Matter at the speed of light... only Energy, therefore Menth is actually right.

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Kerostasis

Yes, Menth is sort of right in that there is no matter at the speed of light. He is simultaneously wrong though, because the real-world application is not that mass vanishes upon reaching the speed of light, but that mass cannot actually get there at all. Only massless particles can travel at the speed of light.

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Gambit7

There's no such thing as a massless particle as far as I'm concerned. E=mc2 kinda proves this. Plus, massless particles have momentum (photons especially). You can move objects with a beam of light you know, and gravity has effects on them, as well as Bose-Einstein Condensates (you can slow light down to a walking pace). How would such a thing occur if there is no mass?

In a way it's a purely relativistic thing. Our perception of light is one of being massless, but the higher reality of it is that it probably does have mass. (maybe the better word for it is "weight")

Information can indeed have weight and no mass.

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Kerostasis

Energy is associated with a certain quantity of mass (due to E=MC2), and mass is associated with a certain quantity of energy, but they are not strictly identical. To move a given mass M at the speed of light requires driving energy K = MV^2, and that driving energy K will have its own associated mass due to E=MC2 which will happen to be identical to the original mass M. That associated mass now needs additional driving energy to keep it moving at the speed of light, and since its the same as the original mass, it requires the same additional energy K. And this additional energy K requires more energy for it to move, and so on and so forth without end, as each iteration adds the same amount of new mass and new required energy as the previous iteration.

By contrast, if you start with free energy in the form of EM radiation, it has no "normal" mass, only the associated mass of E=MC^2. And the energy required to move this associated mass is exactly the amount of energy already present in the radiation, thus ensuring that it will move at precisely the speed of light. (Until of course you put something in the way to slow it down.)

The net result is that at the speed of light, energy is capable of propelling only itself, with no left over "carrying capacity" to push mass around. This does not in itself provide a means to disintegrate mass into pure energy so as to move it at the speed of light, but you would need to independently devise such a method in order to move what used to be mass at light speed. Then of course you have the problem of re-assembling it at the other end...

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sordavie

lol

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mentholated

Thus explaining why it is impractical to travel at the speed of light in this dimension. So I'm right again!

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It's said the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It is with the same good intentions that we blindly place our trust in those with power, the architects of our future and all to often, the manipulators of our ultimate fate.

leejo

Photons and force-carrying particles like gauge bosons are massless.

Gambit7

I revise my comment to say "there's no such thing as a weightless particle"
Hey Kero, what's your physics background btw?

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ikonic

UFOs are swamp gas and weather baloons, didn't you know?

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Kerostasis

Mostly just being curious enough to look these things up, and having a strong enough math background to understand them. My most compelling credential is probably this anecdotal story:

In my senior year of highschool I was in a chemistry class, when we went over the De Broglie Wavelength equations that assign wave properties to particles. After studying the mathematical proof presented in the textbook for awhile, I realized the proof didn't actually work as stated. I asked the professor if he had any idea what I was missing, and he suggested that I ask my college professor next year after I went to college.

So the next year while at RIT, after first doublechecking that the bad proof was the same in the college level textbooks in the school reference library, I sought out a physics professor who had some understanding of Quantum Mechanics. I showed him the erroneous proof in the textbook, and after some consultation we came to the conclusion that the equations still do work, but the correct proof becomes extremely complicated and requires the addition of several higher-level Quantum Mechanical concepts that weren't available to high school students, so the textbooks simply skip all that and use riddle-type mind tricks to make it look like this shorter proof will work instead.

Of course, I didn't actually understand those extra QM concepts, so I'm pretty much taking his word for it that the proof works after you add them in.

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MasterEditorInChief

I believe we're using the term "ceases to exist" too liberally.

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Gambit7

Photons gain mass within a superconductor. (i just read this today when checking up on LHC - which unfortunately was delayed till the Spring)
Gluons are another matter (strong interactions). I kinda dont look at Gluons like a particle... more like uhhh... "glue"

see, now you've forced me to brush up on my particle physics... (sigh) Might as well since they're about to flip the switch at CERN. Helps to understand wth is actually going on over there.

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