For months me and my freinds have been debating the subject of light speed.
It is said that the universe will not allow any object to reach light speed, without creating a paradox. The reason, they say, is because if an object reached lightspeed, it would break the 3rd Newton's Law. That is of course for every action deserves a reaction.
So how can it create a paradox? If you throw a ball and it reaches light speed, that is Newton's 3rd law. A friend of mine argues that the paradox is when the barrier of lightspeed breaks. It's like a wall, light speed is, there is something on our side and the other. And if Newton's 3rd law comes into play then when we reach light speed, going forward, there is something coming back to our side.
Most scientific endeavor precludes that the universe is, and has always been expanding. What discussion ensues is questions related to how fast it is expanding, and whether the speed of the expansion is constant. The question most important, yet not easily answered, is whether the universe has a defined and definite ending point. Perhaps the answer to your question lay in the answer to this one?
I haven't heard of Newton's laws being the barrier. Most things I have read on the subject have cited Einstein's theory of relativity. Basically, increasing the Kinetic Energy of a fast moving object will cause its relativistic mass to increase to near infinity. Hence, a baseball (spaceship) can not travel faster than light. However, small particles may be able to.
Einstein's Gen Theory of Relativity state that nothing can go faster than the Speed of Light. What you might be alluding to as a "Paradox" is that what if you where on a ship that was moving close to the speed of light (say .95 Light Speed. Hope there's no Cop around) and you tossed a ball away from the front of the ship at the same speed...as that ball excelerated away from your ship it would be moving faster than the speed of light...right?
How can that be? Thus your Paradox (When I was young I thought that people were saying "a pair of soxs"). If you are moving at .95 Light Speed and something is moving away from you at .95 Light Speed then it must be moving at 1.9 Light Speed.
This is TRUE!! But...(wait for it)...it is all Relative! To you it is moving at 1.9 Light Speed, but to anyone else it is moving at .95 Light Speed.
E+M is a great class. Usually taken in Jr. or Sr. year in a Physics program.
Therein you work out the understanding of how Einstein arrived at his conclusions in detail re: special relativity and the energy equation of great fame.
You begin to see that matter is harmonically bound EM energy. While we don't directly perceive anything in a 'perfect vacuum'..... Still there is something that has the ability to affect objects AND light at some distance from any other object. There is allegedly a vacuum, light can be bent and of course electric, magnetic and gravitational fields can exist. What is a 'field'? It is a construct to 'model' something that is completely abstract to us. Something that exists in a void.
The bible says God holds all things together by his word. Could it be that his spirit is simply interacting with all this in the vastness of space?? What an awesome God we serve.
Anyway we observe that as things go towards light speed for whatever reason, they experience a different time frame work than the observer. IF matter is harmonically bound EM energy (as the mutual annihilation experiment proves, where matter and anti-matter meet and vanish giving off precisely the energy of photon that represented their mass in the energy equation) AND we observe that it has the frequency characteristic E=hf (where he is plank's constant, which is ..what 6.34x10^-34? Haven't used that one for a while. lol and f is the frequency of resonancy of this object in a harmonic relationship with whatever is 'binding' it to be matter..) then it's natural to expect that as it moves against whatever the medium *is*..that there will be some alteration in the WAY it resonates!
And this relationship in fact is displayed in what we have observed to confirm Einstein's law of special relativity in various ways.
Anyway the bottom line is, IF something were to HIT the speed of light, it would be because it *became* light. And it would never be reassembling itself again :-). No organized mass can come near the speed of light by physical means because you are utlimately fighting against the very properties that hold it together as matter int he first place...and you are fighting against it in an organized packet of material like..a piece of metal say... that is composed of zillions of atoms which are each having their wave function independently 'stretched' by this motion. ie. it will eventually change I believe the properties of any crystal lattice etc. to where it will simply come apart. Disintegrate.
That's my theory on it. But the first order approximation that has been scientifically confirmed at least, is that if you approach the speed of light mass goes towards an undefined state AT light speed. Before that it just increases and increases which would cause more and more energy to be needed for acceleration. If a propulsion system is being used though of course the mass of propellant will also increase. But of course the energy equation dictates that *only* if 100% of the energy in a mass were expended could it accelerate potentially that mass to slight speed anyway. So you can't propel *something to* light speed in other words. only the propellant can reach light speed. lol
Anyway a few physics facts and a few possible ways God could work in things beyond what physics can explain to ponder.
Love the depth of this conversation as my dad and brother used to have long discussions on these things. Thanks for the memories, guys!
I've always been a "trekkie" and would imagine the day that Jesus shouts for his Church and we become cosmic beings traveling in the twinkling of an eye, though the ice cold of outer space and not be affected by any of it. WOW! I speculate that the light of His countenance will blanket us with such divine love and warmth, that we will teleport into the clouds like a comet and embrace and fly high with our Lord and Savior! Yeah~:yay:
There's an article about "chunneling" in OMNI? Dunno, the article itself was on alternate ways that Einstein could've been wrong. Chunneling is the theory that energy travels through matter faster than it does empty space. That said, science is mans best guess at understanding God, and that's only the Wests guess. Many people don't buy into Eastern medicine without feeling the need to involve their religious asspects, too. I don't know who's right, only that I take my medical and scientific advice from smarter people who at least have an idea.
Photons, particles of light travel at c. Tachyons, which are theorectical particles are supposed to exceed c. Pretty much everything else, especially man-made things travel short of c including protons shot round the tunnels of CERN/LHC.
The problem with travelling at precise c (186,282.3976 statute miles per second in vacuum,) is that it requires infinite energy while generating infinite mass.
On a related note, I like to think God put loopholes into physics and how things work in the universe. Otherwise, we and everyone/thing elsewhere in the universe are doomed never to be able to get around in even our tiny sliver portion of it since even at c it'd take 4 years to get to the next nearest star, 9 years or so to thenext star with planets, and lengths of time beyond a human's lifespan for anything more than say 40 light-years away (for comparison, our Milky Way galaxy is about 300,000 light-years across and we're in the lower east side western spiral arm perimeter of it. :)
