There are 6 choices, 6 votes for mcsupajon's debate

Is there really a barrier at the speed of light?

Considering the history of man with such events as breaking the sound barrier can this be false?
  • I, personnally, do not.
    I think it isn't because Einstein had the idea of E=mc2 from a dream. In this dream he kept getting faster and faster until he got so fast that time stopped, I don't believe it was the speed of light...
    I think for time (or relative time to the object in motion) to be effected by the speed of an object it would have to be going infinitely fast, or moving from one place to another instantly. The reason for this is it would disobey time, the natural fact that everything takes time... which doesn't really exist.
    Voted for by mcsupajon.
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  • A barrier?
    This notion is based on the idea that time travels at a speed, rather than time being an imagined movement based on the proccess of the deteriorization of objects in measurable amounts, and simply acting as a record keeping funtion, giving a reference point to the conjunction of evens in relation to that amount of deteriorization
    Voted for by Dwn.
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  • Mathematical knowledge
    Hmm...I would be very wary about making bold statements about these kind of things without having the highly advanced level of mathematics and physics needed to even begin to understand these concepts...the thing with the sound barrier though is that there was never any law of physics that said it couldn't be broken. According to Einstein's work though, an object cannot go faster than the speed of light, which has yet to be disproved.
    Voted for by aerozeppelin.
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  • The belief is. . .
    That nothing *with mass* can travel at the speed of light. It requires more and more energy to travel faster and faster, so theoretically, it would require an *infinite* amount of energy for something with mass to travel at the speed of light. Say we could harness all the energy in the universe to try to travel at light speed; we could come closer and closer and closer but we could never actually reach the speed.
    Voted for by Carpool.
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  • The barrier is half semantical
    The barrier is real. What's amiss is the human conception of the term "speed" as applied to the question. All motions of material things can be defined adequately only as regards another material reference. You can never say that something moves "through space" at a particular non-zero speed, because "space" falls far short of being an actual material entity for reference. 3D space is just a concoction of the human intellect and has no precise semblance to anything actual. Ordered time is the other major human crutch. No, Einstein had it dead on target: you cannot reach or exceed light speed in relative material motion. Only non-material/ethereal signals can seem to move from a point A to a point B at that inviolable speed; but it's really some gimmick because everyone knows that light transmission is as good as instantaneous in all appreciable circumstances and material motion cancels out. God is having a bit of fun with us -- but Einstein had it correct.
    Voted for by placidlake.
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  • Theoretically, yes, but as soon as you do it you're screwed along with the rest of the universe.
    Actually, yes, unless you could have something that has self-generating and exponential energy to constantly overcome the exponential increase in mass that an object undergoes after surpassing the speed of light. If one is gaining speed, well and good, but once an object passes the speed of light, it would gain mass, and, in theory, if it continued to do so, would simply multiply times ∞ to such an extent that your mass implodes and you collapse into a supermassive black hole, and consume the contents of the universe. The only way you could have enough energy to move an object faster than the speed of light and maintain it would be to have as I say a source of energy that generates its own energy, and with each generation cycle the energy must be brought up to the next power, to compensate for the massive increase in the object's mass and overcome it to continue propelling it through space. The only source even remotely similar to this found in nature is dark energy, but as of yet there's no way of harnessing it, nor is there a viable mechanism that can produce its own dark energy. Also, in theory, time would indeed slow down. It probably wouldn't stop, but what would seem to the traveller five hours would seem to the rest of the universe 50,000 years, and so on. For instance, if you were travelling at Cē speed from the sun to the earth, a distance of about eight years, what would seem to you like, two minutes, would to the planet earth seem eight years (although at that speed you'd slam into the planet at such a speed you'd blast it like a meteor and wipe out all multicellular life on it anyway). But that's dealing in extremely, extremely short astronomical distances; a safer bet would be maybe from here to like, say, from here to maybe the other end of the universe (though at the speeds we're talking you'd be there in a few seconds, or, at least, it would be perceived as such). Another theory is that you would travel to such a point and gain so much mass that you collapse into a black hole, which is essentially a tear in the time-space fabric, and would effecively be warped to a point in the Universe seconds before the big bang.

    Understand that I'm not a physicist and have a very, very limited knowledge of these sorts of things but this is what I know.
    Voted for by Xelgaroth.
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