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A Giant Cannon, The Enterprise. The moon, and my buddy's girlfriend.

S

Shame

Platinum Member
My buddy, his girlfriend, and I go outside and smoke (cigarettes) during work and these questions come up in conversation:

#1 If we flew the Enterprise (big ship, shield, you know the one) above[i/] light speed and flew the thing directly at the center of the moon, what would the outcome be?

I said: Enterprise would probably go right through it. (If I'm right, would there even be a mark on the moon?)
Buddy said: The moon and Enterprise would explode. (He suggests a rather large explosion)
Buddy's GF said: Uhhhh.

Then a follow up question came up:

#2 If we stuck my buddy's girlfriend in a giant cannon and fired her directly at the moon, achieving faster than light speed, what would the effect be? (This assumes she doesn't get crispy fried leaving the cannon/atmosphere)

I said: She would go through the moon, might even leave a really cool cartoon like imprint all the way through the moon, then go wizzing out into space on the other side, relatively unharmed,
Buddy said: The moon and his GF would explode. (He suggests a rather large explosion)
Buddy's GF said: Nothing. She didn't think it was funny anymore.

Does anyone know the answer to these questions?
 
Originally posted by: notfred
As far as physics is concerned, your question is irrevlevant as it's impossible to travel faster than light.
Click to expand...

Well they said I'd never walk again, but damnit, I did it! 😛
 
As far as physics is concerned, your question is irrevlevant as it's impossible to travel faster than light
Click to expand...

It was also thought that man could not break the sound barrier

That man would never fly

That man would never leave the atmosphere

That the atom bomb would set the atmosphere on fire

etc, etc, etc.
 
Well, can you estimate how massive the Enterprise is?

I can tell you that "going right through it" isn't the answer, but more information is needed.
 
Originally posted by: Roger
As far as physics is concerned, your question is irrevlevant as it's impossible to travel faster than light
Click to expand...

It was also thought that man could not break the sound barrier
Click to expand...

We knew that breaking the sound barrier was possible, but we couldn't do it.

That man would never fly
Click to expand...

We observed other animals flying.

That man would never leave the atmosphere
Click to expand...

We knew objects entered our atmosphere.

That the atom bomb would set the atmosphere on fire
Click to expand...

Don't know about this one.

etc, etc, etc.
Click to expand...

The point is, for every paradigm shift above we had the very fundamental knowledge that the barries ARE surmountable. We have not a record of any faster-than-light travel (so-called tachyons in reference to particles), so the analogy really breaks down.
 
Originally posted by: Roger
As far as physics is concerned, your question is irrevlevant as it's impossible to travel faster than light
Click to expand...

It was also thought that man could not break the sound barrier

That man would never fly

That man would never leave the atmosphere

That the atom bomb would set the atmosphere on fire

etc, etc, etc.
Click to expand...


The reason we thought we couldn't break the sound barrier was because we didn't think our materials would hold up to the vibrations. It was a matter of needing advancement in material science. We don't have any material currently strong enough for a space elevator, but we expect one eventually.

Speed-of-light travel is a bit different. You see, as you get close to it, your object gets infinitely small and infinitely heavy (relative to a person moving at a constant velocity, much like someone on earth). Whereas they see time going by the same, we would see their time go by infinitely slowly.

Special and general relativity aren't just guesses. They're proven scientific fact.


Also, I've never read of any sentiment that man could never fly not leave the atmosphere. We've been trying different things in order to fly since the earliest man and leaving Earth was the next step.
 
if the shields are strong enough and you had enough force, why wouldn't the enetrprise pierce the moon? As for the gf, she would most likely go splat on the moon's surface.
 
You guys are not too bright, my point is that we will eventually travel faster than light., we just do not know how to do it just yet.
 
Originally posted by: Roger
As far as physics is concerned, your question is irrevlevant as it's impossible to travel faster than light
Click to expand...

It was also thought that man could not break the sound barrier

That man would never fly

That man would never leave the atmosphere

That the atom bomb would set the atmosphere on fire

etc, etc, etc.
Click to expand...

Sure, lots of things we thoguht were impossible to do have been done, and maybe someday people will figure out how to move faster than light. However, he did not ask his question "someday", he asked it now. As of right now, it's impossible to go faster than light so no one know what would happen if you did.
 
It'd be darn unlikely that anything's going through the moon...that's not clay, it's rock. You might shoot the moon out of its orbit, you might break it in pieces and they go everywhere and you continue through in the same direction but slower, but it'd be like shooting a bullet into a rock. Bullet gets smushed and/or ricochets, rock survives another day or maybe splits.
 
Originally posted by: Roger
You guys are not too bright, my point is that we will eventually travel faster than light., we just do not know how to do it just yet.
Click to expand...

I concur. Mankind can do virtually anything we set our minds to. We can even turn lead into gold!
 
Originally posted by: Roger
You guys are not too bright, my point is that we will eventually travel faster than light., we just do not know how to do it just yet.
Click to expand...

We got your point and are saying that you're wrong. The laws we use requiring matter to travel no faster than light aren't just there because we haven't been able to accomplish it yet. They're there because Relativity governs the greater universe to an AMAZING degree of accuracy and we've never seen ANYTHING, ever, that can accomplish that. It's not just a suggestion, it's a fundamental rule of the universe (and those beyond, according to string theory).
 
If we cannot travel specifically faster than light in the literal sense, we woul dhave to do a magic bending of space/time, like creating a wormhole type thing (eg: Even Horizon)
This would mean we would "go through the moon" in a sense, because we would reach the destination by bending space time, effectively travelling in a straight line, so we'd avoid the moon, but we'd seen a ship heading towards the moon and then appearing in a straight line the other side of it.
It would actually have gone by it.

If that was how we travelled faster than light.
 
Hmmm...

Questions that came up:

Is she denser than the moon. That is up for debate. 😀

@Roger: We would have her put the cigarette out before strapping on her in and launching her!
@Descartes: I dunno. Let's guess the the size of an aircraft carrier (the ship, not his GF!).
@Zenmervolt: Her density is up for debate. 😀
@Bowmaster: Probably a good idea... 😛

Oh, what about getting the Enterprise and/or his GF up to nearly the speed of light? Does that change anything?
 
this is a perfectly valid question 😛

warp speed is travelled (enterprise way) by slipping into the fabric of time. That is, the enterprise will no longer be on the same temporal plane as objects in the originating plane. When the enterprise maps out its travel path and destination, they do so to avoid any physical objects in their path present in the same temporal frames they are traversing, lest they collide and all die. If at this moment in time the enterprise were to warp toward the moon, it would go right through it unscathed.
However, if the total mass of your bgf were to be converted to pure light energy, and shot at the moon in a single pulse, I believe a considerable explosion will occur. She of course would be obliterated.
 
Faster than light travel = going backwards in time. At least the math that describes it says so. So yeah, the question is messed up.

If you gave a more realistic velocity, we could estimate her mass and come up with an energy (1/2 gamma m v^2) and see what that would do to the moon.
 
Originally posted by: silverpig
Faster than light travel = going backwards in time. At least the math that describes it says so. So yeah, the question is messed up.

If you gave a more realistic velocity, we could estimate her mass and come up with an energy (1/2 gamma m v^2) and see what that would do to the moon.
Click to expand...

Ok, this has been mentioned a couple times... Let's say she was going only 170,000 miles per second and weighed, oh 130 lbs... Then what?
 
Originally posted by: Shame
Hmmm...

Questions that came up:

Is she denser than the moon. That is up for debate. 😀

@Roger: We would have her put the cigarette out before strapping on her in and launching her!
@Descartes: I dunno. Let's guess the the size of an aircraft carrier (the ship, not his GF!).
@Zenmervolt: Her density is up for debate. 😀
@Bowmaster: Probably a good idea... 😛

Oh, what about getting the Enterprise and/or his GF up to nearly the speed of light? Does that change anything?
Click to expand...

:beer:

koing
 
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