Regarding Gliese581g

DivideBYZero

Lifer
May 18, 2001
24,117
2
0
It's great to know these planets exist, but it's also kinda sad. It's sad because I know that I will never know what life exists on this planet, because:

- We need to develop fast as light or faster than light travel. Not happening.
- Even then it will take years to get there.
- So we need epic deep space life support, also not available.

D:
 

CycloWizard

Lifer
Sep 10, 2001
12,348
1
81
But... but... Vogt said he has 100% certainty that life is on the planet. Trust him - he's a doctor! *fail*
 

Paul98

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2010
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It's great to know these planets exist, but it's also kinda sad. It's sad because I know that I will never know what life exists on this planet, because:

- We need to develop fast as light or faster than light travel. Not happening.
- Even then it will take years to get there.
- So we need epic deep space life support, also not available.

D:

You wouldn't have to go faster than the speed of light if you could find a way to get a good amount of constant acceleration, where you accelerate for half of the journey and decelerate second half. If the ship was able to accelerate at 1g, my guess(without doing any math) on the ship it would take somewhere around 5 years to get there. Now us waiting back at earth it would take the ship more than 20 years to get there then another 20 years to send back the information it finds. If we do end up sending something to that planet the first mission would be an unmanned probe so life support wouldn't be a problem.

Now we maybe we can get around this problem by not needing to visit it in order to figure out if there is life or not. Maybe advances in telescopes and other technology will be able to give us evidence of life on this planet.

But even if we don't, I expect us to find many more planets in the habitable zone in the near future. Giving us more options to what we can compare to, and maybe find planets closer to earth. Or figure out what planets would be the easiest to find life or best possibility for life. If we decide to send some probes out into space we can send them to places where we expect to find life or are "easy" to check out. Then even though it would take a very very long time to get there we stacked the deck in our favor.
 

Ninjahedge

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2005
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What we need to do is just start finding resources on other planets that we could use to make a self-supporting colony.

As soon as you know that Mars has all the chemicals and compounds needed for life, the rest is just methodology.
 

DrPizza

Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
Mar 5, 2001
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We need to develop fast as light or faster than light travel. Not happening.
You seem to imply that this is an engineering challenge. It's not. It would take a completely new and deeper understanding of the rules of physics. While we can hope that some day, some revolutionary new idea will come along that makes this possible, until then, it's fantasy.

However, if we could accelerate to 99.999999% the speed of light with a constant acceleration of one g (using classical physics for the calculation), you would be able to attain that speed in less than a year. Switching to relativity, you'd just need to start slowing down with the same acceleration when you were approximately one year away. The time (as perceived by you, the traveler) would be seconds between getting up to speed and starting to slow down. In minutes, you could start slowing down for a star on the opposite side of the galaxy.
If you could (you can't) travel at exactly the speed of light, time would stop for you.

However, accelerating at 1 g requires more and more energy as your velocity increases to the point where relativistic effects need to be taken into account. So, I'm not sure such an acceleration is going to occur.
 

Paul98

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2010
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You seem to imply that this is an engineering challenge. It's not. It would take a completely new and deeper understanding of the rules of physics. While we can hope that some day, some revolutionary new idea will come along that makes this possible, until then, it's fantasy.

However, if we could accelerate to 99.999999% the speed of light with a constant acceleration of one g (using classical physics for the calculation), you would be able to attain that speed in less than a year. Switching to relativity, you'd just need to start slowing down with the same acceleration when you were approximately one year away. The time (as perceived by you, the traveler) would be seconds between getting up to speed and starting to slow down. In minutes, you could start slowing down for a star on the opposite side of the galaxy.
If you could (you can't) travel at exactly the speed of light, time would stop for you.

For those people on the space ship time is moving just as it normally would. It's from earth that you see time slowing down for the space ship. But if you want to think about something interesting think about a space ship moving away from the earth at .99c. Not only on earth does the time on the spaceship move slower. But also on the spaceship the time on the earth moves slower. So you on the spaceship thinks that the earth's time is moving really slow, and on the earth I think your spaceship time is moving really slow also. So who is right? Both are right.

However, accelerating at 1 g requires more and more energy as your velocity increases to the point where relativistic effects need to be taken into account. So, I'm not sure such an acceleration is going to occur.

Accelerating at 1But on the spaceship they will continue to accelerate at 1g. This does not change the fact that they can never move faster than the speed ofg does NOT require more energy the faster you go for the ship it's self. To it accelerating at 1g always takes the same amount of energy. Now to the people on earth the space ship will be slowing down and not look to be accelerating at 1g due to time dilation. They could keep a constant acceleration of 100years on the space ship. But then if they were to see how fast they were going compared to earth they would still not be going slower than the speed of light.

Also if you were to try to keep on acceleration constant with respect to earth, on the spaceship you would be accelerating faster and faster.
 

Modelworks

Lifer
Feb 22, 2007
16,240
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For space exploration to continue it will need to become profitable. It has operated at a loss since it began and gaining knowledge is not justification for that kind of spending anymore.

Nasa is laying off over 900 people, that will need to find new lines of work. Unless they find something on the moon or mars that provides a product that can be sold, exploration in any major way is dead. You can't go to investors asking for $20 billion so you can put a man on mars because while it would be a great achievement it doesn't lead to any kind of return off that investment that even comes close to what was spent.


Some have suggested moving from a share the knowledge approach to a totally fee based system. Where a probe is paid for, launched and when the data received the only ones that get that data are the ones that paid for it.
 
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PlasmaBomb

Lifer
Nov 19, 2004
11,636
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Accelerating at 1But on the spaceship they will continue to accelerate at 1g. This does not change the fact that they can never move faster than the speed ofg does NOT require more energy the faster you go for the ship it's self. To it accelerating at 1g always takes the same amount of energy. Now to the people on earth the space ship will be slowing down and not look to be accelerating at 1g due to time dilation. They could keep a constant acceleration of 100years on the space ship. But then if they were to see how fast they were going compared to earth they would still not be going slower than the speed of light.

Also if you were to try to keep on acceleration constant with respect to earth, on the spaceship you would be accelerating faster and faster.


Huh?

Did you just say that accelerating as you get closer to c doesn't require more energy?

Suppose I am travelling 0.7c with respect to the Earth. My ships engines and fuel are also travelling at this speed. Shouldn't it be easy to accelerate to 0.8c without too much effort? How is this more energetically expensive than accelerating from rest to 0.1c? From the ships and the engines point of view, the ship is at rest. I'm confused about the difficulties of getting closer to light speed. With respect to whom?


Speeds are indeed relative, so you must compute the change in speed from the frame of the spaceship. In this case you wish to accelerate from 0.7c to 0.8c, both measured with respect to the Earth. By the relativistic velocity addition law, the velocity change is not 0.1c in the frame of the spaceship, but is 0.23c. In the spaceship frame, the energy required is given by the corresponding boost factor, which in this case is 1.028. The additional energy needed is thus 0.028mc2. The change in boost factor as measured from the Earth frame is Gamma(.8c) = 1.67 - Gamma(.7c)=1.40; the difference is 0.27, so the additional energy required will be 0.27mc2, as measured in Earth's frame. Why the difference? The straightforward answer is that a measurement of energy is relative. However, in either frame the amount of energy required to accelerate by the same factor will increase as the ship's speed increases, because of the dependence of the boost factor upon the square of the speed. Accelerating from 0.8c to 0.9c in the Earth's frame corresponds to an increase of 0.35c in the spaceship's frame. In the spaceship frame, the energy required for the increase is 0.06mc2, while in the Earth frame it is 0.68mc2; in both cases substantially more energy is required to go from 0.8c to 0.9c than to go from 0.7c to 0.8c.
 

Paul98

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Jan 31, 2010
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Huh?

Did you just say that accelerating as you get closer to c doesn't require more energy?

Yes I did from the spaceship, they can accelerate at 1g for as long as they want and it never takes any more energy. It's from Earth that they see the ship needing more energy to keep 1g acceleration while looking from earth. But if they were trying to keep 1g acceleration from earth's frame of reference, on the ship's frame of reference they would be accelerating much faster than 1g and continuing to accelerate at a faster and faster rate.

So it both takes more energy and takes the same amount of energy to accelerate at at 1g. It just depends on which frame of reference you chose. If you are talking about the actual acceleration on the spaceship it never takes more energy. As you can feel the acceleration just as if you were in a car starting from a stop you feel that acceleration.
 
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PsiStar

Golden Member
Dec 21, 2005
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You are saying that it still takes energy ... the rate of energy usage does not change?

hmmmm ... ... ...
 

CycloWizard

Lifer
Sep 10, 2001
12,348
1
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Yes I did from the spaceship, they can accelerate at 1g for as long as they want and it never takes any more energy. It's from Earth that they see the ship needing more energy to keep 1g acceleration while looking from earth. But if they were trying to keep 1g acceleration from earth's frame of reference, on the ship's frame of reference they would be accelerating much faster than 1g and continuing to accelerate at a faster and faster rate.

So it both takes more energy and takes the same amount of energy to accelerate at at 1g. It just depends on which frame of reference you chose. If you are talking about the actual acceleration on the spaceship it never takes more energy. As you can feel the acceleration just as if you were in a car starting from a stop you feel that acceleration.
I think you're confusing relationships between Newtonian and relativistic physics. This isn't my area of expertise, but I'm fairly certain that the apparent mass in Newton's second law (F=ma) increases as v/c (or v^2/c^2?), where v is velocity and c is the speed of light. The energy Urequired to accelerate is related to the force as F=dU/dv. Thus, the energy required to achieve a constant acceleration does increase substantially as v-->c. The Newtonian limit at low velocities is simply a linearized asymptote which makes calculations easy for most everyday phenomena. DrPizza can and will correct what I've said here, but I think that's the gist of it.
 

silverpig

Lifer
Jul 29, 2001
27,703
12
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I think you're confusing relationships between Newtonian and relativistic physics. This isn't my area of expertise, but I'm fairly certain that the apparent mass in Newton's second law (F=ma) increases as v/c (or v^2/c^2?), where v is velocity and c is the speed of light. The energy Urequired to accelerate is related to the force as F=dU/dv. Thus, the energy required to achieve a constant acceleration does increase substantially as v-->c. The Newtonian limit at low velocities is simply a linearized asymptote which makes calculations easy for most everyday phenomena. DrPizza can and will correct what I've said here, but I think that's the gist of it.

I haven't worked through the math but he's probably not far off. From the point of view of the spaceship, time slows, so acceleration (distance/time^2) increases. Thus, a constant force acting on the ship will cause the ship to not accelerate as fast from Earth's point of view, but it might do so from the space traveller's point of view due to time dilation.

Again, I haven't worked through the math, but it may work.
 

Paul98

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2010
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I think you're confusing relationships between Newtonian and relativistic physics. This isn't my area of expertise, but I'm fairly certain that the apparent mass in Newton's second law (F=ma) increases as v/c (or v^2/c^2?), where v is velocity and c is the speed of light. The energy Urequired to accelerate is related to the force as F=dU/dv. Thus, the energy required to achieve a constant acceleration does increase substantially as v-->c. The Newtonian limit at low velocities is simply a linearized asymptote which makes calculations easy for most everyday phenomena. DrPizza can and will correct what I've said here, but I think that's the gist of it.

As I have said before it all depends on which frame of reference you use. If you use the ships frame of reference, it's speed is 0. So it never needs to use more energy to accelerate it as it continues to accelerate. If you use the earth's frame of reference to them the rocket would need more energy to continue to accelerate away from it at the same rate. But then if you were on the ship you would be accelerating more and more.

You guys keep on saying the closer you get to c, that you need more energy to accelerate. This is true but from the ships frame of reference after accelerating for a long time it isn't any closer to c as it was when it started.
 

iCyborg

Golden Member
Aug 8, 2008
1,353
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If the ship is accelerating, then its frame of reference is no longer inertial, and only the inertial ones have this frame independence of physical laws. You'd need to account for fictitious forces and what not...
 

PlasmaBomb

Lifer
Nov 19, 2004
11,636
2
81
Yes I did from the spaceship, they can accelerate at 1g for as long as they want and it never takes any more energy. It's from Earth that they see the ship needing more energy to keep 1g acceleration while looking from earth. But if they were trying to keep 1g acceleration from earth's frame of reference, on the ship's frame of reference they would be accelerating much faster than 1g and continuing to accelerate at a faster and faster rate.

So it both takes more energy and takes the same amount of energy to accelerate at at 1g. It just depends on which frame of reference you chose. If you are talking about the actual acceleration on the spaceship it never takes more energy. As you can feel the acceleration just as if you were in a car starting from a stop you feel that acceleration.


Accelerating from 0.7 -> 0.8c = In the spaceship frame, the energy required is given by the corresponding boost factor, which in this case is 1.028mc^2.

Accelerating from 0.8 -> 0.9c = In the spaceship frame, the energy required for the increase is 1.06mc^2

Last I checked 1.06mc^2 > 1.028mc^2
 

Paul98

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2010
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Accelerating from 0.7 -> 0.8c = In the spaceship frame, the energy required is given by the corresponding boost factor, which in this case is 1.028mc^2.

Accelerating from 0.8 -> 0.9c = In the spaceship frame, the energy required for the increase is 1.06mc^2

Last I checked 1.06mc^2 > 1.028mc^2

In the spaceship's frame of reference when compared to what( I am assuming earth )? As in the ships frame of reference it can't be moving .7c or .8c with respect to it's self. Please read all of what i say not just part of it. I agree that on the ship to move .7c to .8c with respect to earth would take less energy than to move from .8c to .9c. I have already said this before. If you wanted to accelerate from .7c to .8c with respect to earth then from .8c to .9c with respect to earth. The actual acceleration felt on the spaceship would increase. If you wanted to calculate this you could use the speed addition equations.

What I have been talking about is the actual acceleration on the spaceship in it's own frame of reference. You can keep this acceleration constant and it never takes any more energy. On the spaceship in it's own frame of reference it can always accelerate at 1g and will never take more energy. This is the acceleration you actually feel, like when you get in a car and accelerate you feel yourself being pushed backwards.
 

Ninjahedge

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2005
4,149
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Actually, from the POV of the spaceship, you will still be going at 1G, but to everyone else, you will not.

G is based on time. If time is slowing down, the change in speed required in that time frame is miniscule (if you need to accelerate another 9.81 m/s in the next second, for everyone else that second takes 15 years....).

As for the one example saying that the Earth will look like it is going at .99C if you are traveling away from it at that speed, it does not work that way. Speed may be relative when you are dealing with physically attainable velocities, but space-time does have an absolute speed limit. Only the one traveling near that speed will experience the funky stuff.
 

Chiropteran

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Nov 14, 2003
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There seems to be a basic misunderstanding in this thread that c is some sort of constant and once an object is moving at c it can't move any faster. While that is true in a roundabout way, the only limit of c is in relative speeds. Nothing can be moving at faster than c relative to anything else. That doesn't have any affect on constant acceleration though.

Think about this little scenario for a minute. We launch a rocket away from earth and it moves at .2 c. Someone on the rocket shines a light back to earth, obviously the light moves at c. So relative to the light, the rocket is now moving at 1.2 c! No. From the perspective of the people on the rocket, the light is moving away from them at exactly c. From the perspective of the people on earth, the light is approaching at exactly c. How can this happen? Time dilation. Time slows down for the people on the rocket, so the light moving away at 1.2 c relative to earth is moving away at 1 relative to them based on their clocks, while at the same time it's moving at 1 c relative to earth where the clocks are moving faster.

From your own perspective, you can move as fast as you want. c isn't really a limit in that respect, if you could accelerate fast enough you could travel x light years in LESS THAN x apparent years. However, for everyone back on earth much more time will have passed, such that regardless of how fast you were going in your own frame earth saw that your journey took at least 1 year per light year traveled. Interestingly enough, if you could manage to go so fast that earth thought your journey was exactly at c, for you the entire journey would be over in the blink of an eye and you wouldn't perceive any time as having passed at all.
 

PlasmaBomb

Lifer
Nov 19, 2004
11,636
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Please read all of what i say not just part of it.

The confusion arises because of this first piece (which is the reason it was quoted)-

Accelerating at 1But on the spaceship they will continue to accelerate at 1g. This does not change the fact that they can never move faster than the speed ofg does NOT require more energy the faster you go for the ship it's self. To it accelerating at 1g always takes the same amount of energy. Now to the people on earth the space ship will be slowing down and not look to be accelerating at 1g due to time dilation. They could keep a constant acceleration of 100years on the space ship. But then if they were to see how fast they were going compared to earth they would still not be going slower than the speed of light.

It's a grammatical mess...


I agree that on the ship to move .7c to .8c with respect to earth would take less energy than to move from .8c to .9c. I have already said this before. If you wanted to accelerate from .7c to .8c with respect to earth then from .8c to .9c with respect to earth. The actual acceleration felt on the spaceship would increase. If you wanted to calculate this you could use the speed addition equations.

I think it would be about 2.3g... going from the quoted workings...

What I have been talking about is the actual acceleration on the spaceship in it's own frame of reference.

Funnily enough that wasn't apparent from the first piece...

You can keep this acceleration constant and it never takes any more energy. On the spaceship in it's own frame of reference it can always accelerate at 1g and will never take more energy. This is the acceleration you actually feel, like when you get in a car and accelerate you feel yourself being pushed backwards.

There is no point looking at the space ship as an inertial point... because it isn't one... it also gives weird results.

Suppose that the space ship is the only thing in the universe bar light and that it accelerates for 10 million years at 9.81 ms^-2, what is it's final speed? Relativistically it's still zero (the differential between the ships speed and that of light is still c).
 

Paul98

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Jan 31, 2010
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Actually, from the POV of the spaceship, you will still be going at 1G, but to everyone else, you will not.

Yes.

G is based on time. If time is slowing down, the change in speed required in that time frame is miniscule (if you need to accelerate another 9.81 m/s in the next second, for everyone else that second takes 15 years....).

Well for the people on earth it might take 15 years, but for others it might be the same as on the spaceship, or really any amount of time. Just depends on which frame of reference you decide to calculate for.

As for the one example saying that the Earth will look like it is going at .99C if you are traveling away from it at that speed, it does not work that way. Speed may be relative when you are dealing with physically attainable velocities, but space-time does have an absolute speed limit. Only the one traveling near that speed will experience the funky stuff.

The Earth IS traveling near the speed of light if you take it compared to the spaceship. The earth is moving away from you at .99c. This is some of the very basics of relativity. Nether frame of reference is "better" than the other. From the spaceship's frame of reference time of the earth is moving slow, where as from the earth's frame of reference time of the spaceship is moving slow. Just depends on which frame of reference you chose for which time is moving slow.

How about this, take two spaceships A and B. Both are moving in the same direction with respect to the earth. Spaceship A and the earth are moving away from each other at .99c, spaceship B and spaceship A can also be moving away from each other at .99C. But this does not mean that spaceship B and the earth are moving away from each other at 1.98c. Instead spaceship B and the earth will be moving away from each other at something like .99995c
 

Paul98

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Jan 31, 2010
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The confusion arises because of this first piece (which is the reason it was quoted)-



It's a grammatical mess...




I think it would be about 2.3g... going from the quoted workings...



Funnily enough that wasn't apparent from the first piece...



There is no point looking at the space ship as an inertial point... because it isn't one... it also gives weird results.

Suppose that the space ship is the only thing in the universe bar light and that it accelerates for 10 million years at 9.81 ms^-2, what is it's final speed? Relativistically it's still zero (the differential between the ships speed and that of light is still c).

As happens many times it the problem was just assumptions about what people meant to say. One thing to add, even if there were other object's in that universe what would the spaceships speed be? It's speed would just depend on which frame of reference you were to look at.
 

Ninjahedge

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2005
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Paul, it ISNT traveling at that speed.

The Earth is traveling at a given speed through the universe and that is the speed it will ALWAYS be traveling regardless of how fast anything else is zipping around it.

You may think that the Earth is moving at a given speed and that you are stationary, but that is just not how it works. Only the object that is actually moving at that speed will experience time dialation.

Chiro, I understand what you are saying, but the spaceship will not be moving at 1.2. It will be moving away from the beam at that speed, but it is not physically moving at that speed.

Two objects coming at each other, time dialation ignored, at say .75c will approach each other at 1.5c, but they will still be traveling at .75c. It does not matter that it SEEMS like they are traveling faster to each other, because they just plain aren't. If they flashed their headlights at each other, that beam will travel .25c faster than the ship. A third person observing it will see it traveling that fast.

Now when you start paying with time, the people ON the ships might observe the light, or the other ship, traveling faster than light, but that is a perceptional error. They are still traveling at .75c and c (ship and beam of light, respectively).

Here's the kick though. Even though the ship will appear to be traveling faster than 186K Mi/sec, it is still traveling slower than the "speed" of light. Calculating the speed you think the beam is traveling at would be an indication of how fast YOU are traveling (both by subtracting your approach speed AND factoring in time dialation).

Not a very strait-forward thing here.
 

Paul98

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Jan 31, 2010
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Paul, it ISNT traveling at that speed.

Yes it is relative to the space ship.

The Earth is traveling at a given speed through the universe and that is the speed it will ALWAYS be traveling regardless of how fast anything else is zipping around it.

In order to get the speed of the earth you have to ask relative to what. Depending on what you chose it's velocity is different. This is the basics of relativity.

You may think that the Earth is moving at a given speed and that you are stationary, but that is just not how it works. Only the object that is actually moving at that speed will experience time dialation.

Once again there is no absolute speed that something is going the ONLY way you can see how fast something is moving is comparing it with something else. So the earth isn't moving to fast from the suns frame of reference but from another galaxy it could be moving at .999c. There is no "actual" speed that the earth is moving at that everyone agrees on. It is simply relative so the earth is moving at .99c with respect to the spaceship and the spaceship is moving at .99c with respect to earth. BOTH have the same effects of the other moving at .99c with respect to it.


Two objects coming at each other, time dialation ignored, at say .75c will approach each other at 1.5c, but they will still be traveling at .75c. It does not matter that it SEEMS like they are traveling faster to each other, because they just plain aren't. If they flashed their headlights at each other, that beam will travel .25c faster than the ship. A third person observing it will see it traveling that fast.

Ok first .75c with respect to what? A mid point between the two so that each sees this mid point approach at .75c? If this is the case the two objects are moving at moving at .96c with respect to each other. If the ship is moving at .75c with respect to some mid point between those two ships. Then if the ship flashed it's headlights, the beam of light would be moving at 1c faster than the ship. Again this is a very basic principle of relativity, light always traveling at c no matter which frame of reference you use. So when compared to the ship the light is moving away from it at c, and NOT .25c in the ships frame of reference. But if you have the mid point and to them the ship is moving at .75c. Then in that frame of reference the same light is moving at c to them also. So it is both moving away from the ship at c, and moving away from the ship at .25c depending on which frame of reference you use.

Now when you start paying with time, the people ON the ships might observe the light, or the other ship, traveling faster than light, but that is a perceptional error. They are still traveling at .75c and c (ship and beam of light, respectively).

Nope, everyone agrees that light is moving at c, in there own frame of reference.

Here's the kick though. Even though the ship will appear to be traveling faster than 186K Mi/sec, it is still traveling slower than the "speed" of light. Calculating the speed you think the beam is traveling at would be an indication of how fast YOU are traveling (both by subtracting your approach speed AND factoring in time dialation).

Not a very strait-forward thing here.

Please read though what I have written above.
 

Ninjahedge

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2005
4,149
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Yes it is relative to the space ship.

Exactly. It ISNT TRAVELING THAT SPEED.

Your perception of it does not matter. Nobody has ever said that an object can't LOOK like it is traveling faster than the speed of light, just that it CAN'T.

Plain and simple.

In order to get the speed of the earth you have to ask relative to what. Depending on what you chose it's velocity is different. This is the basics of relativity.

No, you don't. There is an absolute 0 motion in space time. What it is, I do not know if we will ever really know, but it does not matter how fast something else is going. Your speed is your speed.

Once again there is no absolute speed that something is going the ONLY way you can see how fast something is moving is comparing it with something else.

Wrong. There IS an absolute speed. Not knowing exactly what it is does not make it non-existant. If you and I are standing next to each other, your logic would say we are not moving. But, in absolute space time, we are traveling THROUGH space at XX ft/s. The theory of relativity is not based on the speed that you perceive based on your own. And it is not based on who you are related to either.. ;)


Please read though what I have written above.

I did and you are still not getting it.

There IS an absolute speed. Light travels at the maximum speed that we are currently aware of (at least for material space-time). The inability to tell exactly what your speed is does not mean you are not moving.

The only other thing to keep in mind is simple. The speed of light is SO fast that most of the things we are familiar with in comparing it to our own perceptions are not appropriate. When light travels at 186,000 MILES in a second, it really does not grossly effect things when we are traveling at 100,000 MPH through space.
 

Paul98

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2010
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Exactly. It ISNT TRAVELING THAT SPEED.

Your perception of it does not matter. Nobody has ever said that an object can't LOOK like it is traveling faster than the speed of light, just that it CAN'T.

Plain and simple.



No, you don't. There is an absolute 0 motion in space time. What it is, I do not know if we will ever really know, but it does not matter how fast something else is going. Your speed is your speed.



Wrong. There IS an absolute speed. Not knowing exactly what it is does not make it non-existant. If you and I are standing next to each other, your logic would say we are not moving. But, in absolute space time, we are traveling THROUGH space at XX ft/s. The theory of relativity is not based on the speed that you perceive based on your own. And it is not based on who you are related to either.. ;)




I did and you are still not getting it.

There IS an absolute speed. Light travels at the maximum speed that we are currently aware of (at least for material space-time). The inability to tell exactly what your speed is does not mean you are not moving.

The only other thing to keep in mind is simple. The speed of light is SO fast that most of the things we are familiar with in comparing it to our own perceptions are not appropriate. When light travels at 186,000 MILES in a second, it really does not grossly effect things when we are traveling at 100,000 MPH through space.

You are just flat out wrong on so many points as I have just explained. I am not going to go through and say what I did again. I expect to have some other people who know what they are talking about come in and back me up.