Whats the power required to get something the size of a bb to the speed of light?

[BoogieQ]

Everyone assumes Aliens would need these giant doomsday ships to travel around.. however, people forget they could actually be really really small. Lets say a ship was the size of a bb to transport 100,000 alien dudes.

How much energy would be required to get it to the speed of light, or damn near it, or even past it.

Assume the shape is more a wedge like an arrow head but scaled way down *even though drag doesn't count much in space, this is a more aerodynamic shape.*

What about something half the size? Or the size of a grain of salt?

I saw a bug last night that just hovered, then droped straight down a foot and then took off so fast I lost it.. made me think what if that was actually a little alien dude!?

Thoughts and theory welcome. Asume they have some form of drive mechanisim to propel themselves.. in this case, an ion drive would be fairly powerful.

 

[Kntx]

short answer... infinate.

doesn't matter how small it is.

 

[Haircut]

Originally posted by: Kntx
short answer... infinate.

doesn't matter how small it is.

Yep, that pretty much says it all.

Also, everything increases in mass as its speed gets closer and closer to the speed of light.
Even something the size of a dust particle will end up with more mass than a planet if it gets incredibly close to the speed of light.

 

[BoogieQ]

Short answers don't interest me

I want to see some proof!

Then how close could it get on what amount of power?

By the way, I do think someone at some point will surpass the speed of light in travel, just never close in our life times.. however there HAS to be a way.. saying it is impossible is saying it is impossible to fly, or send a fax.. it's always impossible until it is done.

I'm not ignoring the 'laws' here.. but some 'laws' have been disproven have they not?

Common, be creative!

 

[BoogieQ]

So if it increases in mass... then the Enterprise would have weighed like a galaxy at warp 9?

 

[Haircut]

I want to see some proof!

Get a book on relativity then!
Seriously, to properly show that this is the case would require more than one post here.

A good introduction is here

Mr = M0 /sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)

This formula describes how the relativistic mass compares with the rest mass dependent on the speed of the body, v
c is the speed of light.

as v approaches c, v^2/c^2 approaches 1 from below, so sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) gets incredibly small and so Mr gets incredibly big.

So if it increases in mass... then the Enterprise would have weighed like a galaxy at warp 9?

I think in Star Trek the enterprise is supposed to use large amounts of energy to warp the fabric of spacetime, and so actually bring the places it want to go to nearer to it, thus it never actually goes faster than light.

 

[RossGr]

Originally posted by: BoogieQ
So if it increases in mass... then the Enterprise would have weighed like a galaxy at warp 9?

Need I remind you that Star Trek is science fiction? They can do what ever they wish, because it is all made up.

By the way, I do think someone at some point will surpass the speed of light in travel, just never close in our life times.. however there HAS to be a way.. saying it is impossible is saying it is impossible to fly, or send a fax.. it's always impossible until it is done.

What is this belief based on? There was never a PHYSICAL reason we could not fly, in fact people watched birds and rocks fly for years. (ok, the rock only "flew" as far as you could throw it!) But clearly it was possible to fly. There was no physical reason we could not exceed the speed of sound, only technology needed to be developed.

On the other hand, experimentally verifed theory says we cannot execeed the speed of light. This is a very different situation from the other cases.

Why is it some people believe that there are no physically impossed limitations in this universe? By this I mean why can there be no universal physical limitations on what is possible?

 

[ermular]

Well, to be honest, it's obvious that this poster (a) has no knowledge of physics, and (b) has no interest outside of metaphysics (science fiction bullshit). Oh well. Moving on to more serious threads....

 

[IamElectro]

Originally posted by: Haircut

I want to see some proof!

Get a book on relativity then!
Seriously, to properly show that this is the case would require more than one post here.

A good introduction is here

Mr = M0 /sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)

This formula describes how the relativistic mass compares with the rest mass dependent on the speed of the body, v
c is the speed of light.

as v approaches c, v^2/c^2 approaches 1 from below, so sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) gets incredibly small and so Mr gets incredibly big.

So if it increases in mass... then the Enterprise would have weighed like a galaxy at warp 9?

I think in Star Trek the enterprise is supposed to use large amounts of energy to warp the fabric of spacetime, and so actually bring the places it want to go to nearer to it, thus it never actually goes faster than light.

I was reading about some Star Trek Suff a while ago and came across this. Its a pretty interesting read. Explains how it works and its flaws.

 

[Falloutboy]

We will proubly never see speeds any where close to the speed of light in the conventional sence. Something like artificial worm hole (granted we need Sh*t loads of energy to do this) or something like Event Horizon's gravity drive. One thing is we need something quite powerful to do anything close to this. I don't even think an Antimatter reactor, if thier even possible. (heck we haven't got fusion down yet) could get close enough to the energy levels needed for some of this stuff. Most likely we'll discover some other loophole once we learn more about the universe.

 

[sillymofo]

I can't believe I'm reading this...

 

[DML1001]

Ugh, that star trek drive was just about the dumbest thing I have ever seen.

It requires you to have a magical anti-gravity machine, and then ignores the fact that all matter has mass, regardless of the characteristics of the gravitational field around it.

If your floating in space, it doesn't mean that you have lost your mass and become 'massless'. Your mass is unchanged, its just your weight that is different, which is a completely different thing.

Also, whoever wrote this article seems to think that light can travel faster than light. According to Einstein, nothing with MASS can travel at the speed of light, and nothing at all can ever travel faster than c, massless or not, so even if this thing somehow worked, it could only get you up to c, not past it as the author seems to be suggesting.

 

[f95toli]

There is a good book called "The Physics of Star Trek" (don't remember the name of the author) where the possibility aof "warp drive" is discussed. It is actually, as far as we know, not impossible.
The problem question has been if a stable worm hole could be created or not, in a paper that appeared in Physical Review Letters about a month ago it was shown that it is probably possible. The possibility of worm holes connecting regions of space together has been a "hot topic" in theoretical physics for a few years now and many papers have been published on the subject, it is howver difficult to spot the papers because they tend to have really obscure titles (papers with the words "warp drive" in the title are not very popular in scientific journals).

 

[Mday]

Originally posted by: ermular
Well, to be honest, it's obvious that this poster (a) has no knowledge of physics, and (b) has no interest outside of metaphysics (science fiction bullshit). Oh well. Moving on to more serious threads....

dont mock ppl please. you can tell he know something of physics, but nothing of relativisitics.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Just think a moment of how you would arrange the propulsion. Even if you would use matter/antimatter propulsion for the first while, and solar sails afterwards, you would need an almost infinite time to push the ship to close to the speed of light. Actually reaching it will not be possible in that method, and normal propulsion will fail too, as the particles from it will not be able to catch up with the ship anymore to cause the propulsion. Not to mention that, unless all the propulsion circuits are front to back, you'd have to push the triggering energy/propulsion matter past the speed of light to get it to the desired place.

 

[BoogieQ]

Well, to be honest, it's obvious that this poster (a) has no knowledge of physics, and (b) has no interest outside of metaphysics (science fiction bullshit). Oh well. Moving on to more serious threads....

People like you disgust me. Go away.

Some of you people have no sense of vision. This forum is Highly Technical is it not? So I never went through a class that was open enough to ask things like this... I asked a simple question, if something smaller like a grain of salt can get up to the speed of light, and if not, just how close COULD it get.

If you all don't want to answer it, fine... and for god sakes, the star trek reference was going along with the increased speed increases mass, it was simply a comparison if that is how things work that ship must have weighed a LOT... but all of you are to busy being to smart to answer a stupid question for yours truely.

I asked a lame question in the perpetual motion thread and learned a lot about energy.. that is my goal here as well.. what is the point of a forum if you can't ask a damn question?

 

[BoogieQ]

My mind doesn't like the fact of what is being said, that man will never, ever travel faster than light.. s in saying we already see the limit of just how fast we can go, and all of you are saying we will never even get close to that limit.

It just doesn't seem right. Laws or no laws. But that's just me.

But I'm just trying to understand why this isn't possible.. but in that , it seems to you all like I am asking how to brush my teeth.

 

[Shalmanese]

Trust me, if the HT forums find a way to get around the speed of light, I will personally pm you .

It might sound like we are a tad intolerant except you have to appreciate that this question has been asked approximately 50 billion times so far.

On an interesting side note, it would apparently take 90 kilograms of antimatter fuel in order to propel 1 kilogram of matter to 0.5c. Meaning that fast, interstellar travel is very likely to STAY a pipedream forever.

 

[f95toli]

I agree. Interstellar travel will be very difficult if not impossible. Of course we can launch probes and so on, at 0.2c you would reach many nearby stars within 50-100 years. Using something like cryogenic suspension we might even be able to colonize other worlds.

The only way around this is to "warp" using for example a worm hole, if we manage to open a worm hole we can use it as a "gate" to reach far into the universe. The problem is of course that you need an enormous amont of energy to pull this of, the amount you need is comparable ot what you get by converting all the matter in a star to energy.

 

[Sahakiel]

Originally posted by: BoogieQ
My mind doesn't like the fact of what is being said, that man will never, ever travel faster than light.. s in saying we already see the limit of just how fast we can go, and all of you are saying we will never even get close to that limit.

It just doesn't seem right. Laws or no laws. But that's just me.

Well, so far, man hasn't yet figured out how to fly. We've figured out how to build machines that fly and ride along, but that's as close as we've ever gotten to controlled flight. In fact, we've barely even scratched the surface on emulating natural flight. (build some wings and actually flap em to fly.)

imo, nobody has any idea on ftl that will actually work. my guess is it'll take a few hundred more years to develop the technological basis for a viable theory. in the meantime, the light barrier has been verified repeatedly, and even the best physicists can only speculate.

But I'm just trying to understand why this isn't possible.. but in that , it seems to you all like I am asking how to brush my teeth.

This is the HT forum, where the rate of posts with "speed of light" in the title is about one every two to three weeks on average.

 

[Cogman]

I think that It could be possible to go to, past the speed of light. After all, how can you say it cant be done until you try? and the scientific proof that you could not do it, Science has been proven wrong millions of times over. Think, Science once said that the world was the center of the universe, until a ratical came up with the notion that it might orbit the sun, but for fear of his life denied what he had said. Im sorry, but I think that the impossibe has been proven possible to many times to make this the final limitation. now if we could change matter into energy and visa versa, and get teleportation to work but that still is traviling less the the speed of light.

 

[oupei]

science never said the world was the center of the universe. that would be religion
but more seriously, the limitation of the speed of light has been tested to death. if you wanna surpass that, you'll have to rewrite physics. well, I guess all it would take would be another einstein, right?

 

[Cogman]

I dont know, I mean, what are we testing to observe the speed of light other then, well, light? That said, It has already been proven that light does not act like normal mater or energy. But then, the biggest problem is the fact that we cant truly test the theory until we have sent something made of matter to the speed of light, however right now that is just not possible

 

[oupei]

i believe the speed of light is tested by bouncing a laser off a satellite or the moon or something. but that's only the really hardcore 99.9999999999999999% accurate test. as for testing with matter, it's done with particle accelerators, which you can find out about from an entry level college physics textbook. well, one that involves magnetism and relativity anyways.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Depends a bit on whether you mean traveling at c, or at just any speed of light