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Speed of light

 
 
Reply Sat 6 Aug, 2005 12:11 pm
I've always wondered why the speed of light was considered the "maximum" traveling speed for anything in the universe. Does it have something to do with F=mv rearranged to F/m=a? Does a photon have mass at all? I remember someone talking about how an object with no mass when acted upon by a force automatically accelerates to the speed of light, but why wouldn't it just break that barrier and accelerate to infinite speed? Since a photon carries energy, is that counted as mass making it so the higher energy photons move slower than the lower energy ones?
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Type: Discussion • Score: 1 • Views: 1,602 • Replies: 23
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Thalion
 
  1  
Reply Sat 6 Aug, 2005 05:31 pm
Because E = mc^2, as an object's velocity increases, so too does its mass, making it harder to accelerate further. As its velocity approaches the speed of light, its mass approaches infinity, making it impossible to go beyond that.
0 Replies
 
Vengoropatubus
 
  1  
Reply Sat 6 Aug, 2005 09:18 pm
Thalion wrote:
Because E = mc^2, as an object's velocity increases, so too does its mass, making it harder to accelerate further. As its velocity approaches the speed of light, its mass approaches infinity, making it impossible to go beyond that.

Then why doesn't light have infinite mass?
0 Replies
 
El-Diablo
 
  1  
Reply Sat 6 Aug, 2005 10:35 pm
Light is not matter it is energy particles. It would never have a mass.

Also as technically at the speed of light time does not exist, and the same is true of the center of black holes. These are all theories of course but they are generally held as true. So, and this is all my conjecture here but you can follow, if time does not exist or pass at the speed of light then at that speed it becomes 3 dimensional as opposed to 4 dimensional like everyday life. Perhaps matter cannot exist in just 3 dimensions either.
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satt fs
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Aug, 2005 01:26 am
It must be better to think in terms of the expression

E^2=(mc^2)^2+(pc)^2

where
E: enegery of the particle,
m: (static) mass of the particle,
c: velocity of light in a vacuum,
p: momentum of the particle.

As a photon is usually thought to have zero mass (i.e., m=0), the expression above reduces to

E=pc

for a photon.

(And for a particle with mass m but p=0, it becomes

E=mc^2,

which is somewhat familiar, but not applicable to a photon.)
0 Replies
 
Brandon9000
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Aug, 2005 01:45 am
Thalion wrote:
Because E = mc^2, as an object's velocity increases, so too does its mass, making it harder to accelerate further. As its velocity approaches the speed of light, its mass approaches infinity, making it impossible to go beyond that.

The words are correct, althought they do not follow from E = mc^2. Also, in response to the original question, a photon has no mass. A photon in vacuum always travels at the speed of light.
0 Replies
 
Brandon9000
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Aug, 2005 01:46 am
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Thalion wrote:
Because E = mc^2, as an object's velocity increases, so too does its mass, making it harder to accelerate further. As its velocity approaches the speed of light, its mass approaches infinity, making it impossible to go beyond that.

Then why doesn't light have infinite mass?

Because the statement only applies to matter, and light is not matter.
0 Replies
 
Vengoropatubus
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Aug, 2005 05:12 pm
Brandon9000 wrote:
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Thalion wrote:
Because E = mc^2, as an object's velocity increases, so too does its mass, making it harder to accelerate further. As its velocity approaches the speed of light, its mass approaches infinity, making it impossible to go beyond that.

Then why doesn't light have infinite mass?

Because the statement only applies to matter, and light is not matter.

Then if m=0 and F/m=a shouldn't the speed of light be undefined?
0 Replies
 
Brandon9000
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Aug, 2005 07:49 pm
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Brandon9000 wrote:
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Thalion wrote:
Because E = mc^2, as an object's velocity increases, so too does its mass, making it harder to accelerate further. As its velocity approaches the speed of light, its mass approaches infinity, making it impossible to go beyond that.

Then why doesn't light have infinite mass?

Because the statement only applies to matter, and light is not matter.

Then if m=0 and F/m=a shouldn't the speed of light be undefined?

F/m = a doesn't apply to light. It only applies to material objects at speeds much less than that of light.
0 Replies
 
g day
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Aug, 2005 09:36 pm
One must remember that the lightspeed limit to things in motion must be upheld within and frame of reference that obeys relativity. So lets drop a bomb shell on casual students and ask it the other way around,

Where doesn't the speed of light limit you?

1. In ultra hot areas, say the big bang up until 10 ^ -34 seconds after detonation.

Why - the four forces combine and spacetime is not distinguishable - so the Universe can expand initially (inflatation) at tens of thousands of times lightspeed.

2. In ultra dense areas of spacetime

Within a black hole, cosmic string or wormholes event horizon - again more or less because of point 1 above - is a non relativistic framework

3. At very great distances (far seperated galactic scales)

This is the surprise to folk. Folk often known galaxies are moving away from us and the farther they are from us then they faster they are moving, but most view this as a recession velocity and therefore expect galactic recession is lightspeed limited. WRONG!

On two counts! Its far truer to say spacetime itself is expanding between most galaxies - especially if they are not gravitationally bound. What is more this expansion may occur with no limitation under relativity (because there is no meaningful frame of reference) to keep to lightspeed. So rather than say the Great Attractor is heading away from the Horsehead Nebulae at 600 Km/sec, its more accurate to say that spacetime between them is expanding at this rate.

Secondly spacetime within a galaxy isn't expanding - its gravitationally bound. But spacetime between galaxies does not have to be and hence doesn't have to comply with relativity.

It is possible to accept there are galaxies outside our Hubble sphere that are in an volume of spacetime that is moving away from us at far greater than lightspeed - we can of course never see anything outside our Hubble sphere.

* * *

From an excellent primer in Cosmology http://pancake.uchicago.edu/~carroll/cfcp/primer/faq.html

Are distant galaxies moving faster than the speed of light? Wouldn't that violate relativity?

A profound feature of relativity is that two objects passing by each other cannot have a relative velocity greater than the speed of light. An even more profound feature, one which has received much less publicity, is that the concept of "relative velocity" does not even make sense unless the objects are very close to each other. In Einstein's general theory of relativity (which describes gravity as the curvature of spacetime), there is no way to define the velocity between two widely-separated objects in any strictly correct sense. The "velocity" that cosmologists speak of between distant galaxies is really just a shorthand for the expansion of the universe; it's not that the galaxies are moving, it's that the space between them is expanding. If the distance isn't too great, this expansion looks and feels just like a recession velocity, but when the distance becomes very large that resemblance breaks down. In particular, it's perfectly plausible to have distant galaxies whose "recession velocity" is greater than the speed of light. (We couldn't see such galaxies directly, since light from them would never reach us, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.) The resolution to this paradox is simply that we have taken a convenient analogy too far, and there isn't a well-defined "speed" between us and distant objects.
0 Replies
 
Vengoropatubus
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Aug, 2005 09:42 pm
Brandon9000 wrote:
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Brandon9000 wrote:
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Thalion wrote:
Because E = mc^2, as an object's velocity increases, so too does its mass, making it harder to accelerate further. As its velocity approaches the speed of light, its mass approaches infinity, making it impossible to go beyond that.

Then why doesn't light have infinite mass?

Because the statement only applies to matter, and light is not matter.

Then if m=0 and F/m=a shouldn't the speed of light be undefined?

F/m = a doesn't apply to light. It only applies to material objects at speeds much less than that of light.

Is that at all a problem, like that deal with relativistic gravity not applying in quantum mechanics.
0 Replies
 
rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Aug, 2005 09:50 pm
Re: Speed of light
Vengoropatubus wrote:
I remember someone talking about how an object with no mass when acted upon by a force automatically accelerates to the speed of light


This is a hypothetical. It's more accurate to say that anything with no mass exists at the speed of light (because it cannot exist any other way).

Vengoropatubus wrote:
but why wouldn't it just break that barrier and accelerate to infinite speed?


It helps to stop thinking of Light Speed as a simple velocity, even though it can be represented by a number. The speed of light is a structural condition of space/time. It *is* the infinite condition of zero mass.
0 Replies
 
g day
 
  1  
Reply Sun 7 Aug, 2005 09:52 pm
Folk who mix everday equations with Ferimons (matter as Leptons or Quarks) and Bosons (force carriers) an expects clear cut answers are in for an upset.


BTW nice chart of energy / matter states here http://particleadventure.org/particleadventure/frameless/chart_cutouts/particle_chart.jpg

Once you get down to individual components of existence then the Uncertainity principle and QM is far more important and relevant than relativistic physics. And from QM - things can happen without cause, things can pop into or out of existence without cause, things can tunnel at whim - reality is simply chaotic at Planck scales.
0 Replies
 
Brandon9000
 
  1  
Reply Mon 8 Aug, 2005 12:32 am
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Brandon9000 wrote:
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Brandon9000 wrote:
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Thalion wrote:
Because E = mc^2, as an object's velocity increases, so too does its mass, making it harder to accelerate further. As its velocity approaches the speed of light, its mass approaches infinity, making it impossible to go beyond that.

Then why doesn't light have infinite mass?

Because the statement only applies to matter, and light is not matter.

Then if m=0 and F/m=a shouldn't the speed of light be undefined?

F/m = a doesn't apply to light. It only applies to material objects at speeds much less than that of light.

Is that at all a problem, like that deal with relativistic gravity not applying in quantum mechanics.

I'm not sure what you mean by problem. It doesn't bother me any.
0 Replies
 
Vengoropatubus
 
  1  
Reply Mon 8 Aug, 2005 12:35 am
Brandon9000 wrote:
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Brandon9000 wrote:
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Brandon9000 wrote:
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Thalion wrote:
Because E = mc^2, as an object's velocity increases, so too does its mass, making it harder to accelerate further. As its velocity approaches the speed of light, its mass approaches infinity, making it impossible to go beyond that.

Then why doesn't light have infinite mass?

Because the statement only applies to matter, and light is not matter.

Then if m=0 and F/m=a shouldn't the speed of light be undefined?

F/m = a doesn't apply to light. It only applies to material objects at speeds much less than that of light.

Is that at all a problem, like that deal with relativistic gravity not applying in quantum mechanics.

I'm not sure what you mean by problem. It doesn't bother me any.

I thought that was why there's all that stuff talking about searching for a unified field theory or something like that.
0 Replies
 
Brandon9000
 
  1  
Reply Mon 8 Aug, 2005 12:38 am
Vengoropatubus wrote:

I thought that was why there's all that stuff talking about searching for a unified field theory or something like that.

F = ma is a very old equation that was never intended to apply to anything except material objects. Applying it to electromagnetic radiation is just outside it's realm of applicability.
0 Replies
 
Vengoropatubus
 
  1  
Reply Mon 8 Aug, 2005 12:39 am
Brandon9000 wrote:
Vengoropatubus wrote:

I thought that was why there's all that stuff talking about searching for a unified field theory or something like that.

F = ma is a very old equation that was never intended to apply to anything except material objects. Applying it to electromagnetic radiation is just outside it's realm of applicability.

So then the speed of light is what it is because it is?
0 Replies
 
Brandon9000
 
  1  
Reply Mon 8 Aug, 2005 12:47 am
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Brandon9000 wrote:
Vengoropatubus wrote:

I thought that was why there's all that stuff talking about searching for a unified field theory or something like that.

F = ma is a very old equation that was never intended to apply to anything except material objects. Applying it to electromagnetic radiation is just outside it's realm of applicability.

So then the speed of light is what it is because it is?

I don't understand the question.
0 Replies
 
Vengoropatubus
 
  1  
Reply Mon 8 Aug, 2005 12:49 am
Brandon9000 wrote:
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Brandon9000 wrote:
Vengoropatubus wrote:

I thought that was why there's all that stuff talking about searching for a unified field theory or something like that.

F = ma is a very old equation that was never intended to apply to anything except material objects. Applying it to electromagnetic radiation is just outside it's realm of applicability.

So then the speed of light is what it is because it is?

I don't understand the question.

I don't understand the answer. I'm still confused what places the speed of light in a vacuum at 299792458 m/s
0 Replies
 
Brandon9000
 
  1  
Reply Mon 8 Aug, 2005 12:53 am
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Brandon9000 wrote:
Vengoropatubus wrote:
Brandon9000 wrote:
Vengoropatubus wrote:

I thought that was why there's all that stuff talking about searching for a unified field theory or something like that.

F = ma is a very old equation that was never intended to apply to anything except material objects. Applying it to electromagnetic radiation is just outside it's realm of applicability.

So then the speed of light is what it is because it is?

I don't understand the question.

I don't understand the answer. I'm still confused what places the speed of light in a vacuum at 299792458 m/s

It is the basic nature of light to propagate at that speed. It doesn't have a "cause" that anyone knows. I'm not sure what your concern is.
0 Replies
 
 

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