Most people have heard of Chuck Yeager.
This guy was the test pilot for the Bell X1-A and he was the first person to "break the sound barrier".
What that actually means is that his craft went faster than the speed of sound in air.
A lot of people who do not understand much physics ask the same question about light.
"Is there not a light barrier to break also?" they cry.
The answer is no, for the reasons specified below.
Sound travels in air, and is a vibration of air molecules.
Light travels in a vacuum.
There is no reason why an aircraft can surpass the speed of sound in air, as the effect largely is governed by the doppler effect, which is the same effect that police sirens seem to sound differently when they pass you.
But Einstein produced equations that clearly showed that anything travelling at the speed of light (except photons, which are massless) will end up with infinite mass. try pushing an infinite mass beyond the speed of light and I think it will be found that it is quite difficult.
The thing about space speed is that because mass increases the faster you go, it gets ever harder to push it. The technical way to say this is that the energy from the push goes to increase the mass, not the speed.
The more you push, the more of your push goes into the mass increase.
Oh, and another thing, if your craft gets very near the speed of light, time stops for it.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
A Barrier to Understanding
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3 comments:
So, the way you closed out your post, might that mean that Time=Mass when you reach/equal the speed of light? Thus Time=Mass=Speed of Light, merge into one Universe maybe, one "we-don't-know-what" or ...?
Of course, I am making the assumption that you stop adding mass when time stops above, for do we know for certain that you can add more mass?
A simple comment entirely destroys your "argument".
"Dimensional Analysis".
This is a simple concept and is used in many simple applications.
It's basis is that in any physics equation the dimensions of each side must be the same.
they are: Mass [M], Length (L), Time [T]
For instance, in yours, [T] cannot "equal" [M], nor can it "equal" [L]/[T]
[L]/[T] is speed.
For instance, the simple pendulum has equation T = 2*pi* (SQRT(l/g)
I will leave you to prove that the dimensions are the same for both sides.
Smiling face here. Well, I thought your reply would be even simpler than the one you offer. I was sure you would reject the idea of not adding more mass and simply throw on more mass. I appreciate your actual reply even better. It is more mathematically formal and until math fails, we must go with the math. Thank you.
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