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Thought Experiment |
Kanman
Grand Admiral
Pitch Black
Joined: August 26, 2005
Posts: 1017
From: Virginia, United States
|  Posted: 2006-10-18 21:17
Ok, I'm asking you to draw out the nerd from deep inside and help me figure out this beast:
A man(A) is on a spaceship. Another man(B) is outside the spaceship not moving. Man(A) stands in the back of the spaceship. The Spaceship is travelling in a straight line at the speed of light. Man(A) begins to walk forward in the spaceship, towards the front of the spaceship. Man(B) observes the spaceship going the speed of light, and he can see Man(A) thru the windows of the spaceship. If nothing can travel faster than light, then how fast does Man(B) observe Man(A) travelling as he walks forward in the spaceship travelling at the speed of light?
[ This Message was edited by: Kanman *FC2* on 2006-10-18 22:20 ]
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Coeus
Grand Admiral
Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: March 22, 2006
Posts: 2815
From: Philly
| Posted: 2006-10-18 21:20
Man A is moving at walking speed reletive to the ship. Moving at the speed of light, the ship would pass Man B too fast for him to see anything.
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Kanman
Grand Admiral
Pitch Black
Joined: August 26, 2005
Posts: 1017
From: Virginia, United States
| Posted: 2006-10-18 21:23
.... thats why its a THOUGHT experiment. its not meant to apply completely to realistic conditions of observation.
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[2006] - Codex09
Admiral
Joined: August 16, 2006
Posts: 187
From: Sydney Australia
| Posted: 2006-10-18 21:59
I would have to say that he wouldn't be able to see hiom at all because at the speed of light in theory you dont see light because it cant get to u cause you are travelling faster than it is able to get to u.
Also what is not moving? Up near the begining of the problem it states that something is not moving, what is it?
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Kanman
Grand Admiral
Pitch Black
Joined: August 26, 2005
Posts: 1017
From: Virginia, United States
| Posted: 2006-10-18 22:23
Man(B) is not moving. He is a stationary, external observer.
And, light would still get to Man(A) without any trouble, because no matter how fast you are going, light ALWAYS approaches you, and recedes from you, at the speed of light. This is accomplished with time bending, which I think is the solution to the puzzle, but just unsure.
Time slows as you approach the speed of light, and at exactly the speed of light, it stops moving, so I suppose Man(A) is frozen in time from Man(B)'s perspective, and so not moving forward at all, but simply holding perfectly still as the spaceship zips along at the speed of light.
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Leonide
Grand Admiral
Templar Knights
Joined: October 01, 2005
Posts: 1553
From: Newport News, Virginia
| Posted: 2006-10-19 00:39
Kanman you just made my head hurt....
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YIIMM
Grand Admiral
Joined: June 16, 2005
Posts: 851
From: Barcino, Hispania Tarraconensis
| Posted: 2006-10-19 01:12
Quote:
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On 2006-10-18 22:23, Kanman *FC2* wrote:
And, light would still get to Man(A) without any trouble, because no matter how fast you are going, light ALWAYS approaches you, and recedes from you, at the speed of light. This is accomplished with time bending.
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Oh, how silly of me.
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Borgie
Chief Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: August 15, 2005
Posts: 2256
From: close by
| Posted: 2006-10-19 02:03
too much thinking for me
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Ship-Of-Fools
2nd Rear Admiral
Angry Mob
Joined: June 10, 2004
Posts: 415
From: USA
| Posted: 2006-10-19 10:19
I was under the impression that as an object approached the speed of light its mass increased and became infinite
I might have misunderstood that
but under those conditions, ship would be a black hole, and would suck up man a,b, c, defg, and even if they could scream an answer, both the sound, (that mind u cant be transmitted in space) and sight of them would be obsorbed by the event horizon, spewing gamma radiation
killing me, the "Outside observer" hence effecting the outcome of the problem, unless I looked away at the last second, and the cat was suddenly in a wave form, being neither dead or alive
it is a non problem as the whole Time I was at taco bell's restroom, dealing with my own "infinite mass " problem
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Leviatan
Cadet
Joined: April 22, 2005
Posts: 186
| Posted: 2006-10-19 13:03
Quote:
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On 2006-10-19 10:19, Ship-Of-Fools wrote:
I was under the impression that as an object approached the speed of light its mass increased and became infinite
I might have misunderstood that
but under those conditions, ship would be a black hole, and would suck up man a,b, c, defg, and even if they could scream an answer, both the sound, (that mind u cant be transmitted in space) and sight of them would be obsorbed by the event horizon, spewing gamma radiation
killing me, the "Outside observer" hence effecting the outcome of the problem, unless I looked away at the last second, and the cat was suddenly in a wave form, being neither dead or alive
it is a non problem as the whole Time I was at taco bell's restroom, dealing with my own "infinite mass " problem
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If an object approaches the speed of light, it DOES NOT form a black hole.
The faster you go, the faster the "time" around you goes. Well time itself doesnt go anywhere. But everything around you starts moving forward in time faster and faster. Once you hit 100% speed of light(if this was possible as easily as it sounds), everything around you happens immediatily, and your personal time has slown down to 0(if you went faster than light, it would flip upside down and everything around you would start going backwards in time, in other words, you would go back in time, etc..).
This also causes the "twins" paradox, as if you reach even 75% speed of light, go to a neighbouring star system and return, the person who left is now younger than his/her twin who was originally of the same age(in the traveling persons view, just a few weeks or months have passed, but in the view of the other twin who was left on earth, years could have passed).
Which means, that the time of light has stopped, which means that it should arrive everywhere and anywhere IMMEDIATILY, but from our view, light has never reached 100% speed of light, so as we observe it, it takes a finite amount of time for light to reach things. There are very complicated equations and theories for this, which I'm definitely not going to start typing in here.
[ This Message was edited by: Darksoldier on 2006-10-19 13:06 ]
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!Lono! {Rogue Kluth}
Cadet
Joined: April 19, 2002
Posts: 128
From: Hawaii
| Posted: 2006-10-19 14:46
I have a question
It was said by Albert Einstien that theres nothing faster then the speed of light. If thats true we are doomed to stay near this solar system for a very very very long time unless we figure out how to deep freeze our butts and sleep to our destination. Thats to say we invent a spacecraft with a prupulsion system that can reach light speed.
Anyway what im trying to say is..if theres nothing faster then light..then how does a blackhole pull light in and prevents it from escapeing? wouldnt that force be faster then light? although be it in the opposite direction.
Think about it. a blackhole must be moving in some direction to trap light. So if its moving, doesnt that constitute it being faster then light?
Who knows maybe one day we will figure out a way to harness the power of a blackhole and reach faster then light speeds and if we do..u seen the seeds here first lol.
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Fattierob
Vice Admiral
Joined: April 25, 2003
Posts: 4059
| Posted: 2006-10-19 15:10
Quote:
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On 2006-10-19 14:46, !Lono! {King without a Crown} wrote:
Think about it. a blackhole must be moving in some direction to trap light. So if its moving, doesnt that constitute it being faster then light?
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no. Because, in theory, mass bends space (why gravity occurs), the huge mass of the blackhole bends any light towards it. Into it.
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Light-of-Aurora
Grand Admiral
Joined: December 01, 2003
Posts: 602
From: NJ, USA
| Posted: 2006-10-19 17:17
Quote:
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On 2006-10-19 14:46, !Lono! {King without a Crown} wrote:
I have a question
Anyway what im trying to say is..if theres nothing faster then light..then how does a blackhole pull light in and prevents it from escapeing? wouldnt that force be faster then light? although be it in the opposite direction.
Think about it. a blackhole must be moving in some direction to trap light. So if its moving, doesnt that constitute it being faster then light?
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I'm certainly not qualified to answer this question, but I've read that black holes also bend time with space into themselves, making time flow towards black holes, and where the light's future would be inside the black hole.
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Drafell
Grand Admiral
Mythica
Joined: May 30, 2003
Posts: 2449
From: United Kingdom
| Posted: 2006-10-19 17:20
You realise you are asking about a thought experiment, in DarkSpace???
- think about it -
[ This Message was edited by: Dr Drafell Moraxi on 2006-10-19 17:21 ]
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Binks
1st Rear Admiral
Joined: November 28, 2003
Posts: 469
| Posted: 2006-10-19 17:21
I'm also ignoring all possible FTL methods and assuming the ship is actually moving at the speed of light, and not 'tricking' the universe into letting it go that fast without relativity.
Starting from those assumptions and that scenario we hit a brick was immediatly, for Man(A) time is travelling very slowly. Slow enough, in fact, that for the time period in which Man(B) is able to observe him he wouldn't move. Slow enough, in fact, that the time needed for Man(A) to move, say, a millimeter is longer than whatever span of time is left in the universe. I'm going to ignore that problem but it's the real solution, Man(A) can't move becuase of extreme time dialation therefore Man(B) doesn't percieve Man(A) as moving.
The answer is deceptively simple. Man(A) seems to move at C+-(Walking speed) no matter where Man(B) is.
A good way to imagine this is to think of Man(A) as sending out little signals to Man(B) every second or so. So at time 0s Man(A) is x distance and the ship is y distance from Man(B). At time 1s Man(A) sends another signal and is now x+-c+-walking speed from Man(B) and the ship is y+-c. At time 2s Man(A) is x+-2c+-2walking speed and the ship is y+-2c.
And as for the black hole/FTL questions, fattie answered the black hole one well, but I'll restate it in my own words to see if that helps.
The Black Hole isn't pulling the light in, rather from the light's perspective the path of least resistance is straight into the black hole and out of our current understanding of the universe. If the light's far enough away from the black hole (event horizon) it's simply bent but come any close and the light will spiral down into the hole following the path of least resistance.
As to FTL, there are many possibly ways to achieve Faster than Light speeds without breaking relativity, we can bend space-time so that, in essence, the space around us is moving faster than light and we're along for the ride (which should work just fine, since the space itself isn't an object at all and therefore is exempt from all rules about FTL speeds), we can bend space so that our destination is right next to us from our perspective and the place we left is a long way behind (again, no problems with FTL since we didn't actually move, rather the space around us moved at FTL speeds out of the way.), we can alter the physical properties of a bubble of space-time so that the speed of light is something like 100C, in which case going at C becomes child's play (thought the bending most definatly is not childs play  ), we can travel using alternate dimensions (that's the one I understand the least) or we can just consider that Einstein's theory might not be all encoumpassing, just like every theory before it, and that there's an easily exploitable loophole in the way the universe actually works.
*All above comments are based on my knowledge of physics, and relativity in particular. I'd like to say I know everything about that, but I don't know it all...I just study it for fun
Wow that was a long post, apologies but I like physics and so asking for a physics thought experiment, especially when I find the post when I'm bored, is just asking for trouble
EDIT: Went through and changed my results. I realized that the perception of speed is independant of the medium used to carry the information. AKA hearing something moving away and seeing it moving away both give you the same speed for the object, therefore the object's perceived speed is independant of the infomation carriers. That completely changes my results.
[ This Message was edited by: Binks on 2006-10-20 17:21 ]
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