3 ms·
I can't tell if I'm misreading point 1, barely rephrasing: Special relativity disallows faster than light travel because it requires moving faster than light.
by peteradio 4y ago
I can't tell if I'm misreading point 1, barely rephrasing:
Special relativity disallows faster than light travel because it requires moving faster than light.
I can't gain a lot of insight from that point.
- cyberax 4y agoD'oh. Nope, it's just me typing too fast. It should be: "Special relativity disallows faster than light travel because you need to cross the lightspeed barrier".
- lbarrow 4y agoNo, that kinda is right - under special relativity, as your apparent velocity from a fixed reference frame increases, it takes more and more energy to accelerate closer to light speed, so _moving_ faster than light is disallowed. Another way of putting this is: we know because of special relativity that you can't just strap a lot of rocket boosters on a spaceship and expect to go faster than light. That won't work; if you want to _travel_ faster than light, you have to do it another way.
- spiralx 4y agoFor a particle travelling faster than light (a tachyon) it takes more and more energy to decelerate the closer to light speed you are, and at zero energy velocity would be infinite. At least via a naïve look at what SR says.