Blazing Speed: The Fastest Stuff In The Universe

Unfallversicherung writes "'If you're light, it's fairly easy to travel at your own speed -- that is to say 186,282 miles per second or 299,800 kilometers per second. But if you are matter, then it's another matter altogether.' Astronomers are now measuring matter that moves at 99.9 percent of light-speed. Jupiter-sized blobs of hot gas embedded in streams of material ejected from hyperactive galaxies known as blazars."

Comments

Gamma is not linear

[durandal61]

Ah, how I love hillbilly journalists. Though the facts of the article itself are not incorrect, the way they are presented reeks of naiveté.

Gamma, the factor that in general relates quantities (time, mass, energy, momentum) in two reference frames in Special Relativity, is non-linear. Being within 0.1% of the speed of light does not place you any 'closer' to breaking it than being within 50% of it.

This is why instead of speaking of the speed of particles and objects travelling close to that of light, we refer to the kinetic energy they have, which gives a much more practical way of understanding these speeds.

hrrmmm

[odyrithm]

"Nothing we know of zips along more quickly than light. Einstein, nearly 100 years ago, said it's not possible."

Erm did'nt he say nothing(matter) can accelerate to the speed of light?

heavy

[Doc Ruby]

Wouldn't such large, fast masses thereby account for the majority of "stuff" (matter/energy) in the Universe? If they were previously unaccounted, wouldn't that reduce the amount of "dark matter/energy" postulated to be bending the observable universe, by showing another gravity sink instead?