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

Such precision?

[PornMaster]

I'm interested in how we can measure the speed of things that far away at that level of precision. Any measurement would rely on light from those gas balls reaching us at different times -- and as such, how can we tell that nothing is interfering with the light between there and here?

Or Faster?

[sandstorming]

Maybe its possible to travel faster then light then

Unilectron

[Doc Ruby]

I've always been intrigued by Feynmann's conjecture that there's only one electron, which moves so fast that it appears in all the times/places in the universe that appear to be individual electrons. That accounts for "every" electron having identical properties - it's the same electron. But I suppose that setting different quantum properties, like spin, to different states, without seeing that state "propagated" to "other" electrons, defies that model. Or does it? Maybe we just haven't tested enough electrons, or maybe our technique for setting state actually sets the state of the (moving) space in which we measure that persistent electron state. Or maybe Feynmann had even more clever subtleties in his model. Or maybe it was all just a bad idea.

Re:Unilectron

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that was Wheeler's conjecture to Feynman, which Wheeler himself ruled out in a followup conversation.

Read about the Oh My God proton

[mukund]

You should also read about the Oh My God particle (it's real and not a joke). This proton particle travels almost as fast as light. After traveling one light year, the particle would be only 0.15 femtoseconds--46 nanometres--behind a photon that left at the same time.

Re:Light Speed Travel

[libre lover]

First off, IAAAP (and I don't even play one on TV).

1) Under the current physics, light-speed travel is impossible. As you approach the speed of light, the energy required to accelerate you further approaches infinity.

I understand this is true if the energy or gravity providing the acceleration is in a different frame of reference than the mass being accelerated (think particle accelerator or plasma blob).

But my layman's question is .. what about a rocket?

In a rocket, the energy to accelerate the rocket is in the same frame of reference as the rocket itself. The rocket converts mass into energy which accelerates mass and sends it out the nozzle to provide thrust. As the rocket approaches the speed of light (from Earth's reference, for instance) it becomes heavier and harder to accelerate, but so does the mass upon which it relies to convert into energy to provide thrust. The propellent is also heavier. My guess is that this would all cancel out in such a way that an astronaut travelling inside the rocket would have no way of knowing how close to c he is travelling at without looking out the window.

Now my understanding is that from Earth's perspective the rocket could only reach c at the end of time, but my question is this: given a sufficiently efficient rocket engine, is this the case for the rocket and the astronaut? If the rocket were capable of constant acceleration (for the comfort of the astronaut, lets say an acceleration of G) how long, from the astronauts perspective, would it take for him to reach c?

And once he got there (and he could only know if he looked out the window or kept track of time) what's to stop him from going further? It may be the end of time on earth, but how old is the astronaut?