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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."
To get first post? ...probably not :(
How about linking to the original Space.com article?
Blazing Speed: The Fastest Stuff in the Universe.
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?
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Maybe its possible to travel faster then light then
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Thats impossible nothing can go faster than the speed of light.
Of Course Not! Thats why scientists increased the speed of light in 2208.
From TFA: "For us, the speed limit makes strange sense: Go faster than light, and you could return before you've left, become your own grandpa, or other perform other leaps of cosmic logic."
Someone's been watching too much Futurama.
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.
My motorbike travels in Chile.
"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?
moo
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.
2) As you accelerate to 99.9% the speed of light, time slows down very significantly. Theoretically, at the speed of light, the passage of time stops, but since you cannot accelerate to the speed of light, that's a moot point.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Dude, screw the asteroid detection. One of those things will only take out most of the world's costal area.
Whereas one of those blazar things could take out the whole solar system. Imagine the fireworks there, as a mass the size of Jupiter smacks into the sun.
Gentlemen... we cannot allow... a blazar detection gap!
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My buddy had a blazar and that piece of shit would be lucky to do 0 to 60 in 10 minutes.
AH HA get it? chevye blazar kekekekekeke kthxbye
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Not really, see this is exactly what special relativity explained. The speed of light is constant. If you're moving at 50% of the speed of light, and some light wizzes past you, it looks to you as if it were going at 100% of the speed of light (not 50%). And to an outside observer seeing you go past, it also looks like the light is going at 100% of the speed of light (not 150%). What has happened is that because you are going at 50% of the speed of light, time for you has slowed down, so the if the light goes past at what would apparently be 50% of c if time were not slowed, it still looks to you as if it were going at c.
LOL. Talk about misinformation and hype. It's trivial to transmit an interference wave with a phase velocity faster than the speed of light. That doesn't imply that you can send a signal with information content faster than light - the group velocity (the information carrier or signal you actually control) can't go faster than light.
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"If you're light, it's easy to travel..."
Did anyone else read this and think, "Well, I'm not overweight... so I can go really fast?"
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
As I recall from a late 1990s lecture by Hawking, some matter can exceed "the speed of light" and in doing so, escape a black hole. At an event horizon exactly, that border at which matter including light either escapes a black hole or not, the position of particles is known with complete precision. As such, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle dictates that the speed of the particles cannot be known as precisely. Photons at the event horizon of a black hole are allowed, by a tiny quantity, some Scotty Factor in their speed because their position is certain. In plain words, these are the mathematics of the matter :) Some leptonic matter, in only such a particular position, can be slightly faster than "the speed of light."
As theorized, Hawking's predictions that black holes might leak have, I understand, been observed as radiation from what are as-yet assumed to be black holes. Anyone knowing more than I do about this particular phenomenon is (un?)certainly welcome to add more. The explanation Hawking made was directed at interested and able nonprofessionals; he put forward some mathematics around but not specifically deriving the surprising conclusions. Made sense to me, anyhow. I believe the matter discussed here, blasers measured at .999999... of light's speed, is the fastest measured "directly." But I do not believe this is the fastest known matter, if you allow that "knowing" the speed of the matter Hawking discussed (observed as radiation) was theoretical and later indirectly measured.
BG
Observing particles moving at 99.9% c is not so amazing as it sounds. First of all we routinely accelerate matter to great speeds for use in particle physics experiments (in places such as CERN, SLAC, FermiLab, Brookhaven, etc.).
As an example, the LEP accelerator at CERN which was used in the period 1989-2000, acceleratod electrons to about 99.9999999977% c.
But even outside the laboratories we have previously observed even larger speeds. The UHECR (ultra high energy cosmic rays) whose origin is still a mystery seems to consist of protons moving at speeds of 1-1^(-22) = 0.9999999999999999999999 c.
Furthermore, it might seem like we need absurd accuracies in our measurements to discern the numbers from each other. But we don't really - the speed of the particle is practically the same when 0.99c and 0.99999c are compared, but things like the momentum of the particle will still differ wildly. For the curious, the formula is: momentum = m*v/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2).
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.
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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?
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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.
Banu
And read this for a more detailed explanation of the issue.
First off, IAAAP (and I don't even play one on TV).
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?
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