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Excursions at the Speed of Light

Posted by Zonk on from the nice-bike dept.

D4C5CE writes "S/F fans can finally find out what you really get to see at relativistic velocity, and tourists are one step closer to "doing Europe in a day" in these amazing Space Time Travel simulations of the Theoretical Astrophysics & Computational Physics department at the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics Tübingen. They put you in a driver's seat that both Armstrong the Astronaut and Armstrong the Cyclist would equally enjoy, in simulators built to ride a bike at the speed of light."

5 of 360 comments (clear)

  1. Re:G forces by 3.1415926535 · · Score: 5, Informative

    G-force is caused by acceleration. Assuming you accelerate slowly enough, you can get up to $VERY_FAST without dying.

  2. The nerds have already seen by kernel_dan · · Score: 5, Informative

    Lightspeed is a simulator for velocities at c and below. Screenshots are available.

    --

    Illegal? Samir, This is America.
  3. This has been done before by krumpet · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have seem something similar to this before. Check out:

    http://www.anu.edu.au/Physics/Searle/

    and

    http://www.anu.edu.au/Physics/Savage/TEE/

  4. Re:G forces by qmaqdk · · Score: 5, Informative
    A human being can tolerate up to 5 G (fighter pilots can go to 9 G, but only for short periods of time). That is an acceleration of about 50 m/s^2. If you were able to sustain this acceleration all the way to light speed (which you wouldn't because near light speed the amount of energy needed to accelerate tends to infinity) you would have to keep accelerating for

    300000000/50 = 6000000 seconds, or about 70 days.

    Deceleration would require the same amount of time. So the Tübingen experience would be a 140-day-not-very-pleasent-5-G bike ride :)

    --
    My UID is prime. Hah!
  5. Relativistic G forces by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's Newtonian. The relativistic acceleration equations are different. See this FAQ for the correct equations, which will tell you how long (in either proper or inertial time) it would take to reach a given speed, as measured by an inertial observer initially at rest with respect to the body -- with some calculations for 1 g acceleration.

    (For instance, to reach 0.77c requires 1 year of subjective time or 1.19 years of objective time; for 0.97c, it's 2 years subjective, 3.75 years objective; for 0.99999999996c it's 12 years subjective, 113,243 years objective.)