Excursions at the Speed of Light

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."

Comments

Re:G forces

[3.1415926535]

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

The nerds have already seen

[kernel_dan]

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

This has been done before

[krumpet]

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/

Re:G forces

[anthony_dipierro]

Stand still, and let the rest of the universe move.

Re:Sounds like a wonderful experience...

[cryptoz]

That's wrong...Time would pass normally for you. You would think at a slower speed (the same speed you're moving) so you wouldn't notice a difference. When you got off the bike, however, much more time would have passed for everyone else than you.

All this is, of course, assuming Einstein was right (and I think some experiment somewhere proved these effects to be correct)

oblig. Red Dwarf!

[Johnny Mnobflaps]

HOLLY: Look, we're travelling faster than the speed of light. That means, by the time we see something, we've already passed through it. Even with an IQ of 6000, it's still brown trousers time.

or maybe that's brown bike shorts.

eww.

No blueshift

[Vilim]

They are missing the blueshift you would encounter at that speed. However I guess they couldn't be accurate because wouldn't the frequency would shift to far above the ultraviolet quite quickly?

Re:G forces

[qmaqdk]

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 :)

Re:G forces

[back_pages]

It's a little sad that most people still don't understand the difference between speed and acceleration. When I first read about the Scientific Revolution as a kid, the writer spent a lot of time sneering at medieval scholars who stubornly stuck to Aristotle's physics despite all the experimental evidence showing that it was wrong. But as far as most people are concerned (including the script writers on Star Trek) Aristotle has never been debunked.

Ha, that's easy for a level 7 magic user to say! Some people simply don't have the high INT scores to understand the difference between speed and acceleration. That's why they're so BAD at using a bow and arrow, or even a sling (even level 1 wizards can use a sling hahaa). Anyway, after slaying this sweet dragon last week, I found like a million +2 INT hats. Maybe I should sell them and get rich then everyone would know the difference between acceleration and speed and you wouldn't have a reason to be so sad.

Btw, that was a hilarious email forward you sent me about "10 ways warriors are dumb". You should add a new one to the list 11) Warriors can't even name five flaws in Aristotle's physics!! haha So is your mom still mad or can we play at your house again on Tuesday?

Relativistic G forces

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)