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Matter Discovered Traveling at Near Light Speed
mcgrew writes to mention New Scientist is reporting that scientists have clocked matter traveling at 99.999% the speed of light. "The fastest flows of matter in the universe shoot out of dying stars at more than 99.999% the speed of light, new observations reveal. When a massive star runs out of fuel, it collapses to form a black hole or a neutron star. In the process, some of the matter from the star also explodes outward at blistering speeds, producing an intense burst of gamma rays and other radiation."
Much better subject line than what was found in The Firehose...
(The original subject line said "Matter found travelling at the speed of light", or something along those lines.
Close != At.
Given all the Complaints and BS the mods have to put up with sometimes, I think they should get complimented for a job well done as well.
We've known about gamma ray bursts for a long time. It's just that now we know how fast the matter is moving that causes these bursts.
Slackers.
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I wonder, How long does it travel at that speed, does it hit other things (like planets and other stars) or what?
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will be snails pace when we get warp technology.
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Hey guys, let's say you have a 500 foot pole out in space, far away from anything (no friction, nothing). you are on one end of the pole, and i on the other. Then i push the pole towards you. When does the other end of the pole move towards you, after MY END MOVES? is it instantaneous? or does it take .000000005 seconds of whatever. Like the atoms of the pole push each other on and on and so forth till it gets to the end.
if it does take time, is it faster than light, or slower? what if the pole was 300,000,000 meters long? does it take about 1 second for u to notice the other end moves?
From the article:
"The speed can be translated into something called a Lorentz factor, a number that describes how much time slows down for objects moving close to the speed of light.?"
Let it be clear, time does not slow down for the object. Time, if there even is such a thing, rolls along as it always rolls along for the object. It's just that for most of the rest of the universe (which is more sedentary compared to that of the object), time speeds up.
"mcgrew writes to mention New Scientist is reporting that scientists have clocked matter traveling at 99.999% the speed of light"
I hope someone pulled it over for speeding? Wouldn't want anyone to get hurt.
There are theories that light has the same properties as particles. So if light moves "at the speed of light", then it stands to reason other particles could as well.
It will be whatever the speed of sound is in the pole. Assuming a perfectly rigid material it would be instant, but there is no such thing and the actual speed will much less than c.
now all we need is to capture a sun in supernova mode to power out space ships, hope it has a good fuel tank...
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"Superluminal" expansion from Quasars have been known since the 1960's. (They appear to be superluminal, i.e., faster than light speed, as they are so close to the speed of light that time dilation becomes important.)
What exactly does that scientifically mean?
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...will be carving shit into poles.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
... when one of these hits earth?
"But officer, the light looked green!"
The 500 foot pole would actually take 29.7 mS, not 297 --- decimal error. So expect about 1/30 second delay between push and movement at far end.
AH. THEN here is the truly weird part! Let's say you have a 600,000,000 meter pole. it will take light about 2 seconds to reach from one end to the other. Let's just say, for simplicity's sake, the actual speed of is such that it will take 10 seconds for the other end of the pole to actually move. If I pushed the pole 4 meters forward, and the other end hasn't moved YET, wouldn't the pole be 599,999,996 meters long, for that time being? That is to say, it shrunk? isn'tthat weird???
Bah! Keep your antiquated warp technology. Transwarp is where it's at.
The pole would compress and flex. Even solid steel can be compressed like air with enough force.
If I stood on some of this matter that was flying out of a sun, and shot a bullet in the direction I was going, that bullet would break the speed of light!
Could this create blackholes?
microblackholes = Dark matter?
What if it is the gravitational field that changes. Say the sun disappeared or exploded, would we find out about it immediately or after so many minutes. In other words, do the gravitational field disturbances also propagate at the speed of light?
We know this because we've sent starships out to observe it up close...no wait, we haven't.
I really wish we were doing more in the area of manned space exploration.
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They just haven't "seen" anything traveling at light speed.
Boom Boom Boom,
fire the tachion cannon!
If you were to push a 600,000 km pole 4 meters over a period of 1 second, then you've probably exerted a lot of force (pressure) in order to do so. Imagine that the pole weighs 100 grams per meter (i.e., it's fairly light). That pole has a total mass then of 60,000,000 kg. Assume that the force/acceleration is uniform, and you find that 4 meters over 1 second (starting from rest) requires an acceleration of 8 m/s^2. That implies a total force of 480,000,000 Newtons or about 108 million pounds of force. Not surprising that it would shrink a little under so much force...
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Not really. At that length the pole would be like pushing a wet noodle. The other end may never move.
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Actually, by my understanding of it, the pole would only be 599,999,996 at the exact moment the other end begins to move. The rest of the time it is either shrinking to that length, or growing to it. This only even applies if you push it 4 meters in less than 2 seconds. More than 2 seconds and the other end will have started moving before you reached full compression. Unless you were able to instantaneously push the end of the pole, then it would simply be growing for the full 2 seconds.
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Thank you. You brought a wonderful image to mind of Archimedes in space, pressing on a gigantic pole, and having the end spring back sending him caroming around the solar system.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deeply or not at all."
Not really. Take a brick of Jell-O. Push one end. You'll move it, but it will distort in shape, compress, wobble, send waves, etc.
The only difference between Jell-O and every other solid substance is that your eyes and brain just aren't precise enough to see at a small scale that they are all behaving the same way, just to different degrees.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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isn'tthat weird???
That you are dutch???
Sorry couldn't resist.
Why in the world did I read "Matter Discovered" as a name?
It's not really as weird as it sounds. Try this with a basketball (the rubbery version of this), and you will see shrinking easily with your eye. A pole is simply more rigid, but if you push it fast enough and hard enough to cause that compression, that's exactly what you'll get. If you apply force to the front of a free-floating car sufficient to cause motion before the speed of sound can propagate the energy, then you get a crumpled bumper. This is the same phenomenon, except with the caveat that the speed of light is as fast as the speed of sound can go.
Why is this news? I read this article ten minutes from now.
Now all they need to do is figure out how to get the old people in Buicks to explode in the same manner, then maybe they'll stop driving 35 in a 65!
Seriously though, that's very interesting news. I'd like to know though, how do they know it was only 99.999% the speed of light? Could that be a measuring error, or some point-of-view discrepancy? With all of the constants in the Universe, it seems silly to me that something would be travelling at 99.9999% the speed of light (or however many 9s there were.)
And they said zombies weren't real!
Where are you going to find a 50 foot Polish person anyways?
We think it's time goes slow, it thinks our time goes slow. It's one of the symmetries of a Lorentz transformation. What happens is that when one of the observers accelerates so that it can sit down and compare notes with the other observer the observer that did the accelerating will have seen less time go by. It's a peculiarity of the geometry of spacetime that an inertial observer takes the path of longest proper time, that is the time that the observer will see go by.
The superluminal quasar jets are just optical illusions, as your link points out. Their apparent speed is superluminal, but their measured speed is subluminal. This article talks about the fastest measured speed of matter we have ever encountered.
-Ryan C.
Have they figured out how fast neutrinos typically go yet? I mean, since we're pretty sure they're massive they must go at a speed less than c, but since it has taken us so long to figure it out, it must be really close to c.
It's good to know its at least possible to get matter moving at such a highly relativistic speed. Too bad it takes a collapsing star to jump start it. I'm pretty fond of the one closest to us.
It's unclear to me if the article is saying the matter is destroyed (well, transformed into energy) after colliding with gases and such. Anyone out there know? If not, I wonder how this relates to the dark matter question. I would think that a bunch of matter moving at 99.999% of the speed of light would make for a lot of mass, especially considering these explosions have been happening for billions of years. Or has this already been taken into account?
A great big black hole is created when one of these puppies explodes.
If a star 100LY away goes supernova and launches this much matter our way, how much warning would we have before the planet was destroyed?
Would this much matter at that speed ignite Jupiter?
This is the sort of thing that helps me not care too much about what goes on in the world, we could all be snuffed out in an instant by something like this, asteroid strike, supervolcano, etc..
The largest Pole I ever knew was a guy named Kowalski who towered over everyone at some 7 feet. I don't know where you're going to find one more than 50 times his size!
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/ohmygodpart.html
"Now how many nines did you say, sir?"
Light speed is way too slow... With certain substances I can travel to the farthest reaches of the universe at the speed of thought. ;-P
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Not really. deltaL = FL/EA, where F is the applied force, L is the initial length, A is the cross sectional area, and E is Young's Modulus. This of course assumes that the force is perfectly on the center and perfectly orthogonal to the face. That said, there's nothing weird about materials being compresses as you push on them. It simply seems small because the materials we deal with are usually very short.
Perhaps we're traveling at 99.999% the speed of light and the matter in question is stationary? No wonder time seems to fly by these days.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
So what does that say about efficiency and/or the speed of the thing pushing the matter out at 99.999% of the speed of light? Either it's an extremely efficient transaction or whatever pushed on it was traveling faster.
Soooo.... That would be 100%?
What is the point of reference that is used to measure the speed of something? How does matter know how fast it is going?
Now who could've seen that coming?
Remember that my calculations were based on the assumption that the pole had a mass of only 100 grams per meter. That means it's either a very thin pole or has a very low density.
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What if it the pole was made of diamond, would diamond compress?
I mean the structure of diamond is pretty sturdy..
held in a vacuum and you're at the middle of the pole... (it's very, very long, say 100 miles long, and extremely rigid...)
now start to turn it around the middle (not the long axis though... around the middle of it's length)
keep turning and applying force to increase the rate of rotation...
what happens to time for an ant that's on the pole and decides to walk towards one end of the pole (he's got good feet and doesn't slip)
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Matter is mostly empty space, so there's plenty of room for compression.
Actually, we knew this decades ago. The apparent superluminal motion of emission spots from quasars required highly relativistic particle beams. The measurement here is just of an exceptionally high Lorentz factor. From another viewpoint, cosmic rays are matter as well, and some of them are exceptionally energetic. Indeed, particle physics at the highest energies can only be studied with cosmic rays, as no manmade accelerator can reach these energies. There have been particle physicists studying cosmic rays for decades (probably since the 50's).
I thought superluminal was like, "Hey! You guys! Join the Navy!!!"
It will be whatever the speed of sound is in the pole.
That's right. One way to verify this and see it in a macroscopic manner would be to hit such a pole very fast and hard with a huge hammer. You'd see a big wave propagate through the pole, bending it, making it vibrate like there's no tomorrow.
You just got troll'd!
When you have an electric current flowing through a wire, the information it passes in the electron cascade (as in a computer) moves at (close to, depending on the resistance of the wire) the speed of light, but the actual individual electrons move MUCH slower than that. Determining the actual velocity of an electron in the current is an easy calculation to perform if the resistance of the wire is known.
The sun explodes, diameter increases, so it takes less and less time for us to see the event as it approaches, hummmmmmm.
Sorry dudes, my fault... I should go easier on that damn porn.
I wonder if the steel making up the frame of this building has bananas in it, too.
I have a laser that can maintain it's tight coherent beam over distances of many many many many many MANY light years. I'm up in space with a full spherical viewpoint with nothign in my way for those light years, all around me. I turn on the laser, wait a few years or so, then I shift the beam a few degrees. In that one or two seconds I shift that beam, altering the direction it points past a certain distance by a light-year or so, does that beam (knowing it will "bend" if perceived from outside my vantage point) point suddenly move faster than light and travel a few light years in just a few seconds?
I know the answer is probably not. Can I get a link to explain?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Not much different actually. The Lorentz factor is only about 1.3% for traveling at 0.16c. To get the expected blue shift from 650nm to 550nm, you would have to have a Lorentz factor of about 1.154. To get this, you would have to be travelling about 50% the speed of light.
Also, speed is constant between the reference frames. Let's say you are approaching a stop light and pass a cop when the stop light is 299,792,458 meters away (the exact distance light travels in a vacuum in one second, let's say you are in a vacuum). The cop clocks you at 47,966,793 meters per second or 172,680,455 km/hour and sees that you pass the stop light 6.25 seconds later (he actually sees it 7.25 seconds later, but he is measuring with a synchronized clock at the stop light). You show yourself as moving relative to the cop and the stop light at the same exact speed, 0.16c, but time is moving about 1.3% slower for you (the Lorentz factor is 1.013051123), how can that be? The answer is that objects shrink in the direction of relative motion, so it appears to you like you only traveled about 295,930,236 meters in about 6.17 seconds. So while it looks to you like you made the trip from the parked cop to the stop light in 0.08 seconds less time than the cop says, it also looks to you like you traveled 3,862,222 meters less than the cop says.
New Scientist is reporting that scientists have clocked matter traveling at 99.999% the speed of light.
They probably paid the phone bill. A check mailed to a creditor travels through the postal and banking systems at 99.999999% of c. Conversely, a check payable to you travels through the postal system, and clears the bank, at 0.000000001% of c.
That would be the mass of dorks on slashdot rushing to post tired 640k and balmer chair throwing jokes for each new story.
according to the formula, matter traveling at .99999c appear to be 224 times heavier. and its kinetic energy is 223 times of its "rest energy". a single electron traveling at that speed has the same kinetic energy as a person moving at the speed of one micrometer per second.
No only snitches... or maybe that's the foundation.
If you've got a brick of Jell-O, I'd say you have bigger problems.
Imagine very long scissors, both edges very close to each other. Or a guillotine with very small angle. Now we can use a _non-material_ point of intersection of both scissor hands to transmit information. Of course it can be made to move in excess of c for brief period of time.
However we can't use such scissors to transmit information between 2 points at speed>c.
Not really. Take a brick of Jell-O. Push one end. You'll move it, but it will distort in shape, compress, wobble, send waves, etc.
Boobs also act similarly. Or so I've heard.
Eureka, that's it! Boobie physics! What else could better attract young males to science and fluid dynamics?
Will my 10 foot pole be 50 times faster than a 500 foot one?
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This study tends to lend credence to the theory that the speed of light is the Maximum Velocity. It doesn't prove anything, per se, but matter moving at *nearly* the speed of light (not quite, but not over) at least makes it seem as if there's a speed limit of "c".
...it crashed into Antarctica and caused the Second Impact.
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Not really so weird. This is just longitudinal vibration with a kinda counterintuitively large amplitude. The speed of propagation of the deformation is just analogous to the speed of sound through a solid. The whole "perfectly rigid pole" assumption is just for the sake of argument, and doesn't work so well in reality. There's an old engineering joke that ends with the punch-line, "First, assume a spherical horse,..." that puts the situation in a more easily grasped perspective.
uhm no. /me pushes on his co-workers rotund belly
:-)
gee, he got skinnier for a second before he fell over.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm did i violate relativity? Isn't that weird?!?!?!
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The Hadron Collider will do much better than that (99.99999%), and it has no were near the energy of a dying star. Then, again, it has no where near the mass.
Concept uses proven physics of 50 years.
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space travel.