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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.
It's the Planet Express ship!
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- Douglas Adams
will be snails pace when we get warp technology.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
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.
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...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
"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.)
yes, light is particles, called photons. they are massless, which is what i believe allows them to move at the speed of light. and they always move at the speed of light too. i believe, in order to move at the speed of light, you must have always been, and always will, move at the speed of light. at light speed, time doesnt move, so you cant get out of light speed because that would require time to do so. i think it works the other way too.
What exactly does that scientifically mean?
THANKS SLASHD0T FOR YOUR PR0FESSIONALISM!!
...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, even though it is happening very far away, WE CAN SEE IT YOU GODDAMN DOLT.
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...
Ben Hocking
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Not really. At that length the pole would be like pushing a wet noodle. The other end may never move.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
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.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deeply or not at all."
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."
Actually, and believe you me I am no damn physicst (can't even spell it), a photon has no "resting mass", but does have momentum, which implies that there is an upper limit to is mass which cannot be zero.
WTF does that mean? Dunno. OK screw that. No more Wiki for me.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
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.
of chairs flying through meeting rooms in Redmond WA.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
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.
Like the other replier said, at light speed there is still time. If you were to travel the speed of light, you'd still notice/experience the passing of time, its just the experience of time relative to some one else, or more specifically someone not in your reference frame, thus relativity.
Also, light can be slowed down depending on what medium its passing through. And I would hazard a guess that the commonly used term "speed of light" or c, is based on the speed of a light photon in a vacuum, and that light here on earth would travel slower than c through the air. I'm not sure though, so don't quote me.
no you wouldnt. at the speed of light time stands still. outside of your reference frame, yes, time would still exist but you could not experience it because that would require time. you'd be completely still, unable to move. the universe would pass by instantaneously.
yeah, i forgot light changes speed in some mediums. not sure how that fits in to relativity though.
Why is this news? I read this article ten minutes from now.
Yeah, let's send some people watch the formation of black holes!
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?
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..
No mass, but mass-like qualities.
For example, those little thingies with the black and white paddles in them that look like light bulbs from middle school science class work on the idea that photons transfer and take momentum from stuff they interact with. Momentum is a quality very closely tied with mass.
Likewise, photons are affected by gravitational fields. Having gravity and being affected by it are also qualities very tightly bound with mass.
So, you sort of need to define how you mean "mass" before claiming photons don't have it. No mass in "high school physics" sense, but sure has some mass when you are talking about cosmological stuff or high-energy physics. Indeed, you can really only say "mass: having mass like qualities X, Y and Z" and photons have some of them. So either a grid to define mass with check boxes, or make up some nomenclature Mass: x',y',z" where 1 tick means has, two has not.
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!
"Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will---Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
Yeah, but what if by moving the speed of light, matter becomes light? If matter could accelerate to the speed of light, I would think that it would collide with other matter, exploding, expelling energy in the form of light. Hitting an object at that speed would cause it to slow and scatter, but at a slower speed exponentially until it came to rest. However, light bouncing off "stalled matter" would reflect at such speeds leaving behind a trail of energy from the collision (heat). It would also explain to me how shadows work. The question I always had using that principle is: could two particles of light/matter hit or near-miss (close orbit/slingshot) each other in such a way that it would accelerate them beyond light speed? I go back to the thought that if light was matter, it would build up over time. Matter (Light particles at sub-light) would be attracted to other light particles and form orbits and collections. (Planets, moons, matter as we know it...)
...too much thought for one day.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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.
When the light is moving, it moves at the speed of light. Materials which slow light down (pretty much anything light passes through to some degree) do so by absorbing the light then re-emitting it in the direction (approximately) it was going. The time it takes to do so is what changes the lights apparent speed, and is why denser materials slow light down more. It has to stop and restart more times. At least, that is the high school physics explanation I remember.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deeply or not at all."
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.
Photons always travel at c. It's just that anywhere except in a vacuum, they bump into atoms, get absorbed, and reemitted shortly after. Macroscopically, light slows down through objects, but the photons themselves always travel at c.
What is the point of reference that is used to measure the speed of something? How does matter know how fast it is going?
according to that article, the ohmygod particle was traveling 9.7 million times faster than light.
we geeks were all born too soon.
I wish I could be around in 200 years to see human progress.
They're using their grammar skills there.
That's how Chuck Norris can round-house kick everybody without anybody being able to see or record it.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Because, according to the theory of special relativity, to move a massive particle at the speed of light would require infinite energy. See, mass changes with relative velocity, such that m = m0/(1-beta**2) where beta is v/c and m0 is rest mass. Since kinetic energy is proportional to mass, as v -> c, m -> m0/0 -> infinity, and so does the kinetic energy.
What you actually have is a stream of VERY low mass particles moving VERY close to the speed of light, containing large but finite amounts of kinetic energy.
no you wouldnt. at the speed of light time stands still.
I respectfully disagree.
That was disproved a long time ago (but it's still a common misconception). There are a couple theories explaining the movement of a radiometer, both involving differential gas pressure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crookes_radiometer/
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Crookes radiometer (the aforementioned little thingy with the black and white paddles) does not rotate due to light imparted momentum (the force is too small). This theory of the rotation is disproved by the fact that after a certain point making the vacuum in the bulb stronger reduces the effect, which is the opposite of the expected result if the rotation was due to radiation force.
The actual forces responsible for rotation are a combination of forces due to molecule movement between the hot and cold sides of the vanes near the edges. Wikipedia has a good write up about it here.
There is an invariant mass for an object, i.e. a quantity that remains the same in all reference frames. This can be calculated based on energy and momentum. True of photons as well. Photons don't have a rest mass because rest mass is defined as the mass of an isolated and at rest relative to the observer object. Photons can't be at rest relative to an observer (and if they are isolated they are travelling at c).
"then maybe they'll stop driving 35 in a 65!"
35 for you, is like 65 for them.
It's all relative.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
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.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I didn't know you could post to Slashdot from the seventeenth century.
Brace for Second Impact!
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
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)
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
>Soooo.... That would be 100%?
For small amounts of 100% : yes.
About 99.9997%, according to TFA.
This comment does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the author.
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!
according to that article, the ohmygod particle was traveling 9.7 million times faster than light.
No, it says it was traveling at 0.9999999999999999999999951 times the speed of light.
As a general rule, if an article initially appears to state that something is traveling at more than the speed of light, you should re-read it until it doesn't.
Because matter can not ever attain the speed of light. This stuff has so much energy thrown into it that our brains can't even begin to comprehend and is going about as fast as you can go, period.
Anyways, they are getting pretty good at measuring stuff like that. The technique they used is in TFA and is pretty interesting.
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.
That's true, but photons do have momentum, and this is the concept by which solar sails work. My first problem with the radiometer trick was the idea that the momentum of photons would be sufficient to overcome the friction of the axle -- when you turn on a lightbulb, do you get pummeled to the ground? No, because photons have tiny amounts of momentum.
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
It might shatter from the force you would need to apply to it.
Actual solar sails would move by the pressure of the Solar wind, which is much greater than light pressure.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Matter cannot travel at the speed of light. As you accelerated towards the speed of light, time would slow down for you as measured by an observer in the frame you left and distance to other objects would appear to decrease. If you were able to get close enough to the speed of light, it would be a shorter distance to the end of the farthest known quasar than from one end of your ship to the other. Eventually you would experience the heat death of the universe before you ever reached the speed of light.
If you accelerate at 1g (according to an observer in the frame you left), that would happen in about a year (354.06 days at 9.8m/s^2). However you would have to be accelerating at 1g according to you. Since your mass would appear to increase towards infinity to an outside observer as you approached the speed of light so it would take enormous amounts of energy, and the only thing they could use to accelerate you is a laser, which would get weaker and weaker to you as you approached the speed of light. You would need your own means of propulsion then. If you constantly accelerate at 1g according to you, it would look to an outside observer like your acceleration was decreasing as time dilation took effect. At about 0.6c you would experience 25% time dilation. While you saw yourself accelerating at 9.8m/s^2, to an outside observer it would look like you were accelerating at 7.8m/s^2. At 0.9999c it would appear to them like you were accelerating at only 0.14 m/s^2. At that rate it would take you 68.55 years to reach the remaining gap to light speed. At 0.99999999999c it would appear to an outside observer like you were accelerating at only 0.000044 m/s^s and it would take you 217,000 years to reach the speed of light. Since your acceleration keeps decreasing, the target of light-speed according to an outside observer keeps getting further and further away.
Photons always move at C. Light doesn't spend all it's time as photons, however, even in a vacuum. Calling C "the speed of light" is a slight oversimplification.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Anything with energy has momentum, which kinda intuitively makes sense. .5mv^2 + U would have to be transformed to suit it, though -- IANAP either :)
Also, I just remembered the famous equation that states mass and energy are interchangeable (E = mc^2) .
I'm not sure how the equation E =
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.
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?
What the hell are you talking about? From TFA, the ohmygod particle was traveling slower than light, if only very slightly slower than light. At the end of a bunch of math:
And thus, approximately: v = 0.9999999999999999999999951 c
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
I made an Evangelion reference, my day is complete.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
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.
The structure of diamond is rigid on a micro scale, but on a scale of millions of miles (ie septillions of atoms), yes it would compress.
Stew
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
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?!?!?!
Stew
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
And you engineers wonder why you never get invited to the good parties... ;)
Not that it matters any more, but I wonder what jackass modded the parent as 'Redundant'. Pretty sure this was a unique comment. Idiot...
well, the best way to explain the oddities here: you can never move at the speed of light, so you dont really have to understand what it would be like to do it. only the photon can, and presumably the photon isnt sentient, so no one/nothing ever experiences what it's light to move at the speed of light.
you can, however, move at 99.999999999% the speed of light. at that speed, you wouldnt notice anything weird about your time, but it would seem like the rest of the universe was passing by (in time) much faster than it should be. you could, for example, only be travelling at that speed for what felt like a few seconds, but when you're done most of the universe could have passed by many years.
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.
Mining the The Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud is the purpose of technology.
http://nlspropulsion.net/
Man's continued survival counts on someone coming up with a solution for interstellar
space travel.