General Question

xxporkxsodaxx's avatar

What do you suppose would happen if we were able to break the speed of light?

Asked by xxporkxsodaxx (1398points) May 3rd, 2008

Like breaking the sound barrier gives us a sonic boom, but what would happen if we were to break the speed of light?
I wonder if out eyes would melt if we were watching

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16 Answers

brownlemur's avatar

That is awesome.

joeysefika's avatar

supposedly you can travel in the future because you would stop but time would keep going; It is also argued that you would stay the same size but keep gaining mass until you were infinitely heavy.

xxporkxsodaxx's avatar

I am not familiar with the gaining mass, but I know what your talking about with time dilation. It’s very interesting how someone could com up with that, actually you wouldn’t go into the future but time for you would slow down. It is true because time is relative to speed and at the speed of light there is no time, going beyond that would mean time would “reverse” but because you cannot reverse aging, it would just “slow down”.

joeysefika's avatar

its pretty amazing

atr408's avatar

I heard that if a human was able to go at the speed of light that they would turn into a puddle or sumthing. Is that true?

joeysefika's avatar

i’ve never heard that

atr408's avatar

I dont know where I heard it but I think its because the molecules in are body can’t handle the forces and they tear apart or somthing like that.

8lightminutesaway's avatar

time dilation and length contraction go together. As you approach the speed of light, you get smaller in the direction your going. Like a meter stick traveling lengthwise would be somewhere less than a meter long but the width and depth would be unchanged. Once you reach the speed of light, I think you would only have 2 physical dimensions having lost one. What happens when you’re going greater than the speed of light? who knows… maybe you begin to gain that dimension back but in other direction, and maybe since time has stopped at light speed, you start going backwards at speed greater than light. These are largely unsupported arguments, and the physics behind what we do know about relativity typically only holds when you assume nothing can go greater than the speed of light.

Randy's avatar

I do not have a clue but I would guess that you would beat light if you were going fast and far enough. Interesting question.

gooch's avatar

Our molecules would separate because our molecular structure is not capable of handling those speeds.

lozza's avatar

It would be dark I guess!

Foolaholic's avatar

It’s funny that you say if

xxporkxsodaxx's avatar

@foolaholic, what do you mean? I don’t get your link.

Foolaholic's avatar

Oh it’s just a comic that I read. These two stuffy English gentlemen live on the moon, and have ridiculous and whimsical solutions for such physics problems.

Dresden Codak

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