Would an object exceeding the speed of light be visible to the human eye? If it were not how could it be detected?
Thanks for your reply, James.
Can anything exceed the speed of light?
Can anything exceed the speed of light?
We have a big problem here in the UK with fewer people interested in physics
One good reason why we can't accelerate any significant mass to the speed of light is because if it hits anything, like air, it will explode like an atomic bomb.
We may never know if a heavier object can travel faster than a photon or an atom.
And we can make space ships that can safely go faster than light. It would need redesigning and a whole lot of power and etc, but it can be done.
Er, not really, the reason is that as an object approaches C it's mass increases according to the formula;
m = m0/((1 - v^2/c^2))^1/2
Not because we are worried about collisions.
Er, yes we do, 'a heavier object' can't move faster than a photon. I don't know why you added 'atom', it being a 'heavier object' wrt photons.
That doesn't even make sense. The more its mass increases, the worse the explosion if the projectile collides with something.
Because we do accelerate atoms to very close to the speed of light.
I've suspected for a while that an object containing many atoms, like a slug of iron weighing a gram or so, might be able to travel faster than the speed of light.
If we have such a thing as a "Higgs field" that limits the speed that an atom can be accelerated to, then a heavier object may have a greater terminal velocity, having a much greater ratio of mass over cross section.
So, in a hypothetical laboratory, if helium was drawn into a black hole would the structural ionic information degrade so the helium became hydrogen as it drew closer to the event horizon?