Speed of light faster than light?

[RomanClock]

We know we can use gravity as a means to 'slingshot' objects to increase their speed (like with shuttles and satellites). Theoretically, if a beam of light went into such a path around black hole, wouldn't it go faster?

[RomanClock]

Say there was a disc spinning. We know that as you approach the edge of a spinning disc, the point on the disc travels a greater distance than that of points closer to the center.
Given any non-zero velocity, would a point on the edge of an infinitely long radius disc travel at the speed of light?
Or if we say the disc was spinning so that some point between the center and edge of the disc is traveling at the speed of light, wouldn't any points beyond that point travel faster than the speed of light?

[Kaijuclock]

my dick is faster than the speed of light




























this is seriously the only thing i could come up with, i stared at your post all "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" and thought a simple yes wouldn't be enough

[RomanClock]

Say we have an undefined spherical mass with significant gravitation force.
If there were a ray of light traveling normal to the surface (meaning directly away from the surface of the sphere), and since it is closer to the center of mass at the initial point, wouldn't it need to accelerate to try to reach the speed of light? If so, where does its energy to reach the speed of light come from?

[Loki Clock]

You might be right, but I don't think any of us have the qualifications to actually verify your proposition.

[RomanClock]

propositions.

Plural, also they are more like loosely based theories.

[Loki Clock]

Plural, also they are more like loosely based theories.

I was referring mainly to the initial post.

As for the disc question, if the speed of light was truly the maximum speed possible in the universe (and not just an indicator of the maximum possible speed for that area of space), then the particles past that point would probably lag a bit and the structure would probably distort into a spiral type affair. If not, then yeah, those particles would exceed the speed of light.

For the sphere question, I think light just propagates as fast as it's allowed to, so it's not really speeding up so much as not being slowed down as much. There may indeed be an absolute upper bound on how fast a particle can self-propagate, but I don't believe we know it.

[RomanClock]

For the sphere question, I think light just propagates as fast as it's allowed to, so it's not really speeding up so much as not being slowed down as much. There may indeed be an absolute upper bound on how fast a particle can self-propagate, but I don't believe we know it.

If it was slowed down by some force, it would need another force to speed it up, which would require energy, and where would that energy come from?
Or does the light particle naturally want to go the speed of light, and if so why?

[Loki Clock]

If it was slowed down by some force, it would need another force to speed it up, which would require energy, and where would that energy come from?
Or does the light particle naturally want to go the speed of light, and if so why?

I mean it was always going that speed, but it was being slowed down by other things. Some of it's force was being put towards overcoming it's opposing forces. And I think it's a matter of structure that causes it to propagate.

[DNAClock]

Today is accepted that the speed of light is not a constant because the experiments held to determine the speed of light were done in vacuum enviroments (which is unlikely because space is not really vacuum, there are atoms and different kind of radiations traveling) that and because gravitational field affects light... The shapiro delay is something you might want to read, I saw it for 5 minutes in high school and will not look it up again, be might guest.

Also, dis: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/epfd-ltt081905.php

[DNAClock]

Theoretically, if a beam of light went into such a path around black hole, wouldn't it go faster?

Yes and no... If the light was directed to the black hole you can assist to  theories:

 1. This one says that the gravitational force is needed for the light to travel at that speed, if there was no gravitational force the light wouldn't travel at such high speed, there would be a delay.

 2. The force is so strong that the photons are destroyed.

And of course there are other dozens theories that will tell you other shit,  shit like "the photon never reached the speed of light constant because it's not in vacuum" then resorting to theory 1 or 2 or a simple "yes... it travels faster".

[AstronautClock]

light travels around earth 7.5 times in a second.
 
but if you make a propeller as big as the earth it would spin hundreds times per second

[Blue]

According to current physics... Light is a constant when in a vacuum,  and due to a very little-understood relationship between light and gravity it is believed that the closer an object approaches the maximum speed of that constant, the greater it's relative mass would become, thus causing acceleration to be more and more difficult, eventually becoming impossible. According to this theory, traveling the speed of light would constitute infinite mass.

I don't really buy that, personally... I believe the exact relationship between light and gravity is looser than our current limited understanding. Some say the speed of gravity is exactly the speed of light, and so far evidence proves this (einstein believed it, so they want to back him up), but others believe that it is actually thousands of times faster, practically instantaneous, which would make the relationship far more interresting.

However, light is not accelerable, and this I believe. It is simply a fact. In other words, if you are traveling at 100 miles an hour in a car at night, the beam of light from your headlights is still traveling at the same speed as when you were at a complete stop.

However, due to mediums, light can be slowed down drastically. For example, in coolants within nuclear reactors, there are particles that are emitted from the core that travel faster than the speed of the light within the coolant (usually water). Whenever particles travel faster than light (within a medium, where this is actually possible) a special kind of radiation is emitted. A nice blue pretty radiation, called Čerenkov. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation

Some say that this is what turned the sky bright blue over Chernobyl.

If it WERE possible to travel the speed of light (which I believe it may be, although not with any current known method, or within confines of current laws of gravity we have yet to overcome), then light emitted by our craft from the front wouldn't go anywhere, where as the light emitted from the back would go backwards at the speed of light (although greatly dimmed by the expansion, possibly invisibly)... If we turned off our craft's lights, the front would be visible, but the rear would not, so long as we stay just at or above the speed of light...

[Slash]

You can go out on your very own adventure Romanclock and find out!!

[Thor]

Slingshoting an object only works because you're using the gravity of another object to add to it's speed. This doesn't work with light because it requires infinite gravity to speed it up. For infinite gravity you'd need infinite mass. And nothing has infinite mass. Black holes just have "a lot" of mass.

[GodClock]

i never took any physics classes

[TequilaClock]

Slingshoting an object only works because you're using the gravity of another object to add to it's speed. This doesn't work with light because it requires infinite gravity to speed it up. For infinite gravity you'd need infinite mass. And nothing has infinite mass. Black holes just have "a lot" of mass.

Time is the only thing that its infinite in the universe.

[Thor]

Time is the only thing that its infinite in the universe.

And what makes you think time is infinite? You have no proof of that.

Also that's the point. I was saying it's impossible BECAUSE infinite mass doesn't exist.

[TequilaClock]

So is infinite gravity ffs

[MSPaintClock]

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