Page 2 - Travelling at the speed of light?

Reply to first- Depending on your initial velocity entering the loop, chances are you'd be jelly in quick order, though if you have the time, I don't dobt there would be a way to use an highly elliptical orbit to work your velocity up by increments. It isn't a hole in the classic sense, but it acts as one in the sense that anything pasing the event horizon effectively disappears. The black hole does increase in mass and the event horizon does expand, but according to Hawkin's radiation model, black holes that are not being actively fed can evaporate some of their mass away.

Reply to second- Acceleration is dependant on mass so, given a large enough amount of fuel, yes, you could accelerate your way to relativistic speeds, though you have a few things to factor in-- when you start out, you have a lot of mass in the form of unspent fuel, and as you go along the mass decreases as you expend said fuel, good thing. The closer you approach c, though, the more mass your ship holds, which is bad. Also, any object(s) you encounter during your journey will sap energy away from your ship-- gravity wells, dust, etc. will impede your progress, if only incrementally.

There are dozens of different ideas out there to get around the speed limit-- folding space, jumping out and back in through singularities, using loopholes found in quantum dynamics... obviously nothing that can be exploited at this point in time. But good luck, and I will be one of the billions standing in line to shake your hand when you do it.

I was watching this thing on television the other night where this guy was saying that the fastest way between two points isn't in a straight line... it's in a wormhole. Think of it like this, if you have a sheet of A4 paper, you would think the fastest way to get from one end to the other is by going directly straight down the middle. But if you fold the paper so the the two ends touch, you can get from one end to the other in a instant (Dngrsone: i guess this is what you meant by folding space?)

If that was correct then we wouldnt even need to have to travel at lightspeed... or even spend the time trying to figure out how to.

i found a nice article on your questions..hope this helps:

Faster than Light

It explains arguments both supporting and opposing the FTL concept!

OH and have u tried Stephen Hawking's book by any chance?!!

the question isnt so much "how do we go the speed of light" as it is "how to we get to other solar systems in a reasonable amount of time."

scientist believe they'll have some kind of matter traveling at the speed of light in the next 40 or 50 yrs. but even if one were to implement that into some kind of space shuttle, the nearest solar systems of any interest are 1000s of lightyears away. so while we're figuring out the light speed thing, we've better also be figuring out how to jump around the universe via "wormholes" like the do in star trek.

DO u hav any links to such an article...i wud love to read that!!

i m not aware if ther are any worm holes found around our galaxy.....though some light at the end of Black hole is seen recently!
Lights from New Planets seen!

EXACTLY!

Thanx for the reading too Tejas!

Pleasure is mine!!!
This is my fav subject...i recommend u read Stephen Hawking book if interested!!! its complex but worth reading!

Yeah i think i should. Is it one of those books that has a whole heap of equations to explain things or does it explain stuff in words?
Because i am good at understanding things when in writing but i havn't got a very mathematical brain, otherwise i would be studying this stuff in university! I did physics in final year at high school and i loved it although i wasn't very good at it... lol.

But yeah i think i might have to pick this book up!

Cheers.

unfortunately i dont...its been related to me by a few teachers/professors/students that are active in the field to one degree or another. i believe them because i take professors as a pretty reputable source . if i get a chance i'll see if i can dig somethin up...

Wormholes are not belived to exist since you would need what is called a "white hole" at the other end. Basically the opposite of a black hole, where instead of sucking stuff in it spits stuff out. There is no known way of creating a white hole, though Einstein has an equation that could make them work through math. Also, for some reason of which I am unaware of, scientists belive that if white holes were to exist that the wormholes would be so unstabl that even a grain of sand would mess them up. Again, I don't quite know why they say this.