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26 Comments
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+23Jets of matter near the speed of light? I used to be able to do that when I was 17 on a date.
- supernovasky, on 10/11/2007, -3/+23Physics lesson 1: Mass =/= size
- fkr3, on 10/11/2007, -0/+17So they're not as fast as my 25 cent lightbulb?
Space got ripped off. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6I'm currently reading The Elegant Universe (which is a layman's guide to the Newtonian/Einsteinian theories, as well as an introduction to the newer String theory). A quote that is somewhat relevant to the whole "mass increase with speed" comments above:
"At 99.999 percent of light speed, the mass of a muon has increased by a factor of 224; at 99.99999999 percent of light speed, it has increased by a factor of more than 70,000. Since the mass of the muon increases without limit as its speed approaches that of light, it would require a push with an infinite amount of energy to reach or cross the light barrier. This, of course, is impossible and hence absolutely nothing can travel faster than the speed of light."
http://books.google.com/books?id=FH3o-WVDECwC&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=the+elegant+universe+99.999+light+speed&source=web&ots=GeoN41PoaO&sig=HBwsF9mvkxgMW957QhGWJHJWB_Y - Bamborzled, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4You've posted that same comment on multiple Digg posts now.
GET BLOCKED - Derrekito, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Zing
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Superluminal motion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Superluminal motion
In astronomy, superluminal motion is the apparently faster-than-light motion seen in some radio galaxies, quasars and recently also in some galactic sources called microquasars. All of these sources are thought to contain a black hole, responsible for the ejection of mass at high velocities.
When first observed in the early 1970s, superluminal motion was taken to be a piece of evidence against quasars having cosmological distances. Although a few astrophysicists still argue for this view, most believe that apparent velocities greater than the velocity of light are optical illusions and involve no physics incompatible with the theory of special relativity.
Explanation
The explanation can be given in a fairly straightforward way as a light travel time effect. Imagine a body of matter starting at the center of a galaxy and moving quickly towards the observer, nearly head-on but not exactly.
When the body is at the center of the galaxy, it emits some light towards the observer. After it has moved, and again emits light towards the observer, this light will have a shorter travel time since the object is now closer to Earth. An observer ignoring the movement towards Earth and only noticing the perpendicular movement will underestimate the true time interval (for their inertial reference frame), and so will overestimate the object's speed; this overestimated speed can be many times the speed of light.
Superluminal motion is often seen in two opposing jets, one moving away and one toward Earth. If Doppler shifts are observed in both sources, the velocity and the distance can be determined independently of other observations.
In 1966 Martin Rees predicted (Nature 211, 468) that "an object moving relativistically in suitable directions may appear to a distant observer to have a transverse velocity much greater than the velocity of light".
A few years later (in 1970) such sources were indeed discovered as very distant astronomical radio sources, such as radio galaxies and quasars. They were called superluminal (lit. "above light") sources. The discovery was a spectacular result of a new technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry, which allowed to determine positions better than milli-arcseconds and in particular to determine the change in positions on the sky, called proper motions in a timespan of typically years. The apparent velocity is obtained by multiplying the observed proper motion by the distance and could be up to 6 times the speed of light.
In 1994 a galactic speed record was obtained with the discovery of a superluminal source in our own galaxy, the cosmic x-ray source GRS1915+105. The expansion occurred on a much shorter timescale. Several separate blobs were seen (I.F. Mirabel and L.F. Rodriguez, Nature 371, 48, "A superluminal source in the Galaxy") to expand in pairs within weeks by typically 0.5 arcsec. Because of the analogy with quasars, this source was called a microquasar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superluminal_motion - tehtopher, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2You can calculate the exact multiple of the mass by using the Lorentz factor. Simply plug in your velocity, in terms of c (like .9c), for v in the equation below.
gamma = 1/(sqrt(1 - v^2)) - Dokument, on 10/11/2007, -4/+6did they get pulled over?
- sockpuppets, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4I'm not Einstein but I think the rule is matter at the speed of light ceases to be matter and becomes energy.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/spr/2002-05/msg0041789.html
"...
One thing mass density does is create a gravitational field which is
infinite in its extent. Changes in the field propogate at the speed
of light. That task may be accomplished by the graviton, a massless
particle with spin 2 (the reason to use "may" as a verb is that we
have yet to detect it). The gravitational waves that the LIGO
experiment is trying to detect must make their way accross the galaxy
as particles. These particles are created by a major disturbance in a
mass density, or the Higgs field. Nothing is quite as tricky as
trying to figure out the link between these two proposed particles.
That calculation will not be Particle Properties Data Book anytime
soon, if at all.
Particle physics is a mature area of study. It is extraordinarily odd
that the two so-far-unseen particles are intimitely connected to mass.
..."
Is it not possible that there is some underlying system that ultimately causes these observed effects? - Camaroman, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Old news...
- Jessejb, on 10/11/2007, -3/+4OK I'm sure someone is going to call me a retard. But objects can't travel faster than the speed of light? What if they can but we can't see them because they are moving faster than the light we would need to see them?
- rmetzger, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2did you not read the article ..
But the total amount of matter moving at such high speeds in the GRBs is equivalent to 200 times the mass of the Earth.
and as mentioned there is no size increase. but i think its cool that matter is actually moving forward in time relative to us. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I stand corrected.
Thanks - kmpr326, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1@PJSPJS
186,000 miles per second, not hour. - chutz, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1The amount of energy required to accelerate particles approaches infinity as they approach the speed of light, to accelerate a single atom to 100% the speed of light it would take infinite energy.
It's impossible to make anything with mass go the speed of light (let alone faster) because there is not enough energy in the universe. This is not observed, it's calculated (this stuff is basic general relativity). - masgrada, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1"more than 99.999%" ... So, 99.999 9 % ? OMG.
- JohnnyXmas, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0Sure it can jet but. . . can it blend?!?!?
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -4/+2jets of matter clocked near me???
- stolenisotope1, on 10/11/2007, -7/+2Damn.... I thought Lord Xenu was coming to rescue us from the Scientologists...
WITH HIS SUPER JETS!! - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -6/+1This is crap.
All they measured was afterglow.
Then they calculated the velocity. Using some model of course.
think about it - 150 "seconds" 180 "seconds" yields 99.9997% of 186 thousand miles per hour.
So much for "latency"
"...
For two bursts in 2006, called GRB 060418 and GRB 060607 A, the telescope was able to start watching for the afterglow just one minute after Swift detected the burst. This allowed them to measure the delay before the afterglow peaks of 153 and 180 seconds, respectively. In both cases, the speed of the expanding matter worked out to about 99.9997% the speed of light.
..." - 0ldmankdude, on 10/11/2007, -14/+1edit: erm, what happened to the other comment
- vancanucksfan, on 10/11/2007, -14/+1GET A LIFE
- FeartheKnighted, on 10/11/2007, -19/+5So whatever happened to Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Namely the part about matter increase in mass exponentially as it approaches the speed of light. Shouldn't these particles at least be as massive as large houses or something?
- FeartheKnighted, on 10/11/2007, -18/+1@ supernovasky
No ***** sherlock.
@ rmetzger
Learn to comprehend what you read.
