Wise you have become, young Irtarwan :P ;)

And scientists recently fired a laser that moved faster than the speed of light so it's now theorized there is no 'maximum speed limit' in the universe.

I don't think that you're interpreting that quite right. See, a "laser" is just photons, bundles of energy, and it has no mass. Therefore, it can go as fast as it wants because mass is zero. E = m(c squared), so if m is zero, c doesn't matter.

I'm not sure what's up with sending mass at the speed of light, though. It's supposed to become infinate as it approaches the speed of light, but "Warp theory" sounds cool :D .

I like warp speed, myself.

Milkshake c is the speed of light.

What that formula is saying is that if mass travels at the speed of light times the speed of light it would become energy.

It's discussing the relationship between pure energy and mass. It's saying that they are related and not seperate entities.

Well, actually, the formula also implies that as something approaches the speed of light, which makes it's energy really big, than it's mass has to be quite small for the formula to work, and the faster you want something to go, the smaller it has to be, or the more energy it takes to move it if it's bigger.

Remember that if E=m*c-squared, then c-squared=E/m, if m is zero, than it can have whatever energy it wants, IE go whatever speed it wants, and c has no bearing.


EDIT: I'm stupid though, I could be interpreting E wrong. Anyway, another thing that Einstein said was that as something approaches the speed of light, it's mass becomes infinate, which makes it darn hard to move. (It bends space time around itself or somelike.) But if something, like Irtar's laser, doesn't have any mass, then there is no reason that it can't go faster than the speed of light.

I'm not sure if E = m*c-squared says that or not, but I think that the theory of general relativity does say it in some form.

When the bottom of a fraction is zero than the answer is not a real number a.k.a doesn't exist. Go try it on your calculator you'll get an error.

Right, I know, so E can be whatever.

Well, maybe not, but what about e/c-squared = m, if m is zero then?

Anyway, read my edit. ><

EDIT: I mean the edit that I edited before I put in edit so you could could tell that what i meant by the edit. :D

Itar, "And no Lup, I'm no idealic in the sense that I'm just saying today we can throw down all our guns and hug. People shall always war, it is a fact."

In order for there to be a strong sociaty there must be war.(sorry for spelling errors) That, and the fact that wars get rid of the weak links in the world. We need wars to make a stronger world.

By "minimum," you mean "maximum?" I assume so.

Well, actually, if we could travel at the speed of light, then the fact is, for the person on the spaceship, it would take 4.5 years to reach Alpha Centuri, the nearest star to our sun. (Because Alpha Centuri is 26.5 trillion miles, 4.5 light years, away.)

EDIT: I suppose that if you want to get technical, you would have to take into account the time that acceleration would take, and the trip would take a few months longer. And actually, you can't quite reach the speed of light as far as we know, but you can get darn close.

Also, The trip would, of course, seem longer to us.

You assume incorrectly. The speed of light is the only MINIMUM pheasable speed at which we can hope to traverse space. Anything slower is suicide.

And I think you're getting relativity and the speed of light confused.

Because i can tell you you're just plain wrong. And so was i. In fact it was would take thousands of years, at thousands of km/h, to reach the nearest star. But you are right about that laser stuff milker.

And no Lup, I'm no idealic in the sense that I'm just saying today we can throw down all our guns and hug. People shall always war, it is a fact. People are greedy. Over time I feel that we might get over shit, but it will take a lot of time. There are too many people consumed by race, the all-mighty-dollar, and other petty crap.

No, now infact you totally remind me of that dickhead. Because you don't have any answers, just bullshit hypothetical non-sensical wankery. Shut up, stop using anti-capitalist buzz-phases and get a fucking clue.

"Ohh, i don't know whats right, but i know this isn't it. I don't know what i'm waiting for, but i'll just keep waiting..."

Well thats fucking great. Until you figure out what you DO want, get back in your fucking box.

You assume incorrectly. The speed of light is the only MINIMUM pheasable speed at which we can hope to traverse space. Anything slower is suicide.

And I think you're getting relativity and the speed of light confused.

Because i can tell you you're just plain wrong. And so was i. In fact it was would take thousands of years, at thousands of km/h, to reach the nearest star. But you are right about that laser stuff milker.

Ah, I see. Well, somebody could travel at half the speed of light, but it would take twice as long to get there! (It would feel shorter for them, though.)

The speed of light is 186,282 miles per second, and, like I said, it would take 4.5 years to get to Alpha Centauri at that speed. The fastest man-made thing ever was the Ulysses probe, and it traveled at 27.4 miles per second. At that speed, it would take (eek!) 29,913 years to reach Alpha Centauri. (Which is a little less than 26 trillion miles away.)

I'm pretty sure that, as far as we know, traveling faster than the speed of light woulden't be possible because mass becomes infinate. I'm not sure what you mean about the speed of light being the minimum speed for space travel.

Thousands of kilometers per hour is about what the Ulysses probe is doing, so, yeah, it would take a long time.

I'm pretty sure that, as far as we know, traveling faster than the speed of light woulden't be possible because mass becomes infinate. I'm not sure what you mean about the speed of light being the minimum speed for space travel.

The whole reason this shit started was irtar was wanking on about spacetravel, my whole arguement being based on the point regarding the feasibility of any such crap occuring.

So, unless (care of wormhole/superstring theory) we can reduce the distance between 2 points, lightspeed itself is barely feasible because at even the shortest points it would take numbers of years.

Even considering anything less than the speed of light for MANNED space travel is just retarded, especially when factoring the distances travelled (not just time passed). When time is factored in one must consider human lifespan. At half the speed of light you're wasting almost a decade of your life in travel. Which means only 30 year old people can be used for the operation (due to 10 odd years of requisite training and the fact that any older would be basically useless to the long term efforts of the mission).

That is my point about light speed being the MINIMUM speed for realistic space travel.

And then we must remember that AC 1&2 are just the nearest, generally the distances dealt with are infinitely larger than 4.3 odd light years. And thank you for bringing me to my next point.

The fastest man-made thing ever was the Ulysses probe, and it traveled at 27.4 miles per second.

It has taken man 40,000 years (first human habitation, aborigines) to reach that point. And even with the exponential technology growth that 'shows' we are doubling in computer/information/etc speed every year, its still going to take 1000's more years to even HOPE to approach a feasible space travel speed, further reinforcing my point that any such 'look to the stars' talk is just pure and utter crap.

Irtar, i understand you may have said such stupid comments as a simple 'throwaway SW nerd' type statement which wasn't intended to be taken seriously, but that kinda crap only flies at TGC. We are uberhax0red nerds here who will punish your foolish indescretions with relentless fact.

One thing to think about from a great man, Rev. James Brown;

"Don't burn, learn."

And baby, you just got burnt...