From: Louis Newstrom (louisnews@comcast.net)
Date: Tue Mar 12 2002 - 05:28:36 MST
From: "Dickey, Michael F" <michael_f_dickey@groton.pfizer.com>
> That is, one can not classically
> accelerate to the speed of light, because this would require infinite
> energy, and the subsequent temporal dialition and lorentz transformation
> would also be infinite.
1. You must get from low speeds (less than c) to high speeds (faster than
c) wihtout ever passing through a medium speed (exactly c). At exactly the
speed of light, there is a singularity. (Unlike the extropian use of the
word "singularity", a mathematical "singularity" implies a situation that is
impossible.)
2. Matter travelling faster than light would have a negative time length.
In other words, it must be travelling backwards in time. (Most people don't
see this as a problem, they see it as a benefit. The problem is that since
we have never observed anything going backwards in time, we don't know if
that is possible.)
3. Matter travelling faster than light would have to have imaginary mass.
(Imaginary as in the square root of minus one.) This implies that matter
travelling faster than light isn't even the same kind of matter that travels
slower than light. So even if faster than light matter is a possibility, it
may be impossible to change slow matter into fast matter.
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