Question

[Drotar]

Is traveling at light speed possible for humans? I heard that as something gets faster, it get less wide, and gains mass. And also that if you traveled at light speed, your width would reach zero. So wouldn't it be impossible for any machine or human in it to ever reach that speed?

 

[Jet Black]

nothing with mass can travel at c. that is right.

the length contraction is seen from an outside observer, so from the POV of a person travelling very near the speed of light, things look alot closer together than they are, but from the POV of an outside observer, it is the traveller that looks like a pancake.

 

[Jet Black]

the reason things with mass cannot travel at c, is to do with the amount of energy required to accelerate an object to c, it is infinite.

 

[Drotar]

So I guess I'll never get to meet my doppleganger on Tatoonie right?

 

[Jet Black]

So I guess I'll never get to meet my doppleganger on Tatoonie right?

assuming he is alive now, not unless he lives to tens of thousands of years old. Even if you could travel at c, and so you arrived there and you hadn't aged a bit, he would still have aged by however many years it took for you to get there at light speed (since c is finite).

 

[Drotar]

That, my friend, Jet Black- was a joke.

 

[Drotar]

I would like to travel to Tatoonie though...

...find Princess Amidala and Leia, learn to speak Jawa.

I wonder if there's a bizarro-Jet Black that's YEC.

 

[Jet Black]

I wonder if there's a bizarro-Jet Black that's YEC.

only things with a probability that is not 0 can happen