If a marshmallow traveled at 99.99 percent the speed of light hit the Earth, what would happen?
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The relativistic factor is:


1
gamma = ------------- = 70.7
2 1/2
( 1 - (v/c) )


and the total energy is then
2
E = gamma x m c


A marshmallow weighs about 10 grams, so the total energy is about 70.7 x 10 x ( 30,000,000,000)^2 = 6.4 x 10^23 ergs. I think this is equal in energy to a few dozen good-sized hydrogen bombs. It makes a mess on the surface, but has no effect on the orbit of the earth.
Please, do not attempt this experiment yourself. Consult professionals first!!

quote:

Originally posted by occrider Much like someone mentioned assymptodes before, increases in energy and mass as you approach c would approach infinity. Therefore objects cannot exceed the speed of light using conventional means.

That person would be me. Damn I'm good, I though of the asymptote thing in my 20 seconds of thinking (while I typed actually). wow. I should go for a PhD in physics.

quote:

Originally posted by Turbonium That person would be me. Damn I'm good, I though of the asymptote thing in my 20 seconds of thinking (while I typed actually). wow. I should go for a PhD in physics.

i bet you'd do well in electricity & magnetism

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lets say you managed to travel into the past,
the mere fact that your there means you changed something in the world, thats 100% certain.
now lets supposed one of the actions you made there caused the younger you (the one that was there before you discovered timetravel) die.
btw, the further you go into the past increases the probability for something like that to occur.

i think you can draw your own conclusions now, cant ya?

cuervo79 has mentioned a question: "what if you were meant to go back in time",,,, well then... that isnt a legitimate question. coz most probably, as both you and i have mentioned, you would cause your own death, and then this whole "episode" wouldnt have occured at all,, and if thats so, then you have just eliminated our entire universe by that action.

in response to whiskers': "that is one of them time paradoxes that we can't answer until we try them out.
why do you people always need to have everything explained to you? i repeat, even the most genius physicists can't prove this stuff. so you can believe it or not, but don't dismiss it just because you don't have proof."

well,, to start with,,, im not dismissing it completely (because of the massive lack of knowledge and/or perceptive abilities we have as humans in the year 2003), im just dismissing it for the time being,

philosophically speaking, time travel cannot/have not/is not/will not exist in our universe based on the mere fact that this universe does exist (time travel will 100% guaranteed change something in our universe, and such a change will eliminate our universe and everything that occured/occurs/will occur in it)

regarding the john titor part: what proof do we have that he actually made those predictions prior to those events hapenning?

oh!!! how could i forgotten this?!
you are all talking about time travel in refference to the speed of light, but wouldnt that just be "viewing" the past/future?
why arent you discussing time travel in refference to the speed of sound then?
just imagine, walking around in the world with an auditory time lapse of about 2 minutes,, damn,, that would be hell'a confusing., wouldnt it?

and finally, to partially discredit what i just said, have a look to my sig,, coz im still supporting that quote of mine by all means

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People who own my ass: Citric Acid, Boomer187, Tribu, Sand Leaper,
Jackson, venomX, jamie, Renegade, Konjin, Akridrot, Miss Bliss.
Psy-T - Down The Rabbit Hole (400minute long acid set)

Last edited by Psy-T on Oct-08-2003 at 07:30

if any of you saw the movie "time machine", which is decent up to the "what if" moment (and has one of the BEST CGI skits), it talks about a time paradox and the change of the space continuum.


alex's gf is killed, so he is motivated to finish his time machine project to go back and save her from her murderer, but after he does so, she gets killed by a horse, and then in other numerous ways.

basically, if she wasn't killed, alex wouldn't build the time machine and he wouldn't go back to save her... so in theory, she'd be dead, and alex WOULD be motivated to build the machine and save her, but then that means he doesn't build the machine... get what i'm saying?

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Time travel to the future IS possible. Although it is not so much jumping into the future at a different part of the time continueum, as it is journeying through time albeit at different relative rates. By approaching the speed of light, time is still passing by, however, the time relative to you is different than the time that is relative to everyone else. Time dilation has been proven.

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Retro ...

quote:

Originally posted by occrider Time travel to the future IS possible. Although it is not so much jumping into the future at a different part of the time continueum, as it is journeying through time albeit at different relative rates. By approaching the speed of light, time is still passing by, however, the time relative to you is different than the time that is relative to everyone else. Time dilation has been proven.

Yes, it has been proven, but in what circumstances? It's like the laws of mechanics - they don't apply at the quantum level. You have to use quantum physics.

I still think, as a whole, the world doesn't know jack shit about physics. Let me rephrase that. I KNOW that we don't know jack shit about physics. Yes, we come up with great theories, but we are limited to theories only, as we lack, for the most part, the technologies and resources to test them.

Think about what we knew a couple hundred years ago. Pretty much nothing (relative to now). We're barely scraping the surface of it all as it stands. This is why I sometimes wish I was born in the year 20,000 or something. I can't even begin to fathom what the world will be like then.

quote:

Originally posted by Turbonium Yes, it has been proven, but in what circumstances? It's like the laws of mechanics - they don't apply at the quantum level. You have to use quantum physics. I still think, as a whole, the world doesn't know jack shit about physics. Let me rephrase that. I KNOW that we don't know jack shit about physics. Yes, we come up with great theories, but we are limited to theories only, as we lack, for the most part, the technologies and resources to test them. Think about what we knew a couple hundred years ago. Pretty much nothing (relative to now). We're barely scraping the surface of it all as it stands. This is why I sometimes wish I was born in the year 20,000 or something. I can't even begin to fathom what the world will be like then.

What do you mean under what circumstances? The effects of time dilation have been proven on the physical level as much as gravity has. They put 4 cessium beam atomic clocks on 2 planes and measured the time differences when they landed. Additionally, they've measured time dilation as they've occurred on human astronauts in space.

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Retro ...

quote:

Originally posted by occrider What do you mean under what circumstances? The effects of time dilation have been proven on the physical level as much as gravity has. They put 4 cessium beam atomic clocks on 2 planes and measured the time differences when they landed. Additionally, they've measured time dilation as they've occurred on human astronauts in space.

How fast do planes go? Not that fast.

quote:

Originally posted by Turbonium How fast do planes go? Not that fast.

Well that's why the time dilation was measured in nano-seconds. Then they did corresponding studies on time dilation as exhibited by space shuttles which had much larger speeds. Therefore the time dilation can then be extrapolated to what would occur if one were travelling close to the speed of light. But the point is, is that time dilation has been observed even at the relatively minute speeds that airplanes travel.

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Retro ...

quote:

Originally posted by occrider Well that's why the time dilation was measured in nano-seconds. Then they did corresponding studies on time dilation as exhibited by space shuttles which had much larger speeds. Therefore the time dilation can then be extrapolated to what would occur if one were travelling close to the speed of light. But the point is, is that time dilation has been observed even at the relatively minute speeds that airplanes travel.

Yea I know what you're saying, but what if it all goes out of whack/different at near light speeds? Or something, forget it, maybe I'm not making sense.

why is nobody reffering to my post?
as if it was off-topic or something,,,,
i just wanted to know if i made any sense to you folks

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People who own my ass: Citric Acid, Boomer187, Tribu, Sand Leaper,
Jackson, venomX, jamie, Renegade, Konjin, Akridrot, Miss Bliss.
Psy-T - Down The Rabbit Hole (400minute long acid set)