I think it should actually get shorter as it approaches the speed of light. And since it's not equipped with a warp drive, and can't actually warp space time (beyond that which it does due to its own gravity field), it's sadly stuck at the same old speed limit as you and me. No passing light speed.

New WIRED article: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/08/ddwfttw/all/1

Excellent coverage.

You mean.... Warp 2 is a myth?.....

Thanks. Of course in this case we have no one to blame for errors since they invited us to write this article ourselves.



Nope - warp 2 is still OK because they don't actually travel faster than light. Instead they warp space so they can get to their destination in half the time it takes light to get their in unwarped space. I'm thinking maybe that should be our project for next year. We may need something fancier than wood, foam, glass, steel, and carbon for this one.

Congrats on the wired article. Well deserved coverage...and finally something you have written. Good read!!!

OT: Now I feel a little out in deep water here, but an object approaching speed of light (which if it has mass it could only achieve the speed with infinite energy ie. impossible? Bending of space would also require the same infinite energy?)...but approaching higher speeds would it not look longer? Assuming we could actually perceive such a speed....look at at a car going fast...it will look longer than other cars? .

I understand that objects are not perfectly rigid and that an object that accelerates will not have the same speed at the front as it has in the back and it therefore is shorter, but that does not account for our perception that it looks longer? Or not?

There are as many questions as statements here...

Thanks!



As near as I understand, that's still considered impossible by mainstream physicists.



A LUDICROUS amount of energy - yes. But I don't think infinite.



Certainly there is motion blur when you look at fast moving objects with a camera, but I'm not familiar with such a perception with the human eye/brain.

That being said, I'm certainly no expert on this stuff.

Oh good... I want to jump in at a layman's level!

If speed is defined by distance/time... then we're thinking that warping space and time actually diminishes the distance between two points by bending space?

If not, if I can get from point A in non-bent space to point B, then my speed is d/t which can exceed the speed of light! (... unless, of course, then passage of time is slowed in proportion to the amount of space bending that occurs.... t(ime) increases proportionate to decrease in d(istance).. and the actual speed, as measured from the unwarped frame of reference, is maintained as unchanged. This would imply that, even allowing for warped space, if time slows proportionate to the decrease in distance, speed does not change. Therefore the speed of light is constant even through worm holes and the like.)

I think you got some of that wrong - but again I'm not the expert. What I can say is this much... Time slows down as seen by the guy in the other frame. What makes it even more bizarre is that both people see the other as being slowed down. In your own frame you don't feel any slower, faster, longer, or shorter. And in your own frame you can't go faster than the speed of light. Nor will you be going faster than the speed of light to the other observer.

But here's where it get's perhaps most bizarre. You could argue that for practical purposes you sort of did go faster than the speed of light. Let's say you're going to take trip to a star that's 100 light years away - and you're going to do it going 99% the speed of light. That means it should take you about 101 years to get to that star - and it will. But when you get there you will only be (let's say) a day older. So you went 100 light years in a day. Kind of seems like you must have been going 365 times the speed of light - but you weren't - your time just slowed down.

Now, if you're thinking you beat the system, just head home to tell your lovely wife about this superluminal trip. When you get back you've got two days of beard growth and a wife that's 200 years older than when you left her yesterday morning. Unless she has some really spectacular moisturizer, she probably won't have held up that well.

Yeah I was afraid that was it...maybe I've been watching too much Star Wars / Star Trek