This demonstrates your gross misunderstanding of relativistic physics. No object with a finite rest mass (i.e. something small) can EVER travel at light speed.
You can accellerate a small object (like a charged particle) to CLOSE to light speed, and in the process imbue it with enormous energy (mass), but you can never REACH light speed.
A Cosmic "ray" is a naturally accellerated charged particle travelling at close to C. When it hits the Earth (or its atmosphere) it causes a collision chain and enormous amounts of ionisation.
A massless object CAN travel at the speed of light, but it's energy is neccesarily limited.
Examples include photons, which regularly - indeed incessantly - strike the Earth at full light speed, and Neutrinos [*almost* massless, *almost* reach C] which mostly fail to strike the Earth because it's collision cross-section is so feeble, from their point of view.
Space/Science » in reply to re: Who in this solar system is building actual starships?
re: something small, at light speed
The whole thread (56 posts)
- Aliens may have economic issues, too
- Think of seeds, not ivy+another solution to the paradox
- re: Aliens may have economic issues, too
- Maybe the answer is to use fewer resources...
- Interstellar travel is impossible, not just uneconomical
- False - Fusion sufficient
- Engineering Aliens - Think of Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein
- FAST interstellar travel has a lot of hurdles for us at present
- We put our human limitations on any possible aliens.
- Not trying to
- re: Not trying to
- But what if that one species showed up a long time ago and left?
- Like I said, interstellar travel is impossible
- re: Not trying to
- Not trying to
- We put our human limitations on any possible aliens.
- FAST interstellar travel has a lot of hurdles for us at present
- re: Aliens may have economic issues, too
- Speculative
- re: Aliens may have economic issues, too