- #1
Physics1
- 21
- 0
If my arms were as long as 10 light years and I waved, wouldn't they be going faster than the speed of light?
If your arm were perfectly rigid then what you said would be true. However since no part of your arm, which consists of matter, can actually travel at speeds v > c then it follows that your arm is not rigid. It must bend according to the principle of relativity.Physics1 said:If my arms were as long as 10 light years and I waved, wouldn't they be going faster than the speed of light?
pmb_phy said:If your arm were perfectly rigid then what you said would be true. However since no part of your arm, which consists of matter, can actually travel at speeds v > c then it follows that your arm is not rigid. It must bend according to the principle of relativity.
Pete
I think there is no problem if we were to assume a, theoretically, perfectly rigid (Born rigid) arm. Of course, the farther out, the closer the arm component will approach c, but it will never reach or surpass c.pmb_phy said:If your arm were perfectly rigid then what you said would be true. However since no part of your arm, which consists of matter, can actually travel at speeds v > c then it follows that your arm is not rigid. It must bend according to the principle of relativity.
Pete
From what I know (which is not much), I think that once the ends of your arms approach c, the force required to push them becomes infinite. Therefore as you move your arms, you can exert as much force as you'd like, but you're never surpassing c.
We don't need GR for this, SR will do. Sometimes situations arise in astronomy where something appears to be superliminal, but I don't think this is one of them. But I could be wrong.But because the tips of your arms are experiencing less time, will this give the illusion that (to a stationary observer) his arm is moving faster than c? I really get confused when it comes to this part; I've only read a couple things on GR and still unsure about it.
One has to realize that while the disk could be seen as one thing at a macroscopic level, it is not on a (sub) atomic level.Kruger said:I mean the disk is one thing.
Kruger said:What's the problem with the following. I mean information can not be faster than c. But let's take a massiv disk with radius r and angular velocity 0. If I start giving it angular velocity from the centre then the outer site must also get speed, but in accordance with special relativity the time needed that the outer site is moving after the centre begun moving is: r/c. But why? I mean the disk is one thing.
If you had a long rigid stick ( about a mile long say) and you poked me in the back with it, it would be several seconds from the time you started pushing, to when I felt the push. The impulse travels through the rod at the speed of sound. This is established by theory and experiment.I mean the disk is one thing.
The speed of light is a universal physical constant that refers to the speed at which light travels in a vacuum, which is approximately 299,792,458 meters per second.
Light travels approximately 9.46 trillion kilometers in one year, which is equivalent to approximately 5.88 trillion miles.
The speed of light is incredibly fast and is considered to be the fastest known speed in the universe. It is about 186,282 miles per second, which is more than 670 million miles per hour. This speed is significantly faster than the speed of sound, which is only 767 miles per hour.
If your arms were 10 light years long, it would mean that they would have a span of approximately 9.46 trillion kilometers. This is an enormous distance and would extend far beyond our solar system and into deep space.
The speed of light is a fundamental aspect of our physical world and plays a crucial role in our understanding of the universe. It helps us measure distances in space, calculate the age of the universe, and explore the behavior of matter and energy at high velocities. Without it, our understanding of the universe would be vastly different.