What Happens If an Object Exceeds the Speed of Light?

[JaredJames]

The metal rod thing could easily be tested since we've been able to directly measure the speed of light in a lab for over 100 years and getting better at it ever since. A 2ly long rod connecting comoving planets would still have some other issues to work out obviously.

What's there to test? We know how fast shock waves travel. We know exactly what would happen with such a rod. It certainly wouldn't be ftl communication.

I'm glad I got a big juicy nibble on my 2012 joke. Of course I was referring to the date when the Planck Spacecraft, launched years ago by the ESA, provides us with its first complete sky survey. I thought this forum might be the correct place to discuss data from the Planck, but maybe our little monkey brains aren't as ready as I'd hoped.

If it's valid research then it's fine, but attempting to subtly insult the people here is not.

 

[Subluminal]

Get over yourself! The writings of Galileo, Einstein and many other respected scientists are loaded with thinly veiled insults towards those who disagreed with them. Since you enjoy doing it too, consider yourself in good company.

 

[JaredJames]

Get over yourself! The writings of Galileo, Einstein and many other respected scientists are loaded with thinly veiled insults towards those who disagreed with them. And if you enjoy doing it too, consider yourself in good company.

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[Cajun]

Originally Posted by Subluminal

"The characters in your story about such a massive machine would encounter some interesting effects on how time changes relative to how people far away from the machine (or distant points within it) observe time. Signals eminating from the center would be red shifted, infalling signals would be blue shifted. Read up on GPS satellites and GR."

Ive thought about that, if we looked in the star and saw an object the size of hundreds of thousands of galaxies, what would it look like from far away or even on its surface? Like the surface of Earth going on past the solar system? I understand red/blue shift when i comes to the expansion of the universe, but let's say we were using entangled photons for a quantum computer (just read a great article on our first photon entanglement and its use in quantum computers http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110120111039.htm), what would red/blue shift do to the computer processes? Faster information going outward but not inward? Ya, I am impressed by the timing signals we use for the satellites, to think about the combined human effort we put into GPS.