🚀 go-pugleaf

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First off, I am not sure what relevance this thread has to the newsgroups
it has been posted to.

Secondly, in an attempt to kill it, please allow me to address the
following ideas:

> > Scott Hess wrote:
> > 
> > ] You _cannot_ go faster than the speed of light while remaining
> > ] in our universe.  Almost by definition, if you are going faster
> > ] than the speed light travels in our universe, then you are
> > ] _not_ in our universe.

Scott, please define _our universe_.  While your at it, please define
_universe_.  And if I am not in your universe where am I?
However, I will agree that the mathematical models of time and space that
are implied by Einstein's theories of relativity imply that a body that
exhibits rest mass cannot either achieve or exceed the speed of light
without somehow introducing a discontinuity in space-time.  I have a
problem however, with your characterization of experiencing a discontinuity
being out of this universe.

For the rest of the readers, I apologize for the mathematical nature of the
above paragraph, but that is the only way to express the subject
accurately.  Please read below for an attempt to address this matter by
analogy:

Somebody else wrote:
> > 
> > Scott, just curious if you have two bodies coming at each other
> > really fast, why will gravity not accelerate them to the speed of
> > light?  Is it because the faster they get the less mass they
> > have, so less gravity?  What if one or more of the bodies has
> > mass enough to be a black hole?

Actually, as an object increases velocity, its Kinetic energy increases (I
hope we are all familiar with K= 1/2*mv^2), but by Einstein's equations,
E=mc^2, implies that the mass increases, thus it becomes harder to
accelerate.  So the mass is greater, not less.  This increase in
mass/energy is asymptotic as v approaches c, so that if one could reach c,
one's mass would be infinite.  (yes with the example of gravity as the
acceleration, when the mass is infinite, so is the acceleration, but you
will just have to trust me that the equations work out, mostly because
acceleration is not used as a quantity, nor is velocity, but rather Energy
and momentum, and the result is that we stay below c)

And still a third wrote:
> Two bodies are both moving at 3/4 the speed of light towards each other.
> Doesn't this mean that relative to one of the bodies, the other body is
> travelling at 1.5 times the speed of light? If this is possible, doesn't
> this apparently violate the so-called constant of C? If not, why not? 

The simplest way to explain this is that for a body moving at 3/4 the speed
of light, distances (at least those measured along its direction of motion)
will be shorter, and time will be longer, so that another body traveling
toward the first will appear to be less than c.  The addition of velocities
is simply not linear one approaches c.  Please note, time will actually be
longer, and distance shorter, they will not simply appear so.  I know this
is counter-intuitive, but it is in fact the case.  

I hope I have clarified things rather than simply muddled them.  If you
have questions, please either address them to me in e-mail, or suggest a
single newsgroup that we may continue this thread on, preferably one where
it would be on topic.

regards,
Dave
d...@bank2000.com