Re: Faster Than Light Travel - Reply

At 17:19 14/09/97 -0700, you wrote:
>The SCI.ASTRO FAQ page is COOL!! 8-D  What these astronomy/physics
texts
>don't explain to me...If light has no mass (so it can travel at the
>speed of light), how can anyone feel it?  (Go from a dark room, to the
>bright sunny outdoors...You will feel a faint differance...That is the
>pressure of the light!)  If you can't feel it, how can it possibly
>bounce off of things so we can see them?
That would be impact of photons. See, light acts a particle (which by
definition has mass) and an energy wave (which doesn't) depending upon
how
you look at it. Or alternatively, it would be a feeling of pressure due
to
your skin expanding as it heats up :). Actually, there was a theory
(getting back to spaceflight) that you could push a very light ship
along
with a sail and very big laser. Wouldn't be very good for combat boats,
but
would make a heck of a scenario - sail ship moves 2" per turn and
anything
that passes through it's rear arc takes the equivalent of an A battery
hit.
Can you knock it out before it crosses the table.. What I never figured
about that was they always had the laser back on the home planet, never
fitted to the back of the ship. Then there was a video game ( I think
called Gravity, surprisingly) where the ships moved by opening a small
gravity well in front of the hull, which the ship then fell in to. Then
you
move the well on a bit more , and the ship falls down again.
Acceleration
for free, provided you could maintain the gravity well.

>It is my humble opinion that somethings have been missed.  Whether it
is
>simply that we humans just don't know...who knows?
The problem is you see, we don't now what we don't know so we can out
and
find out about it, if you see what I mean :).

>My favorite pet explanation of light, is it is a very tiny (quantum
>scale) object.  Light bounces at perfect angles like billard balls. 
>Automobile headlights don't explode when you are driving down the road
>(from the light piling up inside the bulb...the car's speed plus that
of
>light, puts it over the speed limit).	When you look at light one way,
>it looks like a partical (I think it is...)  and when you look at it
>another, it looks like a wave (an ocean wave is made up of water
>molocules).  You can feel the sun shining on you.
Something which we haven't mentioned of course is that, moving very
close
(or beyond)  C, it's VERY difficult to navigate. By the time your
sensors
have detected something, you're already crashing into it, which with ~c
momentum would be very messy. As I believe Holly once said 'brown
trousers
time...'. So in other words to maintain a real universe FTL fleet not
only
requires FTL drives and FTL navigation, but also FTL sensors. Or very,
very
accurate star maps. Which is why I actually prefer the wormhole / jump
point / hyperspace ideas. I just don't think near-c travel is feasible
even
if some propulsion method is found.

				TTFN
					Jon
----------------------------------------------
'And I love what we are but I hate what I am
 And I wanna be like you but I hate when you're like them'
		   Maria McKee 'What Else you Wanna Know'
BWFC Fans List Home Page - 
	    http://www.sar.bolton.ac.uk/bwfclist/home.html