What is a "light-year"? (1 Viewer)

[Glenn Overholt]

Gee Jack, but wouldn't that KILL off the series?

Maybe they could rename it "Dead Spaceships in Space"!

Glenn

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

But, then, think of the visuals that would result in.

Is this a reference to David's "chunky sala" comment or Holdamen's "Halle Berry or J-Lo" line? Enquiring minds want to know...



Joe

 

[Mark Shannon]

and an Inertial Damping System that keeps the crew from turning to chunky salsa on the back wall of the bridge.

But that's why the replicators specilize in Silica replication. Surely they'll use it to it's full extent in the 25th century

 

[Joseph Howard]

Well, when talking about "mass" beyond the speed of light.
(Taken from one of my favorite websites Bad Astronomy).

Albert Einstein, when he formulated the theory of Relativity, was able to describe this problem using math. He found that as you get near the speed of light, the energy it takes to increase your velocity starts to increase very rapidly. The equation looks like this (I'll explain all the variables in a moment):


Energy = constant x [[ 1/(1 - v^2/c^2)^0.5 ]] -1

................................ 1
Energy= constant x ----------- - 1
.............................. /--------
............................. /.....v^2
........................... / 1 - ---
................................... c^2

(the "..." are just spaces)

This may look complicated, but it isn't too bad. "Energy" is the energy associated with the velocity, that is, the kinetic energy. For example, it takes more energy to get a baseball moving at 100 kilometers an hour than to get one going at 50 kph. "v" is the velocity at which you're moving, "c" is the speed of light (from the Latin word for light, "celeris"), and "constant" is just a plain old number that doesn't concern us here.
Now look at the number under the square root sign. As your velocity gets near the speed of light, v^2/c^2 gets very close to being equal to 1. 1 - 1=0, so the square root goes to zero. But wait! It's in the denominator, the bottom of the fraction. Anything divided by 0 is infinity! So what this is saying is that as you get very close to the speed of the light, the denominator "blows up" and the energy needed to get to the speed increases very rapidly. It would take infinite energy to go at the speed of light!

This is why the speed of light is considered to be a cosmic speed limit. No matter how fast you go, no matter how much energy you pour into your velocity, you can never quite reach the speed of light. Accelerating through a gravity field still means adding energy to increase your velocity, but you still just cannot ever reach c.

************


As for "information" and "quantum states" there does seem
to be buidling evidence that the speed of light may not
be a barrier as it is for mass.

Dr. Joe

 

[Edwin-S]

Why not? STAR TREK uses the deus ex machina of FTL space drive. FTL travel is a standard convention of SF. Any "neutral zone" created would be based on how long it took to cross the zone using the "current" technology. STAR TREK never defines exactly what distance/time period is traveled when using "warp" drive. The makers are let "off the hook" over the time it takes various races in the STAR TREK universe to travel in their respective spheres of influence.

As for the speed of light being the absolute limit, I was reading on a tech site (wish I could remember the name) about an experiment where the researchers found indications of a particle that traveled above -but not below- the speed of light. I wish I could reference the article but, unfortunately, I cannot.

STAR TREK, more than most TV Sci-Fi series, indicates that, even with "warp drive", it takes quite some time to travel between points in the Federation.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Lucas said he purposely wrote it that way to make Han Solo seem somewhat stupid.

As opposed to Lucas being a numb-nut when it came to astronomy, and getting his terms all wrong...

 

[Mike Wladyka]

Acceleration, not speed pines people against walls

it was implied that there would be significant acceleration to reach ridiculous and ludricous speeds...

 

[Todd K]

As opposed to Lucas being a numb-nut when it came to astronomy, and getting his terms all wrong...

I once read an explanation of the Kessel run thing that made at least some sense:

The run to Kessel may be difficult. There may be asteroid fields, and whatnot. A direct straight line course may not be possible. Maybe 12 parsecs is some kind of record, wheras most people have to travel all the way around an asteroid field and it takes maybe 20 parsecs to get there. For example, there are no roads that go directly from NYC to LA. Thus the distance to drive there is greater than the distance of a straight line between the two cities.

 

[MarkHastings]

Todd, that's interesting. It reminds me of the time I went to Cape Cod from CT. Everyone kept telling me to take I-495, but on the map it was shorter to go Route 6, so I took route 6 which took me so much longer to get there than if I went I-495. So in that case, the longer distance proved to be faster.

But in the case of Han Solo, isn't he trying to prove how fast the ship can go, so he would need to also bring up a time value to make the 12 parsecs a good argument. 12 parsecs may prove he's a good pilot, but it doesn't prove how fast the ship can go.

 

[Mike Wladyka]

isn't he trying to prove how fast the ship can go

i think that maybe if the kessel run was something like accelerate to light speed then stop and accelerate back to light speed..then a distance would be appropiate to judge how fast the falcon is...that way only the ships with the best acceleration could do it in 12 parsecs...but i think lucas might be wrong on his astronomy and we are justifying the misinfo

 

[Todd K]

But in the case of Han Solo, isn't he trying to prove how fast the ship can go, so he would need to also bring up a time value to make the 12 parsecs a good argument. 12 parsecs may prove he's a good pilot, but it doesn't prove how fast the ship can go.

Yeah, the conversation was about speed, so who knows why he said that. Half BSing, half defending his ol' rust bucket. It's really just a throw away line, nothing to get too upset over.

 

[Bryan X]

You have to remember that space (distance) is relative just as time is (and space and time really should be referred to as one unit, space-time). If I am travelling at the speed of light, the results of my measurements of the distance between two objects will differ from the measurement of someone who is not moving with me.

As for the Han comment, I believe that at the time Lucas just didn't know what a parsec was-- it just sounded good. Now, personally, I think the best way to justify the comment is that Han was just BSing Obi-Wan. It fits Han's personality perfectly, anyway.

 

[Greg*go]

The Warp Speed in Star Trek did have specified distances in the shows. Here's a Warp Speed Chart that explains it. I'm not really sure how they calculate it, but it gets exponentially faster the closer they get to Warp 10. {takes geek classes off} And I don't know if they ever talked about how far things actually were in that universe, which is equally important as the speed they are traveling. {oops, they're still on}

I remember watching 1 episode that said they only had about 20% of the galaxy mapped in TNG, which was surprising to me at the time.

 

[Brandon_T]

Is this a reference to David's "chunky sala" comment

Is everyone sure that with this "salsa" comment that silica isn't involved somehow in light years?

Sorry too much motrin right now

B

 

[Steve Ridges]

Of course, we cant go the speed of light or faster because if we did, the headlights on our spaceships wouldn't work.

 

[Francois Caron]

Is this a reference to David's "chunky sala" comment

Actually, the "chunky salsa" is included in one of the author's comments in the "Star Trek Starfleet Technical Manual", ISBN 0671704273.

 

[Bryan X]

Of course, we cant go the speed of light or faster because if we did, the headlights on our spaceships wouldn't work.

I know you're just joking around, but that brings up one peculiar aspect of light. It travels at a constant speed regardless of the speed of it's source.

For example, assume you are traveling at half the speed of light, and you turned on a lightbulb. One second after you turned on the lightbulb (measured by an accurate clock carried with you) the light would have travelled exactly 186,000 miles in EVERY direction -- even though you were speeding through space at 93,000 miles per second in one direction.

 

[MarkHastings]

Bryan, so if you were travleing the speed of light and turned on a lightbulb, would the light that was emitted from the bulb actually be traveling twice as fast as the speed of light?


OUCH! My head hurts.

 

[Bryan X]

so if you were travleing the speed of light and turned on a lightbulb, would the light that was emitted from the bulb actually be traveling twice as fast as the speed of light?

No, that's the weird thing about light. If you were traveling at the speed of light and turned on a lightbulb, you would still measure the light as traveling at the speed of light in all directions. After one second, the light would be exactly 186,000 miles from you in every direction.

Think of the waves of light like the ripples in a pond caused by a pebble. If you were to flash a lightbulb, imagine a ripple of light expanding out from you in all directions. No matter how you move, you will ALWAYS remain at the center of that 'ripple'. Contrast this to sound. If you make a sound, the sound also expands out from you in all directions. However, if you move, the center of that sound ripple remains at the point where you originally made it.

 

[Greg*go]

So then what happens when you travel on a plane that travels faster then sound? Can't you still communicate with other people on the plane, even though the sounds are traveling slower?