Lets say you were going to do a render depicting an object moving faster than the speed of light, where would you put the shadow? Things that make you go hmmmm

Technically the render process calculates the light coming from a source reflecting on the object and arriving to observer's eyes. So an obj moving faster than light can't be rendered...... ;-) Artistically speaking I'll make no shadow. cheers

well, I suppose you could apply a blue shift as you approached the speed of light..;) Of course, as you approach the speed of light, the amount of energy required becomes infinite, so you couldn't power up your PC anyway..;) It's a pretty warped question..;)
How do the Enterprise engines work?
Very well, thank you..
-actual quote from the Paramount staff..;)

(smirks at Pakled) The Enterprise engines work the same as their artificial gravity... They DON'T work, it's theater! Would an objects shadow still move at the speed of light? In a negaverse, is the speed of Dark the inverse of the speed of Light in our world? If an object WERE going the speed of light, and thus "became" light, would it cast a shadow? I think not, although we could test it with conflicting volumetric lights, perhaps. Do perpendicular volumetric light rays cast shadows of each other? Perhaps finally we'll get to use those obscene parallel lights?

pakled I imagine that you put out a field that bends (compresses) space locally so that you are actually traveling a shorter distance within the field than you are outside it - so you are not really traveling at or faster than the speed of light you are compressing the space infront of you as you travel through it... but 'very well' works for me too. LOL MuddyGrub, I would imagine that an object traveling faster than the speed of light would become light(energy), and hopefullly remain coherent (if you ever want to see it again as anything but light) - so it would more than likely glow and cast rays rather than recieve shadows. - TJ

Yes But it would be a very small one. Tachyons are a putative class of particles which able to travel faster than the speed of light. Tachyons were first proposed by physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, and named by Gerald Feinberg. The word tachyon derives from the Greek (tachus), meaning "speedy." Tachyons have the strange properties that, when they lose energy, they gain speed. Consequently, when tachyons gain energy, they slow down. The slowest speed possible for tachyons is the speed of light. If a Tachyon traveled through local space, it would either pass through or possibly collide with the slower moving photons. This collision would knock the photon from its path and create a resulting shadow. It would also cause the tachyon to lose energy and speed up. If you can render this I would really like to see it! So would the Nobel Prize Comittee:)

Aye, this topic rules! And I'm glad we are getting to tachyons, yur explanation is great, electroglyph! Some supplement material : Nemesis - Isaac Asimov. The definitive work on theoretical hyperspace. The Gap Cycle - Stephen R. Donaldson. The best explanation of tach I've ever read, outside Scientific American. Also, possibly, the most violent literature ever written.

Boy, I guess I was absent frrom school that day - this is very interesting - I have nothing to add - but this a great read ....Go On!!!:? Question - where would you actuallly see the shadow (aasssuming there was a "shadow"-- what would the shadow be cast on? itself? Dummy in New York Roch222

According to Carl Sagan on Cosmos if you could get a car to travel at the speed of light and then turn on it's headlights someone in front of the car would still see the lights shining thus I assume you would still get a shadow. It all has to do with relativity. The rule being "Thou shalt not add my speed to that of the speed of light".

Hmm, its times like this I wish relativity didn't stop at the speed of light.. So, talking through my hat.... yeah, you'd get a shadow... a very fast moving shadow that I'm guessing would be moving too fast to see.... and it would be a long long way behind your craft.... think of how when you hear a jet airplane fly overhead, the sound appears to come from a long distance behind where the plane actually is when you hear it as a real world corolary. By the time the light (or lack of light for the shadow) went from your craft to the ground, the craft would likely be hundreds of thousands to millions of km away. I'd say just skip the shadow entirely for greater than light travel :)

Aldaron, good example. (I hope that guy gets out of the way in time.LOL) Tachions if they exist might actually be used to push an object forward given the right circumstances, but as far as I know neither tachions nor gravitons have been confirmed as existing; it would seem, however, that some form of radiant energy would be given off by an object traveling at speeds approaching the speed of light whether tachions or some other form of energy (like radio waves). Whether tachions would push photons out of their way or not is a good question. I think that tachions would simply pass through other objects and even photons, but that is more of a feeling I get about it than anything else.

Man.... That is a very good question. The mathematical computation is a quantum computation; thus, is impossible on the home computer. One would need a quantum computer to figure the math required I think. "Contemporary physics states that no object should be able to travel faster than the speed of light which is: c = 299'792'458 m/s (metres per second)." Does the speed of light change in air or water?... Yes. Light is slowed down in transparent media such as air, water and glass. The ratio by which it is slowed is called the refractive index of the medium and is always greater than one*. This was discovered by Jean Foucault in 1850. When people talk about "the speed of light" in a general context they usually mean "the speed of light in a vacuum". This quantity is also referred to as c. General Relativity... Einstein went on to discover a more general theory of relativity which explained gravity in terms of curved space-time and he talked about the speed of light changing in this new theory. In the 1920 book "Relativity: the special and general theory" he wrote: . . . according to the general theory of relativity, the law of the constancy of the velocity of light in vacuo, which constitutes one of the two fundamental assumptions in the special theory of relativity . . . cannot claim any unlimited validity. A curvature of rays of light can only take place when the velocity of propagation of light varies with position. Since Einstein talks of velocity (a vector quantity) rather than speed it is not clear that he meant the speed will change but the reference to special relativity suggests he did mean so. This interpretation is perfectly valid but a more modern interpretation is that the speed of light is constant in general relativity. The problem here comes from the fact that speed is a coordinate-dependent quantity, and is therefore somewhat ambiguous. To determine speed (distance/time) you must first choose some standards of distance and time, and different choices can give different answers. This is already true in special relativity: if you measure the speed of light in an accelerating reference frame, the answer will, in general, differ from c. The Star Trek question brings to mind, along side the Star Trek Enterprise propulsion theories, the theory of Teleportation also known as particle entanglement which is at present day a realization. Electroglyph's post also touches on this subject. Particle entanglement, multi-particle entanglement, or quantum entanglement which is no longer fiction, Realized with photons only at present; but non-the-less a realization. This theory is known as particle entanglement or quantum entanglement. "A team of scientists at the Australian National University in Canberra, have managed to teleport a stream of electronic data from one laser beam to another a few feet away! The Australian team used a process called quantum entanglement. They created two entangled laser beams of light. One beam was encoded with radio data and sent over an optical fiber link, while the other laser beam was sent in another direction across the lab. At the far end of the optical fiber, the laser beam was destroyed, while the other beam was monitored to read the values of its entangled photons. Just as the data was destroyed, it showed up in the other beam! It had been teleported from one beam to the other. Eureka! It worked! In 1998, a team in California teleported a single photon (or particle of light) using subatomic physics. They generated two photons at the same point (the process of entanglement or spin) and sent them in different directions. But the Australian team is the first to achieve a 100% success rate, howbeit, they only teleported a stream of data. ~Swade~

186,000 miles per second. It's not just a good idea, it's a law we can all live with
-Sign on the TNG set (too small to read)...;)
I wonder, if you're at the speed of light, you'd have to have an external light source to cast a shadow in the first place..;) Past it, I dunno..been too many decades since college (well 2, but who's counting..;) Supposedly the Star Trek ships cross the lightspeed barrier in Planck time (sp? it's the shortest amount of measurable time..), entering subspace, and each succeeding field allows for further multiples of Lightspeed. On the TOS scale, it was the cube of the warp; by TOS it had expanded to larger numbers..there's graphs out there on the web for the fanciful-minded among us. It was mainly set by the idea that you didn't want to make the galaxy too small, which makes for more stories..what were we talking about again?..;)

Teleportation rules. I fear that the only thing cooler than teleportation is that silly game Morrowind, which coincidentally you can teleport in.

Judging by the only thing man has been able to travel at the speed of light. It would cast no shadow, because ( as already stated ) it has to be converted to a light frequency ( or pigged backed on light ) to travel that fast. When 2 light source cross paths, they do not create a shadows. An object traveling at the speed of light would not cast a shadow when crossing another light scoure. But in the wonderful world of CG, there are no laws of physics or nature to break. So anything is possible. The thing is how realistic can it be made to look.

They have also managed to stop light, store it then transmit it again with the data that it contained.

on the speed of light: I believe that refraction refers to the bending rather than the slowing down of light - it simply takes longer as refraction (bending) causes the path to be longer and thus the apparent slowdown. Is the speed of light constant? Studying black holes some observers have indicated that the speed of light may be influenced by gravity. At the poles of black holes radio waves have been observed to escape along the polar axis at HALF the speed of light(much slower than normal but pretty good considering the circumstances). I believe that I heard that from Dr Kaku's radio program - it should be at mkaku.org, but you'll have to look around on that site for it. - TJ

I should go study again, so I didn't read everything yet. But it sounds logical to me that the shadow will travel at the speed of light and thus stay's behind. It's just like when you first see the airplane and then later hear the sound. In other words; you just get a dopler effect. I don't think that tachyons have much to do with the shadow, since the object consists of normal atoms and molecules. Maybe some tachyons (I don't really know much about those), but I don't think that would be significant next to the normal matter. Shadows travel at the speed of light, because they are simply the result of less photons hitting the surface.

Now if somebody could figure out why mass causes gravity other than "just because it's there". My guess is that it's actually a form of displacement. Probably something to do with the nature of photons when they're not shooting around between atoms (one of my crazy ideas, and if true the nature of such would make it that much harder to figure out.) Once science gets this figured out and applied gravitics becomes a field of study... I suppose it would then be possible to create a differential field, and "fall" towards your destination. Such a thing would probably create a refraction bubble generated by something akin to an artificial event horizon. And to top it off, dilation effects on the surface of the bubble would cause red or blueshift of light traversing it. Well, that's my crazy guess. Also note that other particles, etc. would be accelerated by such a field as well. Thus you'd need a good means of shielding, provided you don't want to cook yourself.

"When 2 light source cross paths, they do not create a shadows." Different lightsources can cast shadows. It has something to do with the different light-spectra of elements. I'll look it up after my math exam. As for why mass causes gravity, I think it was actually the gravity that created the mass, instead of the other way around. The particle that causes gravity is the higgs-particle if I remember correctly. Scientists are still trying to capture it.

Found the solution: In 1966 Peter Higgs (University of Edinburgh) proposed that the universe was full of a field called a HIGGS FIELD. Disturbances in this field as particles move through it cause objects to have mass. From a a quantum point of view, we can only stir up the field in discrete units. The smallest possible disturbance is due to a HIGGS PARTICLE, or more precisely, a Higgs Boson. The field consists of countless Higgs Bosons that act like a kind of cosmic molasses that fills all of space. As objects move through space they have to 'wade' through these Higgs particles that 'cling' to them, causing a drag that shows up as mass.

But would you see a shadow? Let's look at it from a biological standpoint. Fluorescent lights operate at 60 cycles AC in the US and 50 cycles per second in europe.In 60 cycles the current switches from running in one direction to running the other direction through the bulb 60 times every second. In the middle there is no current flow and the bulb is dark but you don't see it because the duration is too short for your biological system to detect. Motion picture film runs at 24 frames per second. You are shown a series of still images that your eyes and brain interpret as moving because you can't detect the gaps in between. If an object were big enough and flying at the right orientation relative to you and the light source it is possible it could either interrupt or deflect enough photons long enough to block the light and cause a shadow. It would have to be big enough or close enough and moving slow enough relative to the line between you and the light source to have a detectable shadow. If you did see the shadow, would we have six more weeks of winter?

You mean Higgs has deduced the existence of aether? that is progress! ..;) Now if we can drag Philgiston into the Unified Field Equations..;)

I take it you mean this aether? "A medium of great elasticity and extreme tenuity, supposed to pervade all space, the interior of solid bodies not excepted, and to be the medium of transmission of light and heat; hence often called luminiferous ether." or this one: "personification of the sky or upper air breathed by the Olympians; son of Erebus and Night or of Chaos and Darkness" *)

What's Philgiston? google got no relevant hits...

BTW electroglyph, you have a point with those fluorescent lights pulsating 50 or 60 times per second. However most objects traveling faster then light would be spaceships and I think the stars and sun don't pulsate.

I was not really implying that stars pulsate, just that it takes your eyes a few tenths of a second to register. look at it this way: Have you ever tried to look at the international space station? If you manage to get a good seven or eight minute window during twilight you can barely see what looks like a bright star moving across the sky as the sun reflects off solar panels the size of a football field. The space station orbits at 354KM or 220 miles up. Now suppose the something the size of the enterprise was parked right 1 meter above you at high noon. Ignore inertia and what it would do to the atmosphere and assume the enterprise takes off straight for the sun instantaneously at light speed (186000 miles per second). In 1/845th of a second it will be the height of the space station in orbit. It will look just as big, and block as much of the sunlight as the space station does when it travels across the sky above you. In 1.28 seconds it would be passing the orbit of the moon. It would take something the size of a good moon, heading in a straight line between the light source (the sun) and you (the observer) to block enough light long enough to be detected.

Rayraz, I believe that your equations say that given a field with a certain amount of energy, if you increase the size of the field you decrease the energy density in the field in an inverse proportion. the first equation relates to 3d (sphere) and the second to 2d area (of a circle?). . . . This all assumes that they have mass of course which at speeds at or beyond that of light they might not.

Electroglyph; If you take the reaction-time of your eyes into the equation, the whole object flying by at light-speed would be invisible to the human eye. So that means the object would have no visible shadow too. So an object moving faster then the speed of light should also be invisible. I think you've got the right answer to the question. Bikermouse; I've once been told that if an object collides with another object at the speed of light it would just fly through without a collision. If this is true then the object flying at light speed should also fly through the higgs-field without colliding with the higgs bosons and thus have no mass. But at that point the infinite amount of energy needed to get the object to the speed of light in the first place will not be kinetic energy anymore, because the object hass no mass. Where does that energy go? How does that work with the equation you explained? The equation assumes the object has mass. But now it hasn't. Where does the kinetic energy go? It can't just disappear can it?

Not only does time slow down as you reach the speed of light relative to the rest of the universe but your mass increases as well, in theory until you have infinite mass which requires infinite power and time stops. See how fun this is? :)

Somewhat random, but there's an article from sometime last year on science.com that has a bunch of physicists who were able to slow a beam of light down to 28 miles an hour. I'll see if I can't dig the article up. VERY interesting read; they shot the beam through a cube of condensed gas (boron? I think, but don't quote me on that) that was super-super-cooled.

Hyperspatial theory is the glory and beauty of the human experience... (up until recently I thought it was sex!) We are the only creatures on this Earth that are able to create such silliness, and use it to take Earth's flora and Fauna to other worlds. Make it so....

Rayraz, You see the elison next to the 1/4Pi in the first equation? I think that refers to exponet; as i/4pi radians times the exponet where if the exponet is two you have 3 dimentions if it is three you have 4 dimensios etc. the energy you speak of might go into one of these other dimensions. If you have a serious interest you could start by logging on to mkaku.org - besides the fact that I'm pretty sure I met him when we were kids, he's a favorite because he has a way of explaining this stuff in a simple manner. He has a weekly radio program you might be able to access through streaming video either on his site or through kpfa radio station sorry you'll have to do a google for that one. If you're lucky and have a good physics prof you can talk to, you could visit him at office hours with these types of questions. - I don't know how many times I visited old Dr. Brown to ask him questions - even if I didn't always understand what he said it was worth it to see his eyes light up to realize that someone had an interest in what he had to say on physics. ***** Hey don't you have a Math Exam on monday? !!! ?? (or was that last week - time is so confusing.)

addendum: Streaming video doesn't sound right somehow - but it's called something like that

Thanx bikermouse. I'll check out the link. My math exam was last thursday it wasn't really easy, but I think it went okay. I've got Physics on monday. At school we don't get much further then protons, electrons, neutrons, positrons, anti-protons and neutrino's though. I've been interested in this kind of stuff for years. I remember that at 10 years old I had to do a talk about something I was interested in, so I told the class how a nucleair reactor works. Mainly about splitting atoms. After a lecture of about one hour not even the teacher got it. But I did get an 10,5 on a scale of 1 to 10 though.

RayRaz, Glad you got through it ok. math is really important - The thing that griped me when I was learning it is that nobody ever told me what all that trig and calculus was for except for Dr Brown and he couldn't make up for the years of neglect by teachers that should have been teaching 'how to be boring' rather than math. I had to learn programming inorder to see that it all had a purpose - especially in graphics! You'll like that site - it talks about exactly the type of things you're asking about. I used to be able to do that type of stuff until I got shot, got an anesthesia I was allergic to, and my math skills went to zero (I guess it killed a few brain cells or something.) One thing you will find is the unified field equation hasn't been completely solved yet - maybe you'll be the one to do it! BTW: Dr. Michio Kaku will be on the Art Bell/George Noory program sometime this week. I think Tuesday Morning for you if you can find a station that carries it. cheers, - TJ

I'll check it out. I've once had anesthesia too, when I broke my right arm. They had to put the bones back in the right place and because they thought they needed to insert a piece of steel to keep everything in place I got an anesthesia. I was really sick for a few days. I think it was the combination of the anesthesia and the infusion. I was allergic to both. Luckily my math-skills didn't go down because of it.

Aether- the first definition. Philogiston (probably misspelled)..if'n I remember correctly, it was an 18th-19th theory of what got used up when you burned something..like an element fire..also discredited. I read too much..;) How about Phrenology, everyone?..;) (the study of how the bumps on your head determine what sort of personality you have..gotta stop before I start talking about [molybdomancy -fortell the future from molten lead drops], or some such..;)

I bet that bump on the head stuff works great after you hit yourself with a hammer or after you banged your head against the wall :)

yeah..but it feels so good when you stop..;)