Another science question need more nerds.

[Vanyali]

Hmm so an infinite amount of force is required to stop me. But how much force would be applied to that surrounding area if I just stopped running at lightspeed at 1 meter distance?

You wouldn't be able to stop running instantly. Irrelevant question.

[May90]

You wouldn't be able to stop running instantly. Irrelevant question.

Yes. And if you were, then the force, again, would be infinite: both because of the infinite acceleration, and infinite energy you had at start.

[Kaleredar]

I'd think that any homework question you're attempting to get the thread to answer should be solvable if you've been paying attention in class.

[Zethras]

Yes. And if you were, then the force, again, would be infinite: both because of the infinite acceleration, and infinite energy you had at start.

It’s like a self-contained paradox, what happens when an unstoppable force meets and immovable object, BUT AS THE SAME THING.

[Logwyn]

So I have a question and I need it answered. So if I am in a room and I run ahead of me at exactly one meter at lightspeed, how much force would be applied to the surrounding area, also how much force would be required to stop me.

I'd go with the 20 unicorns of force or UP

[DarkTZeratul]

This would happen:
https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

[Deleted]

So I have a question and I need it answered. So if I am in a room and I run ahead of me at exactly one meter at lightspeed, how much force would be applied to the surrounding area, also how much force would be required to stop me.

I ve got a better question I was thinking of recently:

If you are on a spaceship that is moving at the speed of light (lets say point of origin is Earth, so in a line away from Earth) and you walk forward with a constant velocity. What happens then? Do you move at a speed (in a line away from Earth) that is higher than the speed of light?

[Dendrek]

I ve got a better question I was thinking of recently:

If you are on a spaceship that is moving at the speed of light (lets say point of origin is Earth, so in a line away from Earth) and you walk forward with a constant velocity. What happens then? Do you move at a speed (in a line away from Earth) that is higher than the speed of light?

The answer is "simple": If you're moving at the speed of light, time does not pass for you... at all. You are literally stationary in time (while moving exceptionally fast through space). Therefore, it would take an infinite amount of time for you to move any distance from the light. As such, your speed would be no different than that of the light.

As an example: a photon arrives at its destination instantly (according to its own clock), regardless of how far away that is.

[billymayz]

The answer is "simple": If you're moving at the speed of light, time does not pass for you... at all. You are literally stationary in time (while moving exceptionally fast through space). Therefore, it would take an infinite amount of time for you to move any distance from the light. As such, your speed would be no different than that of the light.

As an example: a photon arrives at its destination instantly (according to its own clock), regardless of how far away that is.

yay photon physics and time dilation

[Wikiy]

If we assume you're moving at 0.5c instead of 1c, so we can ignore most relativistic effects, the answer is that the air would stop you, but you'd act with the same force on it and probably cause a shockwave that would explode your room over half of Earth.

[Raphtheone]

Dendrek touched on what I wanted to reply to the OP. If you're moving at the speed of light you're, from your point of view, everywhere. Inside the room, outside the room, on the moon, inside the sun, in all galaxies and in the vast empty void. The faster you move, the slower time goes for you. When you reach the speed of light, you can get to any point in space instantaneously, from your own perspective. Time ticks by for the rest of us though. But to reach this velocity you would have to use all energy that exists, assuming the universe isn't finite (which can't be proven one way or the other), meaning there's nothing left that can stop you. You'd be doomed to an eternity, litterally, of being everywhere, always.

If you did stop (as this is a hypothetical question), there would be no room left, as it was used up to get you to the speed of light. If you would settle for "near" the speed of light, it would mean instant death, your body would be consumed and there would be nothing left to stop.

I ve got a better question I was thinking of recently:

If you are on a spaceship that is moving at the speed of light (lets say point of origin is Earth, so in a line away from Earth) and you walk forward with a constant velocity. What happens then? Do you move at a speed (in a line away from Earth) that is higher than the speed of light?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACUuFg9Y9dY

Great channel. He has other videos touching on the subject as well.

Edit:
I watched the video again, it indirectly answers the OP's question as well. Basically what I wrote up top.

[Wikiy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACUuFg9Y9dY

Great channel. He has other videos touching on the subject as well.

I think another thing's worth mentioning. This hypothetical scenario, where you attempt to work out what exactly happens to a beam of light emitted from a light source moving at near light speed relative to an observer... The fact that it's measured as constant and equal both from the perspective of the observer and the perspective of the light source - it's not a result of special relativity. It is the main axiom (assumption) of special relativity. When you translate it to the mathematical language of physics, you actually get, believe it or not, all those weird formulas involving the square roots of things with v's and c's. You get time dilation, length contraction, redefinition of momentum, energy (both become infinite at c for anything with non-zero mass), Newton's second law and so forth.

The point is, we measured (in actual experiments, done by Michelson and others, at the end of the 19th century) that the speed of light is always c no matter how fast its source is moving. We measured it to be c from any and all reference frames. We realized that that simply has to be the central assumption of a new theory. Well, rather, Einstein did. And a dude called Lorentz as well. But yeah, they took that assumption all the way, in the mathematical sense, and special relativity was born.

[Hyve]

I smell someone using MMO-Champion to get their Homework done ...

[Raphtheone]

I smell someone using MMO-Champion to get their Homework done ...

I would seriously question the teacher who thought the OP's question would be suitable homework. If I had gotten that homework I would have filed a strongly worded letter to the headmaster, clearly explaining why it's nothing short of bonkers.

[Hyve]

I would seriously question the teacher who thought the OP's question would be suitable homework. If I had gotten that homework I would have filed a strongly worded letter to the headmaster, clearly explaining why it's nothing short of bonkers.

Homework isn't always about 1 + 1 = ?

Sometimes Homework is about going off and exploring the potential concepts of a theory, finding out that something isn't possible, and then using that knowledge to better understand physics. I've had a lot of Homework in my past where there was no "right answer" because the solution doesn't exist, but it was more an exercise to see if we were;

1) Lying about it and handed it in saying it's completed.
2) Able to work by ourselves, to research and better understand the subject

[Dendrek]

I've never understood this

How come a finite speed makes an object have infinite energy/mass?

Assuming you've taken high school algebra 2 (or whatever it might be called where ever you live) I assume you've seen graphs that have vertical asymptotes. As a reminder, it's an imaginary vertical line that a graph is unable to cross but which it gets "infinitely" close to (in other words, it gets really really close without touching). Very often, these result in the graph shooting straight up to positive infinity or straight down to negative infinity.

In our example, the speed of light is a vertical asymptote. The amount of energy needed to get an object moving at the speed of light is a graph that shoots off to infinite energy as the speed gets closer to c.

[Bollocks]

Popular explanation is that the closer you are to the speed of light, the more energy it takes to increase your speed just a bit more. You can get the speed equal to 0.9c, 0.99c, 0.99999999999c... And to get from 0.999999999990c to 0.999999999991c, you will require tremendous amount of energy. If you take all the matter in the Universe, convert it to energy and use all this energy to accelerate yourself, you might get a speed like 0.99999999999999999999999999999(who knows how many more)c, but that still won't be c.

But yes, to really understand where these things come from, you need, at least, to read a bit on special relativity, and that might require some level of physical knowledge to follow through.

Isn't that just limits?

- - - Updated - - -

I smell someone using MMO-Champion to get their Homework done ...

I don't think mmo champion is the best place to have homework done

[Raphtheone]

Homework isn't always about 1 + 1 = ?

Sometimes Homework is about going off and exploring the potential concepts of a theory, finding out that something isn't possible, and then using that knowledge to better understand physics. I've had a lot of Homework in my past where there was no "right answer" because the solution doesn't exist, but it was more an exercise to see if we were;

1) Lying about it and handed it in saying it's completed.
2) Able to work by ourselves, to research and better understand the subject

It's a shady practice.

Either you're asking the students when they're too young; they don't know enough on the subject for the experience to be rewarding and they end up handing in a half-assed homework, or they are old enough and know enough, in which case it's a moot exercise, as the information would be better served during class. During a lecture, or spending 10 minutes on the subject in groups discussing in class with a teacher around would at least teach and reward me more than spending weeks on the task outside the classroom would.

It would be a great homework for some story telling (language) or some sort of arts class, though. But then again, I had grossly incompetent teachers so for me questioning a teacher is the first stop. "Higher thinking" and "exploration" wouldn't even be on their radar.

Maybe I just fail to see what such a homework would teach (the average student).

[belfpala]

Did anyone link this yet? http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

[Vash The Stampede]

The question is invalid, you can't move at the speed of light.

Turns out you can, but it can't be in a vacuum.