[ExI] FW: speed of light at the speed of light

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2013 8:47 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] speed of light at the speed of light

 

On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 11:50 PM, Gordon <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

Good, thanks. Now what does it mean to say, as I do and you seem to agree,
"in the limit as I approach c"? You'll recall that I am accelerating toward
c relative to earth such that the difference between my speed and c is
halved in each time period. In theory I never reach c, so I needn't worry
about the supposed impossibility of a massive object moving at c, but I do
become infinitely close to c. This seems fine until one considers that
.999... 1.

 

>.That last sentence is unclear.  What do you mean by ".999...1"?  The
straight reading is "from .999 to as close to 1 as makes no difference",
except in this case, it matters that there is a difference, however small.

>.Also, for any real case, you have finite acceleration over finite time.
The universe has not existed for infinite time, and the common theories have
it that the universe will not exist for an infinite future time, so you
don't have infinite time in which to accelerate.  (If you find a way to skip
out on the universe's eventual fate, the mechanics of how you do that
probably matter.)  Therefore you can't get "infinitely close to c".

 

 

Ja.  With c, everything is different from our normal experiences.  In our
world, 0.99999 etc is infinitely close to 1, and we can treat it as equal to
1.  But 0.999999.c is still infinitely far from c.  From the point of view
of c, 0.99999.c is infinitesimally close to zero.

 

Cool!

 

spike

 

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