Light speed travel and the AEMIE propulsion engine

I would like to examine light speed travel and the AEMIE (advance electromagnetic motion induction engine). I know everyone is going to jump on me but just listen to me a little and see if I make sense, sense not science.

One of the ideas here is that a light speed engine is not necessary for light speed travel.

It’s important to note that a spacecraft is not like a particle of light ejected from a star traveling at light speed for thousands of light years. A spacecraft has the ability to increase its speed because it has an engine, a particle of light remains at the speed at which it was ejected from the light source.

We know that an object in space will continue in motion once it is put in motion.

For instance, a space car is stationary in space with an engine of a specific power. The engine is turned on for 2 minutes and then turned off; the vehicle is now at a speed of 100 miles an hour. We know this vehicle would continue at this speed of 100 mph indefinitely unless it is acted upon by another force.

If the space car’s engine is turned on again after 1 minute for the same 2 minutes period with the same amount of engine force as before and then turned off; the vehicle would be at 200mph.

So speed is being added to speed, the speed of the vehicle is increasing although the speed and force of the engine is constant. And not only that, if the engine is turned off and left off the vehicle would remain indefinitely at 200mph.

If we agree that the above situation is practical, sensible and true is it not reasonable common sense to think that if the above vehicle’s engine continues to be turned on and off for some time the point will be reached when the vehicle is at light speed? This continued moderate acceleration will bring the vehicle up to light speed and not only that but beyond light speed.

Tell me what you think but please be simple so it can be easily understood.

As your space car approached the speed of light, its inertia would appear to increase, so each time you fired the magic engine it would accelerate less and less.

The Space Car would also appear to get shorter.

Common sense only applies in common situations.

For further reading Special Theory of Relativity

Unfortunately Idiom is correct despite it being a bit counter intuitive Einsteins Special Theory of Relativity has been quite well empirically tested in places like CERN and does seem to be mostly correct but there is a problem that you would hit before getting that close to c and that is space is not proper vacuum there are a few hydrogen atoms every meter or so irc which is not much at slow speeds but approaching c its like being constantly hit by a radioactive brick which would slow anything down.

One question, the example I gave is it true or not true?

Do you remember when scientists say the earth was flat?
Do you remember when scientists say the sun is the center of the universe?
Do you believe that man evolve from monkeys.

I am cautious about some of the conclusions of scientists especially, when they go against my common sense, sometimes even establish science needs to be revised.

Its False its close to being true at Newtonian speeds but becomes falser and falser at Einsteinian speeds.


Nope i am too young but Science is the pursuit of truth and when a scientist proved it was a globe then the good scientists who followed the reasoning understood the better truth.


Nope despite the odd grey hair still too young and it was mostly because the religious nuts would excommunicate them if they didn't believe it sometimes inviting them to a scientist barbecue as guest of honor and many scientists knew how to avoid a Darwin award before Darwin was born


Ook!*1



Science is constantly evolving and is constantly being challenged by scientists themselves good science is the pursuit of truth and when good empirical evidence is found to overturn a prior theory a good scientist will show you his workings so you can do the experiment yourself. And much as i would like to see FTL or something approaching it Einsteins theories have so far stood up empirically in a lot of tests. If you think you can build an engine that can accelerate without expending mass build it put it in a sealed container and take it onto a rowboat with no oars and film your self moving forward also get a good patent lawyer as empirical evidence does trump theory 9 times out of 10.

*1 I am a Discworld fan feeding trolls is a charitable act

I believe that we actually evolved from single cells organism, via worms, mice, monkeys etc (not modern ones of course). It's all a question of how far back you look.

Ok, with the monkeys comment you really stretched yourself thin.

same with the comment about the conclusions of scientists being contrary to common sense. just as it used to be "common sense" that the world was flat and the center of the universe.

the worst thing that can be done in a community like this is to work yourself into a furvor over things. no need for people's feelings to get hurt over any of this. especially when its avoidable by being calm, open to critique, andwilling to learn.

While the responders to this post are mostly correct, there is one little hang up. Given our inventor's moving reference frame he will not notice an increase in mass and thus inertia. It does not become harder and harder for him to accelerate. So yes, if he could build such a space car he could achieve what would seem to be faster than light travel.

The Caveat. As he accelerated his destination would not appear to approach him faster than the speed of light. It would just seem to be closer (and flatter). The real trouble arises when you try to make it back home in time for dinner only to discover that you did not cheat physics at all and that you are 30 years late for supper.

For anyone interested in the topic I recommend "readable relativity" by Clement V. Durell. It was written in the 1920's but it is by far the best and most concise treatment I have seen. It was written for the high school level and uses nothing more than algebra and a tiny bit of geometry to explain the whole of special relativity.

Where do people get this idea that magical things occur when objects approach the speed of light. It kind of odd, i thought speed was just speed wether the speed is low, high or very very high.

Well it started with Maxwell's equations and ended with Einstein.

Maxwell's equations predicted that the speed of light was a constant.
Michelson and Morley tried to use this to find out earth's absolute motion in the universe. It did not work.

Einstein took Maxwell's equations as absolute and did the math to see what would happen if the speed of light were constant for all observers.

He also assumed that there was no absolute set of coordinates in the universe. Motion and position are only relative to other objects.

The resulting predictions seemed weird, but actually fit the observed universe far better than Newtonian models.

For Einstein's Special relativity to be valid all we need is to verify that the speed of light is indeed constant for all observers. This is easy to check and it turns out that it is true.

Here is what happens. If I am traveling toward you at 1/2 the speed of light and turn on a flashlight, you would expect the light to pass by you at 1.5 times the speed of light. You are astounded when it is actually only the speed of light. I double check my flashlight assuming that The light must be coming out of it at 0.5 the speed of light relative to my ship. But it turns out to be going the speed of light!!

What happened? Well it depends on who you ask. You think that I made an error in my measurement because not only is my clock running too slow but my ruler is too short. I thus measured too short of a time over too short of a length making it seem faster.

I say that this is not so. My measuring devices are fine. Your devices must be faulty. Who is correct? It all depends on reference frame.

These phenomena have been tested successfully in jets loaded with atomic clocks. The clock on the jet loses time by precisely the amount predicted by Einstein.

A most excellent reply Daniel.

You use the word "speed" a lot in your posts. Speed is fine for describing things in general conversation, and it's fine in the way you used it in the sentence above. For engineering and scientific purposes you should always be thinking in terms of velocity. Velocity is the combined speed and direction of an object. The direction is important and you don't seem to understand that changing the direction of a moving object requires additional energy. Your magic engine changes the direction of the combustion gases with no concern for how that affects the rest of the engine.

johno

Excellent explanation.
Whenever the topic of relativity comes up, I've always felt tht something was missing about it, but the more i think about it, the more it does make sense. especially if you can break the ingrained concept that time is an absolute concept, as opposed to a relative measurement, like mass, distance, velocity, etc. (ok, maybe mass may not fit in there, but i think you know what i mean...lol)

At the same time, i fet the feeling there is some glaring loophole in the whole relativity thing, that could really open up some fantastic posibilities. you know, one of those things so obvious and glaringly huge that you completely miss it. much like when you spend the better part of an hour searching for your car keys only to find they've been in your pocket the whole time.

ahhh.... caffine and sugar...lol. maybe too much this morning

Mike

Believe it or not i was considering the problem as a fairly objective outside observer despite being willing to take a measure of risk to get into space it had not before crossed my mind to strap myself onto a sealed I.C.E.

But on the mass and inertia thing i thought the increase in mass was objectively true so if he got fast enough he would eventually collapse down to Neutronium then Sticky Quarks and finally become black hole this change in state would i think be noticeably to all observers participants included even if only briefly relatively speaking Mind you i could be wrong i have tried wrap my neurons around relativity over the years and i think i understand some of the reasons but some of the answers do seem a bit weird.

That would require a stationary reference in the universe that just does not exist. "Speed" is not some intrinsic property that you posses. It is only relative to something else.

It would make just as much sense to say earth will collapse into a black hole because it is traveling near the speed of light away from the hypothetical spaceship. The ship is standing still and we poor doomed earthlings are moving along at near light speeds!

We are indeed moving near the speed of light relative to the edge of the observable universe. No casualties yet.