What would happen if...

[Delta4Embassy]

Thinking of the Sun in another thread, I got to wondering what would happen if you flew a spaceship with warp drive (as proposed by Alcubierre) into a star? Because the warp drive is compressing space in front, and widening it out the back, wouldn't the matter of the star be compressed too? Would it be too dense and like hitting a brick wall, or would ya make it?

What'll happen in trillions of years when the last star blinks out and no new ones form? Cold, dark, lifeless universe or will whatever's around then have learned to deal with perfect darkness, absolute zero temps, and other things stemming from that problem?

 

[Mr. H.]

You come up with the dandiest of notions.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

Oddly enough they came to me making today's chocolate chip cookie batter and blendering it up. Watching the batter go in one side or the whirling beaters, and coming out the other side whipped and widened.

 

[Mr. H.]

LOL the things in which we find inspiration.

A friend of mine is the son of Max Beberman.

Max Beberman is generally regarded as the father of the New Math, his teaching and his curriculum project having achieved nationwide fame long before the 1957 Sputnik raised mathematics education to the level of a national priority.

Chapter 1: Max

Anyhow- he told me that when he was a kid, his dad brought home a half-bushel of apples and proceeded to feed them into the sink disposal all the while marveling at the ensuing chaos.

 

[orogenicman]

Thinking of the Sun in another thread, I got to wondering what would happen if you flew a spaceship with warp drive (as proposed by Alcubierre) into a star? Because the warp drive is compressing space in front, and widening it out the back, wouldn't the matter of the star be compressed too? Would it be too dense and like hitting a brick wall, or would ya make it?

What'll happen in trillions of years when the last star blinks out and no new ones form? Cold, dark, lifeless universe or will whatever's around then have learned to deal with perfect darkness, absolute zero temps, and other things stemming from that problem?

Space is a dimension, while matter is not a dimension. Something to consider.

 

[HenryBHough]

So here you are rocketing along in your spiffy ObamaVolt Electric Space Ship....right at the speed of light...and you turn on your headlights.

Think that one through.

Would it make any difference if the headlights were CFL or LED instead of that horribly polluting incandescent technology?

 

[boedicca]

Thinking of the Sun in another thread, I got to wondering what would happen if you flew a spaceship with warp drive (as proposed by Alcubierre) into a star? Because the warp drive is compressing space in front, and widening it out the back, wouldn't the matter of the star be compressed too? Would it be too dense and like hitting a brick wall, or would ya make it?

What'll happen in trillions of years when the last star blinks out and no new ones form? Cold, dark, lifeless universe or will whatever's around then have learned to deal with perfect darkness, absolute zero temps, and other things stemming from that problem?

I think you'd burn up.

 

[norwegen]

I was just wondering the other day which would sink in the milk first: my Cap'n Crunch bit or my Crunch Berries bit. But then I ate them before I found out.

This question is, like, a notch above where I am right now, so I might need time to think about it.

 

[mamooth]

So here you are rocketing along in your spiffy ObamaVolt Electric Space Ship....right at the speed of light...and you turn on your headlights.

Since it has mass, it can't reach the speed of light. It can get close, but it will never quite get there.

If the driver turned on the headlights at close to lightspeed, he would still see the light moving away from him at lightspeed. But an external observer would see the light (highly blue shifted) barely outracing the vehicle. First rule of special relativity, the speed of light is constant in all reference frames.

 

[HenryBHough]

Cool.

Now explain the CFL vs LED vs incandescent part.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

So here you are rocketing along in your spiffy ObamaVolt Electric Space Ship....right at the speed of light...and you turn on your headlights.

Since it has mass, it can't reach the speed of light. It can get close, but it will never quite get there.

If the driver turned on the headlights at close to lightspeed, he would still see the light moving away from him at lightspeed. But an external observer would see the light (highly blue shifted) barely outracing the vehicle. First rule of special relativity, the speed of light is constant in all reference frames.

Until a few years ago anyway. We know now that 'c' isn't constant in all reference frames. As with experiments shooting it through some kind of gel which slowed it down, and more recently, hypotheses that the speed of light might have changed over billions of years.

Speed of Light May Not Be Constant, Physicists Say | Cosmology & Astronomy | LiveScience