Why could we not go the speed of light if we did this?

Question

I understand the speed of light like everyone else but picture this.... if you have a long pole say it is 10000 miles long and you spin it as fast as you can??? at some point you at the end are not going to go the speed of light but the other end would, why is my line of thinking wrong... please dont send me dumb answers i really want to understand why this cant happen?

Answer 1

The speed of light is independant of the speed of the observer. Two people in cars going 60 mph see the other person sitting perfectly still. If both cars were able to go the speed of light, each driver would simutaneously see the other driver pull away at the speed of light. Einstein reasoned the only way this was possible was that moving objects create their own time frame. Incredibly, this means a moving object is actually in another universe with it's own timeframe, relative to non-moving objects. However, the time shift is too small to measure until objects approach the speed of light. One other consequence of Einstein's calculations is the mass of an object increases as the speed of light is approached. This means an object moving the speed of light would be infinitly massive. The only way photons can travel at the speed of light is because they have no mass. Light travels 186,000 miles in 1 second. The circumference of a circle is the diameter times the number "PI". This means the diameter of a 186000 circle would be around 60,000 miles. The stick itself would need be only 30,000 miles long, and if swung in a circle in 1 second, the atoms at the very tip of the stick would be going the speed of light. Relative to you however, time will be standing completely still and it would take forever for them to move even a tiny amount. Atoms just behind them would be moving just under light speed but the timeframe would be nearly frozen. I expect this would form a very peculiar shell of material consisting of a enormously thin cylinder of atoms just inside the diameter of the circle. These atoms would be frozen in time as the stick rotated. Of course, this is all speculation.

Answer 2

It all comes down to the amount of energy required to move the mass in question.



For the end of that 10,000 mile long pole to be moving at 186,000 mi/sec you would need to sweep it through space at almost 3 revolutions per second, with the weight of your body on the end of it.



I don't know how much the pole would weigh, or how much you weigh, but that's one helluva lot of energy just to move an average human's weight through a 10,000 mile long arc at 3 RPS (180 RPM).



Not to mention, how much centrifugal force would be applied to you orbiting at 10,000 miles in 1/3 of a second! I think your body would be severely stressed by the trip.

Answer 3

When you approach speeds that fast the wind turbulence and other factors would cause your skin to burn off

Answer 4

why would you spin...when the pole is the one thats spinning?