Crashing into sun at speed of light

Question

Ok, so for the sake of an argument we HAVE devised a way to travel at the speed of light and we shoot off into the sun. logical theory's of the result?

Answer 1

If an object did strike the sun at near light speed, and it were large enough, the theoritical models we have suggest a massive solar flare would be the result.

The mass would have to be very large--several hundred thousand metric tons, at least.  But the flare would be unlike anything we've ever seen. Powerful enough that if Earth happened to be in the path of the wave front, it would probably kill anything on the side facing the sun at the time.

Answer 2

in your dream

Answer 3

Well, presuming that somehow traveling at light speed is possible, you'd never make it to the sun itself.

You see, space is considered a vacuum, but it is not a perfect vacuum.  For all intents it may as well be since the particle density in space is so unbelievably low, but you have a very different story when you are approaching the speed of light.

Now remember, the whole reason you cannot travel at the speed of light is because your relative mass approaches infinity as you get closer to c.  Since this is a question of relativity, that means that the many particles shooting away from the sun have a relative infinite mass when you approach them.  So, here you are in a super spaceship heading towards the sun and along comes a neutrino.  The sun puts out a boatload of these and their mass is considered nearly nonexistent.  So, you slam into one of these particles at light speed but its relative mass is now approaching infinity.  Well, the neutrino is so small, it may just slide right through your ship without hitting anything... but, if it does hit one single atom...

KABOOM!  That would be the nuclear kind.

So, you'd never really make it to the sun.

Answer 4

It would take 8 minutes to get there, and we would probably burn up before we had a chance to crash into it. And if we did crash into it, which isn't likely, we would burn up almost instantly. But I doubt NASA is going to point a state-of-the-art space vehicle into the sun. :)

Answer 5

This is like the possibility of streaming through the Internet and stuffing questions like this back onto the harddisk of the sender so they are never seen again - logical?

Answer 6

Considering it takes more and more energy to get closer and closer to the speed of light any ship going the speed of light would have infinite kinetic energy and due to time dilation time would not pass for the crew. An object with infinite energy would impart infinite energy to anything it touches. Any and all matter in front of it would get a kick in the *** accelerating it to the speed of light instantly taking infinite energy from the infinite energy of the ship. The ship would be pass through the Sun in 0.004557 seconds creating a hole just slightly bigger than the profile of the ship which would be filled right after the event by the Sun's tremendous pressure. However the ship and all of the now super dense infinitely energized matter now directly in front of it launching off into space like a shotgun shell. Anything in the way of that expanding wave of matter would have similar holes punched through it adding more and more matter to the infinitely energized wave of destruction. If the universe is infinite than the wave will grow infinitely in the direction the ship was heading. If the universe is finite the wave will keeping going and going around our looped universe until all the matter in the universe is moving at the speed of light in an infinitely energized super dense wave that not even a black hole could resist.

Luckily accelerating a space ship to the speed of light is impossible because one cannot have infinite energy. A ship could theoretically be accelerated to a velocity very very close to the speed of light... like 99.9999% the speed of light. If you were a crew member on a ship traveling at this speed heading directly towards the sun you would perceive a huge star moving at you at nearly the speed of light. To put this in perspective the few trillion protons in the LHC when accelerated to similar speeds have the force of a 400 tonne freight train going 95 mph (thats 4x10^5 kg going 42 m/s which is a force of 14 million Newtons). Now thats about the 1.0x10^-14 kilograms... increase that mass to that of the sun which is about 2.0x10^30 kilograms and you get a force of 2.14x10^54 Newtons (214 sexdecillion Newtons for large number enthusiasts). I don't believe you would survive it =(

Answer 7

Whatever you make your spaceship from, you would be destroyed, though it may be theoretically possible to make strong enough materials.  It actually takes a very long time even for light to travel through the sun.  Some of the wavelengths of light we receive from the sun are so short that they would have to be produced in the core.  It takes 8 minutes for the light to travel from the sun to the earth, but actually 15 to get from the core to the edge of the sun (a much much shorter distance).  Anything going through the sun does not move at anything like the speed of light in a vacuum.

Answer 8

hot!hot!hot!hot!hot!hot!hot!

impossible.

can't travel at or close up to the speed of light.

faster, maybe... just how would you get there?