Going faster than light?

Question

OK I don't have any degrees or anything but this kind of stuff interests me so I have some ideas and questions on this. Remember I have no degree and these are just thoughts and some questions at the same time that I would like to know whether are true or not if you can tell me.

1. If you were to travel faster then light wouldn't you be seeing an allusion of the object going faster than light behind the object while no seeing the object? Here's an example to explain this since I doubt anyone got it....

1a. IIf object A was going faster then the speed of light then object B would be following this object. Object B is an allusion of object A due to the light not keeping up with object A. Kind of like when a jet (object C) is going faster then the speed of sound (object D) then object A passes by you but a few seconds later object B comes by you while object A remains silent while it passes by you. (People who have watched a Jet go faster than sound will know what I mean.)

2. What happens when object B catches up to object A (when object A is stopped) and object E (object E is light coming from another source like another sun) is already hitting object A? I think that it might be the same effect as if two jets were to go faster then the speed of sound for a long time then crash into each other what would happen when the sound from both jets hit each other once it caught up?

Now I know these might be really stupid questions I KNOW THAT please do not say your stupid or shut up things like that. All I am doing is being curious to my thoughts and I thought rather than keep on wondering I would just ask people. Hopefully someone can help me out lol. Thanks for the time and remember I DON'T HAVE A DEGREE, I KNOW THESE MIGHT BE STUPID QUESTIONS!

Answer 1

There are no stupid questions except those which are not asked. Einstein did a number of thought experiments of this kind when he was developing his special and general theories of relativity.

Putting aside the difficulties with going faster than light.(theoretically impossible). You would see the object where it was Rather than where it is just as astronomers see galaxies as they were rather than as they are because of the multi- light year distances involved.

2) as there is no physical trailing object no collision would occur.

Answer 2

First off, the speed of light in a vacuum, 299,792,458 m/s (scientific abbreviation "c"), is the universal speed limit. Nothing can go faster than that.

However, the speed of light through a medium can be much slower. For example, the speed of light in glass is 0.67c. So, there is a way for an object to travel faster than light.

I don't know how to answer your questions, but your sonic boom analogy, relative to light, is known as Čerenkov radiation, which is electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle, such as a proton, passes through an insulator at a speed greater than the speed of light in that medium. This is the cause of the blue glow of nuclear reactors.

Answer 3

1.

The answer to this question is 'yes', but only because EVERYTHING you see is delayed, and therefore an 'illusion'.  When something happens 100 feet away from you, the light doesn't get to you immediately.  Instead, there is a delay (although a very short one).

For larger distances, such as 1 light year, any event that occurs at that distance will take 1 year to be seen here on Earth.  For very large distances, the delay is proportionally longer.  That means the light reaching your eyes from distant stars is thousands of years old.  Some of the stars could have exploded today, but we won't know for another thousand years due to the large distances.

2.

There's no such thing as 'stopped'.  You can't talk about absolute speed.  You can only talk about relative speed.  For example, this statement is incorrect according to Einstein's theories of relativity:

"Object A is moving, then it stops"

And here is the correct statement:

"Object A is moving relative to object B, then it ceases to move relative to object B".

Answer 4

These aren't stupid question at all, however there is one fundamental flaw. It is physically impossible for any object to exceed the speed of light.

As an object increases its speed, its mass rises as well. If anything were to travel the speed of light its mass would be equivalent to the mass of the universe (of course, with the exception of photons and other subatomic particles).

To attempt to understand what you are asking would be like trying to predict a football play with no rules, touchdown zones, or a ball.