Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and the Yahoo Answers website is now in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.

According to Newtonian physics, the speed of light can not be exceeded, from that perspective interstellar travels are impossible ?

Update:

The issue I wanted to pursue is actually the possibility of alien subjects and their possible means of transportation comming to Earth...

8 Answers

Relevance
  • 1 year ago
    Favorite Answer

    Newtonian physics makes no claims whatsoever about the speed of light.  Even Einstein didn't make the claim directly.  It was discovered that the speed of light was the same in each frame of reference.  By extrapolation there can be no inertial frame in which you are any closer to the speed of light than you are right now.

    This does not preclude interstellar travel.  It does prevent you from getting back to the world you left.

    Imagine a rip van winkle scenario where you are put into "suspended animation" and spend 100 of your years passing through space.  Yet you have not aged and are not aware of time passing.  When you arrive at the far end only an instant of your time has elapsed.

    Now after spending a few days there you repeat the process and another 100 years passes.  Fine.  So that on earth 200 years have passed since you left.  Nothing of the world you knew remains.  Nations have come and gone.  Pollution, wars, climate change.  Perhaps even civilization itself has disappeared.   All of which means that interstellar travel could only be a means of buggering up still more of the universe.  But not of bringing back anything of value to our world.

  • 1 year ago

    Newtonian physics does not say anything about the speed of light. Relativity says nothing can exceed the speed of light. 

    Interstellar travel is not impossible. You could travel slow to a star and take hundreds of years. Or you could go near the speed of light, and relativistic time dilation effects would allow you to get there in just days or weeks relative to the travelers. 

  • 1 year ago

    Science assumes nothing can travel faster then light because light is the fastest thing we can detect. Given the mathematical relationship between mechanical energy, sound energy and light energy in relative speed to one another the next energy form above light would have a speed of c (pi^100). Meaning the speed of light times pi raised to the 100th. This is fast and given the "wave length" would affect even subatomic particles and be able to move entire galaxies at speeds greater then the speed of light.

  • 1 year ago

    Newton never foresaw a limit to rate of motion of anything.  That came from Einstein.  If Einsteinian thinking is correct, then distance has a fixed minimum time to travel it.  It is not obvious that distance and time are precisely as we imagine them in our 4-D image of spacetime.  Shortcuts might exist somehow.

    Interstellar travel is not impossible even if the rate limit applies.  It simply means that interstellar travel will take very long (absolute) times. That would not be very practical for the individual doing the traveling, but it would not be impossible, and if the travel could be performed at high enough rates (speeds), then time dilation could even make it so a particular individual could achieve shorter trips, even if time in its normal perspective passed fast relative to that individual.

    You ask a question for which the answer is not truly known.

  • 1 year ago

    As far as I'm aware the Newtonian view made no such claim.

  • ?
    Lv 7
    1 year ago

    Yes, that is correct!

  • Anonymous
    1 year ago

    With all the contingent problems we have to face every day , i wonder if it makes sense conjecturing interstellar trips ^_-

  • 1 year ago

    interstellar "travel is" impossible, not "travels are". Okay, so what's your question exactly?

Still have questions? Get your answers by asking now.