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Think about it this way - the reason it takes infinite energy to move at the speed of light is because you just INSTANTLY propelled yourself from one location in space to another. To instantly move any distance requires infinite energy. You can't move faster unless you input more energy and to input more energy you need more time, hence why the "speed of light" is always a moving target and no matter how much energy you put in, you'll only get a little closer to it...because you can never get from A to B instantly, you need time to do that. And if you took any time to release that energy to get you moving, well then you haven't moved at the speed of light.
Wrap your head around this - time doesn't move from the perspective of light. Light just moves around in a static universe. That's why light "captures" what things looked like from the location the light came from...because light IS a timeless snapshot of the universe, at the time it was created.
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Last reply I promise  Just wanted to give you an example of something I do strongly argue against...people that think we are doomed to end with some catastrophic ripping apart of the universe.
Firstly, to make any long-term prediction with any certainty about what will happen to a bubble of mass-energy where you literally have NO IDEA what 95% of it is or where it is coming from is insane. We live in but a tiny sliver of time of the universe and our predictions of where it is going and what it is going to do keep coming up wrong time and time again. We don't even know if the universe is a closed system. Given dark energy, it may not be. To decide we are doomed to explode from all this energy accelerating the universe that we know nothing about is insane to me.
Secondly, look at the scientific advances in the last 100 years. Can you even begin to picture what scientific advances will look like in 500 years? 10,000 years? 1,000,000 years? Yeah...no. The current physical arrangement and makeup of our bodies may cease to be possible, but who's to say that in a million years we won't be able to discover tech that will continue to work and exist and persist our minds in a universe with much different physics than now? Nobody can.
I love talking about this kind of stuff though haha. I was always trying to work out the whole faster than light travel thing in my head until I had an "aha!" moment one day while thinking about it and suddenly relativity, speed of light, time dialation, etc just clicked on a much deeper level than before and it started making sense. I was always relatively (pun intended) well-versed with relativity and how it worked, I could answer any question you wanted about what would happen if X, but that one aha moment was mind blowing, and I began to look at the universe entirely differently.
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I know how those ah-ha moments feel. I had mine when I was trying to figure out why we couldn't define gravity and what gives particles their mass. That is when it struck me that it's not the science that is wrong, it is our perception of the science that is wrong. I have always acknowledged that when a problem looks impossible, it's time to shift your point of view and approach the problem in a different direction. I'm not saying that any of the discoveries of the last 40 years are wrong. I'm am attempting to point out that human failings have fixed our view point to a specific set of base hypotheses which limits our scientific flexibility of thought.
To expand on how human perceptions play into scientific research I start with e = mc2 and how this formula influenced thought processes. Not many think much about this formula but it usually is one of the first physics formulas that we are exposed to; usually as children through TV and other media. Once we learn about what it means, it becomes a base for other thoughts. It's the rigid adherence to the formula's structure that could be the problem. By only looking at the formula, and the universe by extension, from one singular point of view, we have limited ourselves to functioning within that narrow space.
By limiting ourselves to such a narrow point of view, science can only progress along one line of thought. Previously when I said that e = mc2 implied that energy was a function of an interaction between mass and the universal constant, I was attempting to make the point that, when you look at the formula like this, our brains interpret its meaning in that all particles are defined by their mass. All of the mainstream accepted science to this date is predicated on the idea that a fundamental aspect of particles is that they have mass. What if that were not true. With simple algebra, the formula can be rewritten to m = e/c2. Now, anybody with mediocre math will shrug at this and not see past the surface but it could be that if Einstein had written the formula this way our approach to physics would be completely different now. That is the line of thought that I like to explore. What the formula now implies is that all particles have energy and that mass is a function of energy and the universal constant. That means that particles are defined by their energy. When you approach it from the side of all particles have energy, the limitations caused by mass do not seem so insurmountable.
I don't necessarily disagree with anything you mentioned, well except when it comes to time  . I still say that even when traveling faster than the speed of light, time still ticks by at the same rate as if you were standing still. The real fact is that, until we actually accelerate a human being to relativistic velocities, we really don't know how time will behave and that our understanding right now is still just theory.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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But that's not rewriting the formula or looking at it differently. There isn't an "interaction" between mass and a constant...that formula is saying that mass IS energy. Don't look too much into the c^2 part...it's a constant. It's just a normalizing factor between mass and energy. All it's saying is that mass is directly proportional to energy.
That formula is also not the full expanded formula, it's just the main part of it.
There are particles with no mass. It's called light. Photons are exactly what you are saying - particles with energy. They have energy because of the part of that equation that you're missing, but that isn't rest mass. What happens from the perspective of a particle with no mass? Exactly what I described - it moves at the speed of light! No matter how much energy you give it, it still just moves at the speed of light, it just has a different amount of energy. That amount of energy defines the wavelength of the light. Low energy = radio waves. High energy = gamma rays.
When a particle that has no mass is created, i.e. a photon, it's universe LITERALLY stands still. Photons live in a uniquely different life than particles with mass - their life is defined not by time, but by distance. Time literally stands still for a particle of light during its journey, and then it is instantly over as it hits it's destination (from the perspective of the photon).
You really gotta work with the full equation to get any use out of it. m=e/c^2 without factoring in the missing part doesn't actually work.
See here for a somewhat better explanation: energy - Does $E = mc^2$ apply to photons? - Physics Stack Exchange[^]
modified 10-Feb-17 12:25pm.
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The user's response to the question only reinforces the point I am trying to make:
Quote: So formally one can still talk about the photon having a relativistic (or effective) mass $m = E/c^2$. But this concept of mass runs in all kinds of problems so its usage is discouraged.
Here is an example of the lengths that science will go to avoid the fact that the way they may be looking at physics isn't quite right. Two different ways of examining the exact same thing are available but one is accepted and the other is avoided because it causes trouble. By causing trouble, I more suspect it means that if it is accepted as priciple their life's work will be invalidated.
To me, it smells of hypocrisy. Here is light which, by saying is a massless particle, breaks their own fundamentals so instead of admitting that a photon has an infinitesimally small mass, they just call it zero and tell the rest of us to drink the cool-aid so that they don't have to go back and perform decades of rework.
Don't get me wrong here. I am not attacking you or the information you have provided. I don't think we are discussing the same thing. You have been providing the results of research while I am trying to examine the thought process that led to those results to determine if the human element has led us to a misunderstanding of the results or that our very base assumptions of physics are fundamentally incorrect. To me, physics has hit a brick wall of sorts which has led me to question everything I have been taught.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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I'm not sure what you mean. It's not infinitesimally small, it's zero. The equation measures rest mass. They are saying if you change the definition you can use it the other way but you've changed the definition into something that makes a mess of things, not because the equation is correct and we just don't understand it, but because if you use that definition of mass then now you have to carry the second part of the equation that you left out into EVERYTHING ELSE to make it work. And the second part of that equation is messy.
There's no conspiracy here.
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I'm not calling a conspiracy. Recent discoveries have led me to a questioning of fundamentals. Take the EM Drive for instance. The experiment has repeatedly shown that the drive is creating thrust from electromagnetic energy in a vacuum but that shouldn't be possible. I really goes against convention. The EM Drive is basically saying that a vacuum is not empty and there is something there for the EM Drive to push against. Since we might have gotten the concept of what's in the space around us wrong, what else have we gotten wrong?
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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I completely agree, all I'm saying is that faster than light travel doesn't make sense because speed of light travel is actually INSTANT. So, you are going to have to define what you mean by faster than light travel, because I don't know how you can get somewhere faster than instant.
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True, there is no shorter distance then zero. To me, FTL is traveling in excess of 300,000 km/s.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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Yeah but....you are. You are travelling infinitely fast from your perspective. If you are travelling at the speed of light, your rocket ship can instantly arrive anywhere in the universe INSTANTLY. I think that's what you are missing about the whole relativity thing.
Pick the further thing in the universe you can think of. If you get your ship up to 99.99999% the speed of light, you will literally get there in a second.
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Would you mean instantly from my point of reference or from an observer's point of reference?
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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Mike Marynowski wrote: Pick the further thing in the universe you can think of. If you get your ship up to 99.99999% the speed of light, you will literally get there in a second.
So, if you go slower than light, you travel further than light itself travels in a second?
I'm going to re-read this thread later on again, I must have missed some things 
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Haha...the closer to the speed of light you go, the slower time becomes in your frame of reference. Very close to speed of light travel will get you anywhere in the universe instantly from your perspective because of time dilation. The faster you go from Earth to say Planet X, the more "slow motion" you look to someone observing you from Earth or Planet X, and the more sped up everything on Earth and Planet X looks to you. When you move at the speed of light relative to something, from your perspective you get there instantly, and that thing ages the amount of light-time away it is.
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I get how time may appear relative, but not how that means you move instantly.
Mike Marynowski wrote: When you move at the speed of light relative to something, from your perspective you get there instantly, and that thing ages the amount of light-time away it is.
So, accelerating to lightspeed means time stands still from your own point of view?
I kinda doubt that
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Thanks - but the explanation isn't for me; I'd refute it, where most people seem to agree that it is correct
"So, when we move, at whatever speed, time slows down relative to a stationary observer."
..means it doesn't slow down for you if you move at that speed. So, again, I do not see how a photon travels instantly; not even from it's own perspective.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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I don't know what you mean by your first line.
When they say "it doesn't slow down for you" they are clarifying that it means that it's not like your spaceship will be moving in slow motion around you, it slows down from the reference frame of someone looking at you from where you left. That said, it does *appear* to you like you are travelling faster than 300,000km/s if you accelerated close to the speed of light towards an object because time will be moving very slow for you. If you take the trip distance as measured from a stationary point, divided by the time measured on a time taking device on your ship, it will certainly work out to considerably faster than the speed of light.
Relativity is fascinating and kind of awesome. You need to rethink how you look at everything for it to make sense.
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Remember that there is also length contraction at close to the speed of light...so time slows, and length contracts to close to 0 as well. So the distance you have to cover when you are moving that fast, relative to your frame of reference, has now decreased to almost 0 as well. Perhaps that's an easier way of thinking about it from the perspective of the traveler.
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This is what most people that complain about the speed of light as a limit don't fully comprehend. It's not a speed limit, so much as it is the universe's infinity. It takes infinite energy to get there for a massful object because IT IS infinity from the perspective of that object. An outside observer watching their friend fly off in a spaceship at close to the speed of light will see a completely frozen person moving at 300,000km/s. The person in the space ship will see everything around them aging millions of years in an instant. From their perspective, they can travel millions of light years in an instant at that speed and no laws regarding faster-than-light information travel are being broken because of relativity - the object they are moving towards is aging fast enough that the information technically still took millions of years to get there.
So the good news is that it could be possible for us to reach the furthest stars if we want to, as long as we are willing to leave behind an earth that will age millions of years when we arrive there.
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Allow me to clarify for a second.
You see an awesome star you want to visit. You look into the night sky, and you see a supernova exploding. You want front row seats to this event, so you jump into your speed of light ship to go look at it.
You get there instantly, i.e. you have aged say 1 second, but when the ship stops at its destination you will have found that the supernova is gone. But how? You got there instantly!
Well that's simple...it's because the light you were looking at from Earth was 20 billion light years old, so the star actually exploded 20 billion years ago. You got there instantly, but "instantly" near the star is 20 billion years later than the light you are seeing from earth.
So if you don't believe in time travel, this is the fastest you can go. If the star exploded 20 billion years ago and it's now dead, you can't get to the star as it was 20 billion years ago. You can begin your journey now at infinite speed from your perspective and see how it looks NOW, 20 years after that supernova explosion that the light just got to you from.
If you have an alternate proposition, such as multiverse theory, then I'm all game, it's possible. But you can't have no time travel and faster than light travel, it just doesn't make sense. If you explain a theory of how that would work where I can picture it working then I'm all for it being possible, but as you've laid it out, it won't work.
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I get what you are say, of course the star won't be there, you're 20 billion years too late. I get that. I guess what my brain isn't getting the jump from faster than light to instantaneous travel. To me faster than light is just that, traveling faster than 300,000 km/s (I'm ignoring the limitations on speed here).
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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Well then you're in luck - get up to close to the speed of light and you will get there instantly. If someone on earth is looking at you as you make your journey then it will look like you are moving at the 300,000km/s, but at that speed space in front of you is compressed so much that you get there instantly, and space behind you expands so much that 20 billion years will have passed on earth. Hence why "everything is relative" - there is no "absolute" frame of reference in the universe, everything changes in relation to everything else.
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As interesting as this discussion has been, it's almost quitting time here so I'm off to enjoy the weekend. Have a pleasant evening.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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You too!
I should correct a previous statement - I meant to say time is compressed/expanded in front/behind you not space. That's what they are talking about when they refer to "time dilation" in relativity.
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