Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the earth, is 4.243 light years away i.e. the fastest spacecraft New Horizons with the Earth-relative velocity of about 16.26 km/s (58,536 km/h), would make take 78,084 years and 11days 22hrs. WHAT??????
Faster-than-light travel has always been a staple of science fiction, but recently physicists have given serious thought to this possibility.
According to Einstein, the speed of light is the ultimate speed limit in the universe. Even our most powerful atom smashers, which can create energies found only at the center of exploding stars or the big bang itself, cannot
hurl subatomic particles at a rate faster than the speed of light. Apparently the speed of light is the ultimate traffic cop in the universe. If so, any hope of our reaching the distant galaxies seems to be dashed.
Einstein's celebrated equation E=mc2 states that for a body to attain the speed of light it has to have an infinite source of energy. Furthermore, the faster an object travels, more of it's energy is converted to mass.
Regarding these two facts, and weighing them to our current state of technology, we don't have the enough resources to propel any earthly thing to the distant stars anywhere near. Even if we do manage to find the ultimate
energy source there still lies this inevitable problem. Anything with mass, the more it accelerates the more energy gets converted to mass.So, till the object reaches the speed of light it would have gained an infinite amount of
How much do you think you know about light? I presume you know that it has a finite speed of about 3x108ms-1 and that it travels in forms of waves like that of ripples in water. I suppose you know that its speed is the highest in the universe and nothing in the universe travels faster than it. You may also know that it travels in a straight path. But is that all? Do your limit of curiosity and the chain of questions end here? Are you satisfied with what you know? I bet not.
Light as we knew or assumed to know is not exactly the way we suppose it to be. Most of the things that are in our knowledge about the behavior of light are almost incomplete and to some extent untrue. Physics is weird and full of surprises. Though you think it is over, it never stops amusing you with novel surprises.
The first thing to know about light is that it is wave. It is true as we know it since we started the flight of physics. But it is not the whole legitimacy. Light, not only travels as waves, but it also travels as particle. It has a wave-particle duality. Light is composed of several component rays consisting of microwave, infra wave, gamma rays and visible light and they all exhibit similar characteristics. In the Rutherford’s α-scattering experiment, the unusual behavior depicted by Geiger counter is the proof of the particle nature of light. The photoelectric effect that Einstein led to success is also a remarkable triumph in the world of physics that accounts for the particulate behavior of light.
Now we know that light also behaves as particle, it leaves space for further questions as "How it behaves inside a gravitational field?" And I say “Without any doubt”. To search for the facts, it has been proved in 1919 by a British Expedition while observing an eclipse on account for the confirmation of one of the prediction of Einstein's theory of relativity. The theory was that around large masses the space would be curved and so would the path of the particle passing near it. In Short, gravity would affect the course of travel of a particle. In fact it was proved right when the star behind the sun had slightly changed as predicted by the theory of relativity. So, light does not ALWAYS travels in a straight path. It follows the curves of Geodesics.
Bending Of light in a Gravitational field
Similarly, another astounding personality of light is its speed. It is the fastest in the universe that we have till now in our knowledge. Nothing except light itself exceeds its speed. But what if someone travels at nearly the speed of light; will they seem like quantum of molecule? It seems logical that we may see the packet of molecules but it is just the opposite. No matter how fast an observer is and he’ll always see the light in its full speed irrespectively. No matter how fast one travels he can never outrun the speed of light. Wonder how?...Wait for the next one!
I was such a Cartoon freak in my childhood years, that I watched each and every show on the Cartoon Network. I loved them because of the animation and to the creativity that they held. I am much thankful to cartoons to much extent for evoking this eternal love for science. I remember once watching a cartoon at cartoonnetwork known as Powerpuff girls when I was a small kid....The episode that made me curious about what happened just when the girls sped up to the speed of the light. At that time I was too young and also I had no interest in science. All I could do was enjoy and laugh watching the animation in sheer amazement and pleasure. But when I was a little much grown up and as I was interested much in classical physics and fictional science, my attention was drawn back to that episode I had watched few years back....let me tell you what had actually happened in that episode.
Powerpuff girls once got out of their school, and as they had supernatural powers, they flew up in the sky. As they were flying, Buttercop challenged for a race to the girls and so she paced. The other two girls also increased their speed to the extent that everything seemed to stop and they could literally see packets of light on their sideways passing slower than themselves(don't know if anything travels faster than the light). Then they returned back down to the earth. Just to their amazement they entered a world they were totally unfamiliar with...in it everything was destroyed, the villans had taken over the city and the most shoking news They HAD DISAPPEARED FOR MORE THAN 50 YEARS. How could that be? They had entered another realm , maybe a Parallel universe or maybe they had encountered Time travel, but whatever it was it was my first peak (step) into the world of fascination with science. Fact or Fiction these things may turn up to be, but they are just the things that I Love to think of, dream of and talk of. Later, when I was in grade 8, I read an article writen by my cousin Manish Thapa. May be it was my good day because it was just what I had been searching for since I watched that show. The article was about the possibility of time travel. In it, he had mentioned about the twin paradox in which one of the twins stays on the earth and the other sets on a journey at the speed of light just to find out on his arrival that his brother on earth has aged more than himself. It helped me explain what had happened in that episode I'd mentioned above. Then I started doing research about such things which we call fictional science. Whenever I used to get a chance to meet my cousin I used to discuss with him about it. I often used to ask my elder brother(Aashish bhattarai) about such things. We used to discuss about science fantasies, the possibility of science and all. I started watching Discovery and History since then. All the programs related to science fiction. Even though I understood a very little from what I watched because of the new terms I encountered with...but everytime I watched the documentries and videos, I made sure that I learnt a little bit more than the previous time I had watched the show. Each time I got a new term that I was unfamiliar with, I took the help of dictionary and the internet to find out what it was. I got more deep about these things and I fell love in with it.
Other cartoon that inspired me were DEXTER and JIMMI NEUTRON. Each and every episode were related to Physics and they always filled me with lots of querries within myself! One another Cartoon I liked was Ben 10, it was about aliens. The episode "Paradox"...expecially was the most exciting one.
Einstein once said (or maybe not) that we should tell fairy tales to children if we are to make them curious. But I say, Watching a Cartoon worth watching is also not so much a bad idea!;D
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." -Albert Einstein
I was such a Cartoon freak in my childhood years, that I watched each and every show on the Cartoon Network. I loved them because of the animation and to the creativity that they held. I am much thankful to cartoons to much extent for evoking this eternal love for science.I remember once watching a cartoon at cartoonnetwork known as Powerpuff girls when I was a small kid....The episode that made me curious about what happened just when the girls sped up to the speed of the light. At that time I was too young and also I had no interest in science. All I could do was enjoy and laugh watching the animation in sheer amazement and pleasure. But when I was a little much grown up and as I was interested much in classical physics and fictional science, my attention was drawn back to that episode I had watched few years back....let me tell you what had actually happened in that episode.
Powerpuff girls once got out of their school, and as they had supernatural powers, they flew up in the sky. As they were flying, Buttercop challenged for a race to the girls and so she paced. The other two girls also increased their speed to the extent that everything seemed to stop and they could literally see packets of light on their sideways passing slower than themselves(don't know if anything travels faster than the light). Then they returned back down to the earth. Just to their amazement they entered a world they were totally unfamiliar with...in it everything was destroyed, the villans had taken over the city and the most shoking news They HAD DISAPPEARED FOR ABOUT 50 YEARS. How could that be? They had entered another realm , maybe a Parallel universe or maybe they had encountered Time travel, but whatever it was it was my first peak (step) into the world of fascination with science. Fact or Fiction these things may turn up to be, but they are just the things that I Love to think of, dream of and talk of.
Later, when I was in grade 8, I read an article writen by my cousin Manish Thapa. May be it was my good day because it was just what I had been searching for since I watched that show. The article was about the possibility of time travel. In it, he had mentioned about the twin paradox in which one of the twins stays on the earth and the other sets on a journey at the speed of light just to find out on his arrival that his brother on earth has aged more than himself. It helped me explain what had happened in that episode I'd mentioned above. Then I started doing research about such things which we call fictional science. Whenever I used to get a chance to meet my cousin I used to discuss with him about it. I often used to ask my elder brother(Aashish bhattarai) about such things. We used to discuss about science fantasies, the possibility of science and all. I started watching Discovery and History since then. All the programs related to science fiction. Even though I understood a very little from what I watched because of the new terms I encountered with...but everytime I watched the documentries and videos, I made sure that I learnt a little bit more than the previous time I had watched the show. Each time I got a new term that I was unfamiliar with, I took the help of dictionary and the internet to find out what it was. I got more deep about these things and I fell love in with it.
Other cartoon that inspired me were DEXTER and JIMMI NEUTRON. Each and every episode were related to Physics and they always filled me with lots of querries within myself!. They left me bewildered in my world of dreams. One another Cartoon I liked was Ben 10, it was about aliens. The episode "Paradox"...expecially was the most exciting one.
Jimmy NeUTron
Einstein once said (or maybe not) that we should tell fairy tales to children if we are to make them curious. But I say, Watching a Cartoon worth watching is also not so much a bad idea!;D
DeXTeR
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." -Albert Einstein
Day by day and minutes by minute, I can feel within me, this unstopping urge to know more and learn more and more.
This overwhelming interest in Physics, the laws and principles, the theory behind them and the great minds who involved in their formation- And above all, the search for the truth for its own sake.
The more I research into the more I feel I am farther from the reality; the truth, the simple reason and logic behind the creation of this large universe....I want to know the how and the why of every questions I have that evoke in my mind every day every time I look at the sky to see the stars millions and millions light year away and yet get puzzled how these massive structures came into existence and how they managed to generate such enormous powers.
Light, as I viewed from my childhood....it was to me as taught in school just a form of energy which always travels in a straight path un-deviated by any external factor. I had this belief for almost 13 years and when I started to peek into the world of physics I was so amused and pretty much fascinated too on knowing that gravity has effects on light as proposed by one of the greatest minds Albert Einstein in his papers published in 1905. Also it was surprising that light being a wave sometimes behaves as a particle and vice versa. (Sounds strange to believe but is true). Hence another question that hits my mind from this illogical phenomenon- Does light have mass? If it acts as particle then it should have a mass, should not it?
Another question troubles me and that is gravity itself. Every day and everywhere we observe this phenomenon in our life and most of us view it as normal. Most of us do not find it strange, but to the physicists and to me as well, this has been one of the many unsolved puzzles of physics. What is gravity? Why is it even there? And how does it work? It is supposed that at the time of the big bang, there was super symmetry...it was perfect and balanced. But why did that symmetry fall apart to create this unsymmetrical world? What caused the big bang? And what powered it!!Above all why is Gravity so Weak, as compared with the other forces that govern the nature? What could explain this bizarre world where the realities all lay behind mere illusions that encourages us to view this world so simply? Physicists have proposed many theories including two of the most important and well recognized “String theory and M-Theory” which try to define the situation in terms of quantum events explaining that the gravity is not weak actually rather, it is an Illusion created that instigates us to think the way we perceive them. Again this raises yet another question....the existence of multi-dimensions space.
Are we not alone in this vast universe? Are there alien being on other galaxies? Who knows? After all, the universe is vast and we have just reached the mars so as to say physically-we are like the fish in the pond that spend whole of their life in it thinking they have a limited space and the world to them is just the pond they live in !! Maybe there are extraterrestrial living beings in higher dimensions! We could not predict for sure but there are chances.
Nevertheless other questions still to be answered ...i.e. about the dark matter, black holes, wormholes and the possibility of Time travel.
What are black holes? What is their gravitational power (force)? Why do black holes emit radiation and not visible light? What is at its surface? What happens to someone if s/he steps on the surface of a black hole? What effect does it have to the fabric of space time?
It is postulated that if one attends nearly the speed of light, time slows down for the person as a consequence s/he has time travel....but is it possible to attend the speed of light for any creature. It is proven that weird things happen when 99.9999999999999999999…… percentage of speed of light is attained- the evidence is the longer existence of matter at the particle accelerators. If we follow the Equation E=mc2 it seems impossible because by the time one attains the speed of light one would have gained infinitely large mass and also would have consumed infinite amounts of energy!!This limits the speeds!!However, there has been proposed an alternate for time travel and for shortcut routes to link other places in universe and those shortcuts are Wormholes. Can wormholes be used as time machines and shortcuts to other places in universe? But wormholes have a Very small life span and they open only for fractions of seconds. If anyone tries using that route they may be crushed or dematerialized on the middle or they could end up at some weird place!
The best of my queries lay on the universe itself. How old is it? And how colossal is it? How did it all start and from where did they all come from? What is the age of the universe and how long will it remain there? Where are we actually? Are we in the middle or the edges of this infinite place? Who created it all? Is there anyone who created everything? If yes, then who created the creator? Is the universe really expanding as they say or is it contracting, who knows for sure because no scientific finding is ever long lasting?
Moreover, was there a big bang ever?
This is just a small part compared to this infinite universe and its hidden mysteries. I hope to get all my questions answered someday and it would be even more my wish to do it on my own. It would be fun, exciting and thrilling to unravel the truths of this vast creation and nature, wouldn’t it? I guess that I’m on the right track and hopefully someday my instincts would lead me to the place where I am born to be.
fabric of spacetime
ET
Wormholes