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From: jim@randvax.UUCP (Jim Gillogly)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Speed of Light and beyond
Message-ID: <2481@randvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-May-85 14:08:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: randvax.2481
Posted: Wed May 15 14:08:43 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 22-May-85 07:45:25 EDT
References: <1776@mordor.UUCP>
Organization: Banzai Institute
Lines: 21

In article <1776@mordor.UUCP> @S1-A.ARPA,@MIT-MC:TENCATI@JPL-VLSI.ARPA writes:
>
>I know this is impossible, but what would happen if...
>A ship could exceed the speed of light?  When the space shuttle crosses the
>sound barrier, there is a sonic boom.  If it were possible to cross the
>"light barrier", what phenomenon would result?

As the ship approaches the speed of light its mass approaches infinity.
So as it crosses the speed of light I would expect an infinitely strong
(if momentary) gravity wave across all of space ... and don't expect it
to attenuate by the time it gets here, since the cube root of infinity is
going to be pretty big :-) .  Perhaps the Tralfamadorians in _Slaughterhouse
Five_ did exactly this when they ended the universe -- I seem to remember
that it was caused by experiments with a new rocket propulsion system.

I'd recommend that you find a way to skip directly from our tardyon universe
into the tachyon universe without going across the speed of light.
-- 
	Jim Gillogly
	{decvax, vortex}!randvax!jim
	jim@rand-unix.arpa