Janus

Saint also goes on to say "The backbone of SR is not simply the constancy of c, but also that it is the universal "speed limit". Everything was developed based on that idea. Since it was clearly developed with the assumption that FTL speeds are impossible to achieve, it cannot provide useable answers to inputs beyond c." Where he quite literally says that SR was based on the Speed of light being a universal speed limit.

Common misconception. Time would not go backwards at FTL speeds' date=' it would become imaginary (a product of the square root of -1) It would be undefined. Look at the time dilation equation: [math]T = \frac{T'}{\sqrt{1- \frac{v^2}{c^2}}}[/math] Note that as v equals c, the equation becomes [math]T = \frac{T'}{0}[/math] And division by zero is undefined. But since nothing with mass can travel at c, it'll never come up.

As close to infinite as you want to get. Temperature is related to the Average kinetic energy of the particles involved. Now while you can't get particles up to light speed you can get as close as you want. Kinetic energy, taking Relativity into account is [math]KE = mc^2 \left( \frac{1}{1- \frac{v^2}{c^2}}-1 \right)[/math] note that as v approaches c, the kinetic energy approaches infinity and so does the temp.

Your third POV would see things depending on its relative velocity to the ship and Earth. It is no different than either the POV of the Earth or the POV of the ship. There is no POV that can say that it sees what "actually" happens. All POV's are equally valid, and what each POV measures as happening is what "actually" happens in that frame of reference.

To add to what Swansont has already stated. The speed of light in a vacuum is always c, where c is 299,792,458 meters/sec as measured by any observer. Thus say you have three observes: A; standing next to the light source, B; moving away from the light source, and C; moving towards the light source. Each has a device capable of measuring the speed of the light from the source relative to themselves. They will each measure that the light has a velocity of c to relative to themselves.

It depends on your orientation of the ship's gravity to the impact. If the impact is at a right angle to the "up" of your ship's gravity and strong enough, then, yes, you will be thrown off your feet. While the gravity will pull you down to the deck plates, it has no sidewise component. If the ship is hit hard enough to shift it sideways, your feet, due to the friction between them and the deck plate, will go with it. your upper body, however will try and stay in place (law of inertia). Your feet come out from under your center of gravity and you lose balance. If you were hit from the "bottom", you would feel heavier for a moment. If the impact is large enough and you weren't prepared, you could also end up falling. If you were hit from the top, you would feel lighter, and again, depending on the severity of the impact and what you were doing at the time, it could throw off your balance.

While there has been some speculation on the possibilty of silicon based life, I don't think that any positive conclusion of it possibility has been reached. In fact, most of the evidence points against it. Example: carbon dioxide is a gas at standard temp and pressure, silicon dioxide is a solid. The same is true for other silicon based molecules. This means that silicon based molecules tend to be less reactive. In order to form life you need chemical reaction to take place. A way around this is to place the molecules in a warmer enviroment, meaning you would need a hot planet for silicon life. The problem is that you also need complex molecules for life, and molecules made from silicon chains are more fragile than those made from carbon. The upshot is that the conditions needed for the molecules to be reactive enough for silicon based life to exist are too harsh to allow the formation of the complex molecules needed for life.

The trick to all this is the rocket equation. v_f = v_ex ln( M_i/M_f) The part within the parenthesis is known as the mass ratio, and is the ratio of the fully fueled rocket to the rocker empty of fuel. for any given mass ratio, the final velocity of the rocket depends on the exhaust velocity. the higher the exhaust velocity the greater final speed your rocket can achieve with the same amount of fuel. In other words, higher exhaust velocity leads to better efficiency. The ion rocket is more efficient that the chemcal rocket because it is capable of producing higher exhaust velocity. The downside is that Ion drives produce a "thin" exhaust (The total amount of exhaust it can produce in a given amount of time is low), this leads to low thrust and slow acceleration. Falling somewhere between is a system under development called a VASIMR (VArible Specific Impulse Magnetohydrodynamic Rocket) It is more efficient than chemical rockets, while producing more thrust than ion rockets. It is also adjustable so that you can choose either the highest efficiency or the most thrust, depending on the what you need at the moment.

Well, Proxima (Alpha Centauri C) is the closest star, but it is unknown as to whether is has any planets. It is a small red dwarf that is part of the Alpha Centauri system which also includes Alpha Centauri A & B. 'A' is a yellow star of about the same mass as the sun, and could have planets in the habital zone, but it is unknown as to whether it does.

http://web.mit.edu/space/www/voyager/voyager.html

Go to http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/eph Choose the target as the Sun. Set the date/time range you want. Generate the ephemerides. The distance to the sun will be under the heading "delta" and in AU. One AU is 149,598,550,000 meters.

A graviton would be a quantum of gravitational raditation, in the same way that a photon is a quantum of electromagnetic radiation. And just like the virtual photon is the mediator for the electromagnetic force, it is the virtual graviton that would mediate gravity. This is assuming that gravity can be quantisized.

Its me, I forgot to convert the meter/sec to cm/sec before plugging the numbers in. It would be 125 watt-sec, .03 watt-hrs, run a 100w bulb for 1.25 secs, etc.

No, Mass x velocity is momentum. The force imparted in an impact is related to the "stopping" distance of that impact, which in turn is related to the stopping time, and that in turn is a measure of acceleration. I.E. It takes ten times more force to stop a bullet over a distance of 1 mm then it does to stop it over 1 cm. Of course it takes the same energy to stop the same bullet in both instances, as energy is force times distance.

As stated above, the speed of sound in a gas is: [math]v= \sqrt{\gamma R T}[/math] Gamma is the Ratio of specific heats R in the gas constant T is the Temp in Kelvin. For air: Gamma = 1.4 R = 286 For CO2: Gamma = 1.3 R= 189 From this it is obvious that sound travels faster in air. (330 m/s vs 259 m/s at 0 degrees C)

Yes, they do. Your calculations only took into account the acceleration of M1 due to its attraction to M2, but neglected the acceleration of M2 due it's attraction to M1.