The Large Hadron Collider can accelerate protons to 99.9999991% the speed of light. Why can’t we reach 100%?
In: Physics
because that would require **literally** infinite energy.
and yes I used literally correctly. If we exterminate all life on earth including humans to make way for power plants cover every millimeter of the surface of the earth, and then build a magic worm hole that funnels all the energy of one trillion supernovas a second and used that to power the LHC we would have less than
0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the energy needed for that.
Massive particles in general cannot go at the speed of light. It’s a fundamental aspect of the universe, as far as we know.
Because light weights nothing. You can’t accelerate as fast as something that weights nothing as long as you weight something. The # of energy you would need is infinite.
Adding onto what someone said, it’s because protons are massive particles — meaning they have mass, not that they’re big. Things that have mass can’t reach the speed of light.
The famous equation E=mc^2 has a more complete form that’s usually ignored bc stuff is usually nowhere close to light speed:
E^2 = (mc^2 )^2 + (pc)^2
The notable difference is the addition of a term to address momentum (p). As things move faster and faster, their momentum gets higher and higher. Normally, at speeds much less than the speed of light, that momentum term doesn’t really affect the rest of the equation, since the speed pales in comparison to the speed of light. As things approach the speed of light, however, that term starts to matter; the amount of energy needed to go faster constantly increases as you speed up, to the point that it ends up being unattainable.
TL;DR the speed of light is the speed limit for stuff without mass, otherwise it’s gotta go slower!
Any particle with mass requires more energy to be added to accelerate it. This in effect gives it more mass so it takes even more energy to accelerate it. You can get closer and closer but you can never hit light speed.
Light, photons, have no mass. So they always travel at light speed and never anything less.
Basically the faster you want to go the more energy you need, to get to the speed of light you need infinite energy
Anything with mass requires infinite energy to reach the speed of light. Infinite energy is not possible.
We could double the amount of energy we put into the particle and it would only get slightly closer to the speed of light.
The faster something is going, the more energy it takes to speed it up. It’s harder for a car to accelerate from 60 mph to 61 mph than it was for it to go from 59 mph to 60.
As your speed approaches the speed of light, the energy required to accelerate approaches infinity, meaning it would take infinite energy to move a particle with mass at the speed of light
The more you accelerate, the more energy you need to accelerate further.
You add more energy and accelerate more. Now you need even more energy to accelerate even further.
You can do this indefinitely; you’ll get closer and closer to the speed of light but you’ll never reach it.
Follow-up question based on the replies:
I remember reading some stuff from some theoretical physicists (think Stephen Hawking was one of them) theorising that time travel would be possible if you could go faster than the speed of light, since time is relative and time would go slower for you then everything around it.
Isn’t this theory completely pointless if it defies all physics for anything with a mass to be able to even travel AT the speed of light, never mind FASTER than the speed of light?
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