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From: barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: FTL Techniques (masslessness)
Message-ID: <1086@ames.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-Aug-85 02:55:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames.1086
Posted: Thu Aug 15 02:55:17 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Aug-85 07:15:12 EDT
References: <2900@topaz.ARPA> <825@ncoast.UUCP>
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 31

Quoted from <2900@topaz.ARPA> ["Re: FTL & Physics"], by Alfke.PASA@Xerox.ARPA...
+---------------
| Photons (and anything else which travels at lightspeed) are massless.
| You can multiply their mass by any gamma factor (the thing that goes
| infinite at c) and it stays zero: thus, the formula still applies.
| Interestingly enough, photons do have momentum, which varies with
| wavelength, not speed.
| 
| If we could get rid of ALL of a starship's mass, we could get it to go
| at lightspeed very easily ... hmmm.  Sounds like a great gimmick for a
| space-opera.
+---------------

	One of Dr. Robert Forward's "Far Out Physics" ideas is along
these lines. First, you postulate anti-mass - not antimatter, but negative
mass. Its gravity pushes, and when it's combined with regular mass, you
get cancellation, nothing, no energy.
	Anyway, you take approximately equal hunks of mass and anti-mass.
The mass is your spaceship, the anti-mass your "drive". Hook 'em together
(how?) (shut up, kid!), and the thing's inertialess (or nearly, depending
on how exactly you measure the mass and anti-mass), because the total
mass of the system's 0. It immediately flies off in the direction of
the mass-end of the system (the mass pulls the anti-mass, the anti-mass
pushes the mass) at a velocity approximating light.
	Anybody seen any anti-mass lying around? :-)

-  From the Crow's Nest  -                      Kenn Barry
                                                NASA-Ames Research Center
                                                Moffett Field, CA
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