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From: draughn@iitcs.UUCP (Mark Draughn)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: FTL Travel
Message-ID: <154@iitcs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Aug-85 22:16:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: iitcs.154
Posted: Wed Aug  7 22:16:15 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Aug-85 02:58:10 EDT
References: <2702@topaz.ARPA> <1622@orca.UUCP> <813@ncoast.UUCP> <436@utastro.UUCP>
Reply-To: draughn@iitcs.UUCP (Mark draughn)
Organization: Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago Il.
Lines: 15

The annoying thing about the idea of FTL travel is what happens when an object
travels faster than the speed of light.  It's relativistic mass drops to zero.
At least the real part does.  The imaginary part shows up, and then dwindles
away toward zero as velocity increases without bound.  The problem with FTL
travel then depends on what "imaginary" means in the real world.  (It's easy
to forget that "imaginary" is just a word and assume that all this means that
objects traveling above the speed of light have no mass.  Depending on one's
school of thought, this may or may not make FTL travel impossible.)  I don't
know what "imaginary mass" means in the real world, and I don't think anyone
else knows either.

                                                   Mark Draughn
                                                   ihnp4!iitcs!draughn
P.S.  Of course you can't just accellerate up through the speed of light.
      Coming from the lower side of c, mass increases toward infinity.