• Question: As cars are improving on speed so much, possibly in the future, could there be a car that is faster than the speed of light?

    Asked by nyxiemoonbeamz to Cathy, Mark, Roma, Rory on 26 Jun 2014.
    • Photo: Rory Hadden

      Rory Hadden answered on 26 Jun 2014:


      Nope! That would be physically impossible. It sounds strange but when things move, they gain mass (this is something that Einstein discovered). We don’t notice it normally because we move very slowly compared to the speed limit of the universe which is 300 000 000 m/s – the speed of light.

      When something starts moving very fast i.e 90% of the speed of light, the mass increases significantly. The force you need to keep accelerating this mass also increases. When you get near the speed of light, the mass becomes close to infinity and the force you need to make it go faster becomes close to infinity. That is obviously impossible. So we cannot travel at the speed of light.

      I also have no idea what happens to an engine going that fast…

      Sadly we will just have to content ourselves by going faster than the speed of sound like these guys http://www.bloodhoundssc.com

      Rory

    • Photo: Roma Agrawal

      Roma Agrawal answered on 26 Jun 2014:


      Rory has really got that one covered! Einstein’s theories show that you cannot go over the speed of light- nothing can. However we do have planes that go faster than the speed of sound.

    • Photo: Cathy Fraser

      Cathy Fraser answered on 26 Jun 2014:


      Sounds like Roma and Rory have this one covered!

    • Photo: Mark Greaves

      Mark Greaves answered on 27 Jun 2014:


      I see the other engineers have covered this already.

      Personally I think breaking the speed of sound is plenty quick enough

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