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M$1.00  Funded By Mahalo ? |  March 04, 2009 03:45 PM

Would there be a shock wave if something suddenly accelerated to the speed of light?

Given that there is a shock wave generated when fighters go Mach, would there be some super shock wave created by going the speed of light?
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March 04, 2009 04:14 PM
We don't know... If you watch The Right Stuff, the test pilots who were trying to break the sound barrier (and the scientists at that time) didn't know what would happen if you broke the sound barrier. When they finally did it, I'm sure a whole new mathematics was born.

I think this will happen for the speed of light "barrier". We don't have a way to describe what happens beyond the speed of light, so, we'll figure that out once we've gone beyond that.

Now... the humorous answer: Thing would happen, but we'd never see it coming.

THANK YOU! I'm here all night... Try the veal.

('cause it's the speed of LIGHT... get it?)

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March 04, 2009 10:01 PM
Well, sonic booms are caused by pressure waves travelling at the speed of sound; but it is physically impossible for physical mass to travel at the speed of light, so no pressure waves there.

I think that it'd be more likely that you'd break the space-time continuum... :)

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March 05, 2009 01:51 AM
Sort of. If a charged particle moving close to c (the speed of light in a vacuum), enters an insulating medium in which the speed of light is less than the particle speed (water or glass, for example, transmit light at quite a bit less than c), the particle will emit a cone shaped burst of Cerenkov radiation that is very like a shock wave.
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/en/Cerenkov_radiation


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March 05, 2009 06:13 AM
Why doesn't my answer here show up in my profile? Somehow the submit process didn't quite complete. Odd.

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