Q&A

What happens if you spin something at the speed of light?

What happens if you spin something at the speed of light?

Consider this… the speed of light is 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per second) and when an object moves at this speed, its mass will become infinite according to the Theory of Relativity put forth by Einstein. Therefore, infinite energy will be required to move the object, which is impractical.

Can rotational velocity exceed the speed of light?

Unlike the classical case of a spinning top, the angular velocity of a disk of astronomic size would decrease with increasing radius; such that the velocity of the atoms at the rim of the disk will not exceed the speed of light.

What is the speed of light in RPM?

Using a radius about one meter, the speed of light limits us to an RPM of about 18 billion, so that is a safe upper limit.

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What is the fastest spinning object?

Scientists at Purdue University have made the fastest spinning object ever, a tiny ball of silicon dioxide that rotates 300 billion times per second. They positioned the microscopic silica balls in a vacuum and blasted them with two different lasers that induce the spin.

Can light move in circles?

Any physics student knows that light travels in a straight line. But now researchers have shown that light can also travel in a curve, without any external influence. Out in space, light rays passing near very massive objects such as stars are seen to travel in curves.

What else travels at the speed of light?

The only other thing we know that is massless and stable when free, would be the gravitational field (and its presumed quanta, the gravitons.) So like light (propagating waves of the electromagnetic field), gravitational radiation (propagating waves of the gravitational field) also travel at the vacuum speed of light.

How was the speed of light determined?

The speed of light could then be found by dividing the diameter of the Earth’s orbit by the time difference. The Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens, who first did the arithmetic, found a value for the speed of light equivalent to 131,000 miles per second. The correct value is 186,000 miles per second.

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What spins fast?

Scientists at Purdue University have made the fastest spinning object ever, a tiny ball of silicon dioxide that rotates 300 billion times per second.

What is the fastest spinning thing?

It is too faint in this image to be visible against the background. PSR J1748−2446ad is the fastest-spinning pulsar known, at 716 Hz, or 716 times per second.

What RPM is the speed of light?

Scientists at Purdue University created the object, which revolves at 300 billion revolutions per minute.

Do objects moving at nearly the speed of light look distorted?

Given that already since Olaf Römer’s observations of 1676 it has been known that light propagates at a finite speed, it would have been possible more than 300 years ago to conclude that objects moving at nearly the speed of light must look distorted. Surprisingly, no such conclusions have been drawn in the framework of classical physics.

What is the shape of the sphere moving at 95\% speed of light?

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Figure 2: A sphere (a) moving at 95\% of the speed of light is contracted to an ellipsoid (b) as a measurement of its shape would show. Looking at the moving sphere, one sees it with an exactly circular outline, but rotated (c).

Is a tennis ball moving at the speed of light?

On the other hand, if it were moving at the speed of light relative to you, then it was moving at the same speed as me relative to you, thus both myself and the tennis ball will hit you simultaneously. If this is the case, however, then the tennis ball would have been moving at a speed of 0 m/s with respect to me.

What happens to your time as you approach the speed of light?

That means, from the perspective of a person strapped to O, clocks attached to you are ticking slowly (i.e. your time is slowed down). As you approach the speed of light (with respect to O), this time dilation effect becomes more and more pronounced.