Is the speed of light Warp 1?
139638
I recall it was something like, \n\nWarp 1 - Speed of light\nWarp 2 - 12x speed of light\nand so on. \n\nUpdate: Did a little more research, and found this:\n\nThis chart compares TOS-era Warp speeds with the speed of light:\n\nWarp ......  Velocity   \n1 ...............1  Speed of Light  \n2 ...............8   \n3 ..............27   \n4 ..............64   \n5 .............125   \n6 .............216  Maximum stable speed of NCC-1701  \n7 .............343   \n8 .............512  Emergency speed of NCC-1701  \n9 .............729   \n10 ...........1000   \n11 ...........1331   \n12 ...........1728   \n13 ...........2197   \n14.1 .........2803  Episode: "That Which Survives" [TOS]  \n \n\nAnd, here's something fun... it's a warp factor calculator to figure out how long it will take you to get to your destination at different warp speeds:\n\nhttp://home.att.net/~srschmitt/script_warpcalc.html
631594
Our goal was to drastically slow down light, which travels through empty space at the universe's ultimate speed limit of nearly 300,000 kilometers a second. We saw the first sign of light pulses slowing down in March 1998. As happens so often in experimental physics--because it can take so many hours to get all the components working together for the first time--this occurred in the wee hours of the morning, at 4 A.M. By July we were down to airplane speed. At that time I had to go to the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen to teach a class. I remember sitting in the plane marveling that I was traveling "faster than light";--that I could beat one of our slow pulses to Denmark by a full hour.
6671
The exact speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s\n\nTo be precise, what we usually call the "speed of light" is really the speed of light in a vacuum (the absence of matter). In reality, the speed of light depends on the material that light moves through. Thus, for example, light moves slower in glass than in air, and in both cases the speed is less than in a vacuum. However, the density of matter between the stars is sufficiently low that the actual speed of light through most of interstellar space is essentially the speed it would have through a vacuum, so we don't make much error by ignoring the difference.\n\nTo make it easier for you to convert, here is the speed in alternative units :\n\n(1) 983,571,056.4304461 foot/second\n(2) 11,802,852,677.165352 inch/second\n(3) 1,079,252,848.8 kilometer/hour\n(4) 299,792.458 kilometer/second\n(5) 582,749,918.3585312 knot\n(6) 880,991.0899527 mach\n(7) 670,616,629.3843952 mile/hour (mph)
468084
Greetings,\n\nKinda outta my league, but perhaps the link I posted can be of some use to you.\n\nDiscover had an article last year about a couple of inflation cosmology theorists who believed the speed of light, while constant now, was not constant in the very early universe, it was in fact slower.  Not sure about all that, but thought you might want to go digging for the article.\n\n-matt
1151814
Yes but only to the person observing from one comet the speed of one is only relitive to the still space it occupies , but yes compared to the other it would appeare to go faster than the speed of light.
721172
A) Speed is distance divided by time, as in kilometers per second or km/s, which can also be expressed as km*s^-1 (kilometers times seconds to the minus one power). The incorrect notation km/s-1 appears to be a mixed up combination of these two ways of expressing speed.\nB) Light speed is 300,000 km/s, so 9,000 is 3% of that.\nC) A Parsec is 30,856,802,500,000 km and a year is 365*24*60*20 = 31,536,000 seconds. Doing the math gives 0.000009198 parsecs per year.\nD) A megaparsec is a million parsecs so 0.000009198 * 4 billion / a million = 0.036792 Mpc/year
811109
You misunderstand Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity. It doesn't say that you can't have something move faster than the speed of light. Only "information" can NOT move faster than the speed of light. By information, I mean any "signal", like electromagnetic waves (which includes light, radio waves, etc. etc.). Any material object within the Universe are also restricted by Special Relativity, since material objects also carry "information".\n\nFor the Universe or the fabric of spacetime to be expanding faster than the speed of light is NOT a violation of Special Relativity, and the Universe will not be moving backwards in time.\n\n--------------------------------------------------------\n\nEdit - Ok, here let me clarify why I said that Special Relativity (SR) does NOT apply to the expansion of the Universe:\n\nVelocity of something depends on which definition of distance we use. So, if we assume that the distance of an object at time t is the distance from our position at time t to the object's position at time t measured by a set of observers moving with the expansion of the Universe, and all making their observations when they see the Universe as having age t, then the velocity (change in D per change in t) can definitely be larger than the speed of light. This is not a contradiction of special relativity because this "distance" is not the same as the spatial distance used in SR, and the age of the Universe is not the same as the time used in SR.\n\nIn the special case of the "empty Universe", where one can show the model in both special relativistic and cosmological coordinates, the velocity defined by change in cosmological distance per unit cosmic time is given by v = c ln(1+z), where z is the redshift, which clearly goes to infinity as the redshift goes to infinity, and is larger than c for z > 1.718.\n\nFor the "critical density Universe", this velocity is given by v = 2c[1-(1/sqrt(1+z))], which is larger than c for z > 3. \n\nFor the "concordance model" based on CMB data and the acceleration of the expansion measured using supernovae, a flat Universe with Omega = 0.27 (this would be our Universe), the velocity is greater than c for z > 1.407\n\nAll this just means that for any expanding universe, there will be a value of z (i.e., redshift or cosmological distance) that will give the appearance of galaxies moving at velocities greater than c.
911033
No.  Nothing goes faster than the speed of light.
95650
It's like the rictor scale (earthquakes).  Warp 2 is twice as fast as warp 1.  Warp 3 is twice as fast as warp 2.\n\nSo say warp 1 goes 1 foot a second. (it goes MUCH faster.)\n\nWarp 2 goes 2 feet a second.\n\nWarp 3 goes 4 feet a second.\n\nWarp 4 goes 16 feet a second.\n\nWarp 5 goes 256 feet a second.\n\nWarp 6 goes 65536 feet a second.\n\nAnd Voyager got to go warp 10 through a poorly written script :)
349427
no, anything that travels close to the speed of light becomes more massive as it goes faster, and would actually become infinitely massive at the speed of light. this means it would take an increasing amount of energy just to get close, and an infinite amount to reach that speed. the only reason light can reach that speed is because it is made of photons which have no mass. even a tiny particle like an electron can never actually reach the speed of light.\n\nHowever, faster than light travel may be possible by warping space-time itself, using phenomena like wormholes or even black holes.
8700
no. well, its absolutely impossible to travel at the speed of light, but lets pretend you can so i can actually give you an answer to the question. The speed of light is actually the ultimate speed limit to the universe, nothing can travel faster than light, so although you would expect the light to be going at twice the speed of light (you plus the speed of light)it can't because it is physically impossible for even light to travel faster than the speed of light so it would be going at the same speed of you and not reach any path in front of you.  Of course, if you turned on your headlights before you started moving, the light would always be one step ahead of you.\n\nbut again, this situation couldn't happen anyway since you can't get to the speed of light, and if you want to know why, look at some of my answers to other questions about time travel (which involves velocity distorting time) and shining flashlights and such.
372609
warp speed is supposed to be a x a x a x speed of light or in otherwords a cubed. so warp 9 would be 9x9x9 x lightspeed or 729 x lightspeed so time would be 5 years divided by 729 = 2.5 days approx
811141
The Speed of Light is measured to any observer, preferably "at rest" or not moving on an intersteller ship.  As said above, there is no such thing as absolutely stationary anywhere.  Everything in this Universe moves relative to something else.  We move relative to the local star systems, they in turn move relative to the galactic center.  The galactic center moves realative to the nearby Galaxies, such as Andromeda Galaxy (which in less than 6 Billion years the Milky Way will collide with to form one larger Galaxy).  So, everything moves.  Even if it looks like it doesn't.
678688
It's not a yes or no question.\n\nCan one travel faster than the speed of light?  No.\n\nCan objects be moving away from each other at a relative rate faster than the speed of light?  Yes.\n\nMeditate upon this, and you may become enlighted, or enspeeded, or something...
10713
no, only things traveling at speeds close to the speed of light experience the distortion of time.  Light itself doesn't have mass or anything, it's an electromagnetic wave.  And even if it did, time is only distorted for the thing thats moving at the high velocities, so you wouldn't ever know it.
557289
I read about an experiment where they actually made light travel backwards faster than the proposed limit for the speed of light.\n\nhttp://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=2544\n\nAlso, there is some proposals that what we call "the void" we call space isn't as much a void as it is micro-matter continuously coming together and annihilating each other and repeating this process continuously.\n\nSome other information on space:\n\nhttp://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=2544
134543
I believe that warp speed is supposed to be significantly faster than the speed of light (given that they sometimes consider three light years a minor detour), and it's not possible to go faster than the speed of light.  The concept of manipulating space in such a way that they can essentially create worm holes it less unrealistic, but is still purely science fiction.