Will This Go Faster Than Light?

Physics of contraptions meant to go faster than light.

Special thanks to MinutePhysics for visual effects and Prof. Geraint Lewis for revisions to earlier drafts of this video.

[chiefbeef]

ok but what if i took a baseball and threw it like *really* fast

[nahiduzzaman]

Make the speed of light be the speed limit of a US road and people will drive 10/15 mph more than the speed limit. There, now you have speed higher than speed of light

[davidnewton]

I love how his voice raises near the end of the video, shows how much he was invested in the topic

[Elusaka]

Something faster than the speed is rule 34 artists when a new character releases

[whyiseveryaliastaken]

What if we used a Nokia 3310 instead of Carbon Nanotubes?

[Saedris]

Record a laser
Then play that laser in fast forward
BOOM faster than light...

[angelogandolfo]

“The only thing that travels faster than light, is bad news.” - British Author Douglas Adams.

[CanadianBoardCrew]

My friend claims his 1999 Honda Civic with Vtec can go 99% the speed of light if he found a long enough road

[SharkRainstorm]

Honestly sad, even if we moved at the speed of light, exploring the universe is pretty much impossible. Due to the distance between those objects.

[WaterCrane]

Though ultimately rather minute compared to everything else, the first thing that sprung to mind with the spinning tether thing is that if you start extending carbon nanotubes out, no matter how light they are, the whole apparatus will spin more slowly due to the conservation of angular momentum.

[TheEvilGreebo]

When I was in 6th grade, I had a *science* teacher claim that it should be impossible for a stick to move faster at one end than at the other because the stick was a solid object and solid objects can't move at more than one speed. That always bothered me because I knew it had to be wrong, even then, but could never quite conceptualize why.

Your "long stick across the moon" - explaining that the atoms that make up the stick have to bump into each other to move the whole - you just crystalized the answer for me.

43 years later.

Thank you!💌

[BracchiAlessandroFineArt]

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news but they didn't work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn't really any point in being there.”

― Douglas Adams

[blackhatvisions]

My man just recorded a whole video with a booger coming out of his nose

[piyusgurung]

What if you record light from the sun travelling to the earth and watch the video at 2x speed :p

[omarsatar]

My paycheck is disappearing faster than the speed of light.

[babbar]

But there is always “Faster than the Speed of Love” by Brian Griffin....

[gx_no]

I love how he was almost yelling in the end, and that's what good teachers do.

[quelorepario]

That nose hair is travellin at the speed of light

[kosnk]

I love that people try to break the limit and that Derek replies to that in detail.

[aghanasir]

Man I pity the man who gave that innocent idea to Derek it was just a naive idea but Derek meant it as a professional one