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[Dooly]

Fizziks

So basically an object's movement upon being pushed is essentially a pressure wave of atoms pushing against each other which still can't happen faster than c, right?

[TA]

I never took physics, but I think that's right, yes.  There's no such thing as a solid object, which is why a lot of c-breaking activities fall apart.  If it worked, you wouldn't need to extend it to Mars to prove it - instantaneous movement is instantaneous at any scale, and pushing one end of a pencil would demonstrate this.

[Classic]

I never understood the answer as to why an arbitrarily large force couldn't propel an arbitrarily small particle faster than c (it... GAINS mass!?). My understanding of classical relativity was never deep enough to broach the subject, and any insight I was given to the nature of relativity (in say fast semiconductors) was never discussed as a product of those theories..

EDIT:

Actually, in the magic stick scenario, if you tried to break c with a sufficiently high force I don't know whether you'd make the hydrogen core "leapfrog" over its neighbors, losing potential at each step... Or fuse helium, which would shrink the stick!

... Probably fuse helium, but we're already way past my ability to "execute" the thought experiment we're describing even if we weren't cocking it up with a tremendous assload of magic.

EDIT EDIT:
So I guess I have been watching lots of anal sex videos lately?

[Mothra]

What I don't understand is how exactly we'd communicate using this damn thing!

[Koah]

Morse code.  Failing that, we'd just poke someone with it and use it to gesture towards whatever we needed them to do.

[Classic]

Even with a working and useful code, the controlling forces seem hell-bent on stymieing anything useful coming from the technology.

[Zaratustra]

Classic: Not the mass per se, but the energy required to push the object faster and faster becomes higher and higher (in a direct proportion to how much spacetime distorts around the object) until you need infinite energy to get the object to the speed of light. Obviously, an object with more energy has more mass.

Also, someone needs to split this.

[Büge]

Classic: Not the mass per se, but the energy required to push the object faster and faster becomes higher and higher (in a direct proportion to how much spacetime distorts around the object) until you need infinite energy to get the object to the speed of light. Obviously, an object with more energy has more mass.

That's assuming you don't have a four-mile-long line of peasants ready to throw it.

[Classic]

Oh, right. Because mass==space-time distortion in this model.

[Brentai]

You'd either need a very light stick or a canister of rocket fuel every time you wanted to nudge an object with that much total mass.

The silly thing is that this is kind of basically the idea behind proposed models of FTL communication, except of course you're using fired neutrons, not fucking sticks.

[Mongrel]

[Büge]

[Shinra]

And that is why Tom Bombadil wasn't in the fucking movie.

[Lottel]

...Because it would've made the rest of the movie terrible by comparison?

[Doom]

The potential for a LOTR Musical is still there, ripe for the taking.

[Büge]

The potential for a LOTR Musical is still there, ripe for the taking.

It's happened.

[Mongrel]

Gentlemen, I present a handy visual guide to The Internet:

[Mongrel]

[R^2]

Semi-related: I saw a guy yesterday wearing a t-shirt that said he's been to the Trap and Skeet Exhibition Championship. I know what that's supposed to mean, but still: eheeheeheeheehee.

[Mongrel]

Oh fuck, this is priceless on so many levels: