Just a question here...
I understand that if a force is being exerted on an object, it will accelerate at a constant rate, and I wonder why it won't eventually break the speed of light?
I assume this is because there is not enough energy in the universe as we know it to create this much force.
Is this correct?

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"...and that brings up Parkman, who's batting just over .900 against Vaughn." ~ Major League II

Hum,
the space time `fabric` can only support a certain `speed`, the extra energy that you pump into the object to make it go faster just gets converted to mass instead.

it is like a glass of water, the glass will only hold so much before it overflows...

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

If the force is constant the object will not accelerate at a constant rate, because the mass will increase.

Non-increasing mass is a simplification of Newtonian mechanics that is accurate enough for all practical purposes at low velocities, but the errors become increasing large as you approach the speed of light.

So at the speed of light a material object would have to have infinite mass.

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"Insignificant molehill sometimes more important than conspicuous mountain." - Charlie Chan

and would have required infinite energy to accelerate it.

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An emperor without enemies, a king without a kingdom, supported in life by the willing tribute of a free people.

...at least according to the Einsteinian physics we know now.

(come back in a few centuries and that may or may not change!!!)

Bascially according Einsteinian Physicis there are three speed limits.

For anything with mass it is less the Light Speed, as it accelerates it gains mass. At the speed of light anything with mass, will have infinate mass, requiring it to have infinate energy to reach that acceleration.

For anything Massless (like light) they are limited to traveling exactly at the speed of light, unless externale forces are applied to them (they they can be slowed down and possibly sped up, both have been done experimentally now)

For anything with negative mass they are limited to traveling at speeds only faster then light. The less energy they have the faster they move. It requires infinate energy to slow negative mass down to the speed of light. Even if such particles as this exsit (Tacheons, etc) it's likely there would be no way to detect them with slower Photons or even slower mass.

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What this means is that to move something Faster then Light, you need to do it without accelerating it. Or accelerating it at slower then light speeds, while altering space/time to make the distance shorter (compress space/time)

So only way around the limit is to either Warp space, travle in other dimensions, or outright quantum teleportation (which produces a copy, not the original at the destination)

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"There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives" - US Army Demolitions School

http://worldsofothersuns.home.comcast.net/

Trivial Pursuit: Experiments show that nothing will travel faster than the speed of light in the neutrino sea. As no experiment has ever been conducted in absentia of the neutrino sea, whether or not it is possible for light to travel faster there....we know not. pete

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A third rate theory forbids
A second rate theory explains after the fact
A first rate theory predicts...A. Lomonosov

This is so much more complex than it's often portrayed. A constant force will accelerate an object forever, as far as the object is concerned. All this mass increasing, time stretching, length contracting stuff only applies to outside observers. You can jump in your starship with it's constant acceleration engine and, providing you have the fuel, cross the galaxy in your lifetime. Don't expect to come back and tell your friends about it though, they will be long dead. They're the outside observers.

In the other hand, while doing this you'll see the rest of the universe gain mass, slow down, get squashed and so on, since you'll be the outside observer looking in on it.

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An emperor without enemies, a king without a kingdom, supported in life by the willing tribute of a free people.

Provided you are clever enough to detect and avoid objects that you might otherwise encounter and are able to knowingly navigate.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

Sorry to be pedantic, but tachyons have imaginary mass not negative. It's to do with the root (1-nu^2/c^2) term. Particles with negative masses would still travel slower than the speed of light

Light has not been slowed down.

Propagation of light has been slowed to almost a stop, these are entirely different things.

Both Harvard and Lene Hau **** me off for misleading the public.

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"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - George Santayana

If we consider that it is possible to go beyond this neutrino sea (in this life or the next), perhaps by distorting our mass as we move beyond the speed of light, so as not to hit anything in our way, then constant increase in speed would be no problem. Atoms traveling at the speed of light would act wildly different from other objects that they are passing, so could they even slip between objects because of their excited state at high speed?
As nothing in the material plane has reached such speeds, I expect no one can answer that right now, yet I await a plasma-fission power source that my get us that fast one day.
Why not?

individual particles of matter - protons, electrons, alpha particles( helium nuclei) have gotten awful close to the speed of light in our labs (human labs) and even somewhat closer from massive cosmic power sources. Suffice to say that they don't go whizzing between relatively stationary matter much better than much slower matter - they go splat really hard.

As for fission/fusion power sources for rockets, you'd be terribly dissappointed in just how much fuel it's going to take and how long it would take to make a trip to a nearby star - assuming you're not going to be splatted into your astronaut chair. The earth only has the resources for a relatively few trips of large craft with enough speed for relatively high time dilation without starting to have significant environmental impact.

So can you slow down and loose mass?

Is that why fat people walk slow?

Blob. I'm going to try an expansion of that analogy. If the laws of nature were such that the volume of a magic cylindrical glass of water is constant, then an odd thing would happen as you tried to fill it. The first monolayer poured on the bottom would seem to be on its' way to providing a route to the top, but the second layer would be distinctly different. While providing the same mass, it would have a slightly smaller volume. Layer by layer, as you pour, the water molecules shrink in size, becoming ever denser. So, the glass gets heavier and heavier but never full (according to gamma). Eventually, you'll be pouring water at black hole density..(it's just numbers).
When you empty the glass out, just the opposite occurs. First you pour out the black hole water, then ~ neutron star density, through successive density gradients down to the bottom monolayer of water (the only one). of "normal" water
With masses accelerating to c, even your initial minute acceleration from your rest frame has already changed your object's mass. Not all the energy you thought you were putting into delta v did that for you (though it's close, according to gamma). With every successive incremental acceleration, a larger and larger relative proportion of the energy you are applying goes into mass, (still according to gamma) until that too reaches black hole density.
"Waiter, could I have a refill on my water, please?" Pete.

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A third rate theory forbids
A second rate theory explains after the fact
A first rate theory predicts...A. Lomonosov

it depends, does light have infinite mass?

i don't think so

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