That's a variant of Zeno's paradoxon of "Dichotomy Paradox".Keklas Rekobah wrote: ↑Fri Sep 10, 2021 8:38 pmI am not trying to put too fine of a point on this, but unlimited acceleration is theoretically possible in the real universe. While a vessel could never achieve 100% of lightspeed, it is theoretically possible to keep "adding nines" indefinitely to the ship's velocity, accelerating from 0.9c, through 0.999c, through 0.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999...c, and so forth.
You'll have an infinite amount of steps to make to get to the target. (Each step being half of the difference between c and your speed, the target being c.)
That's time dilation. Once you've reached the speed of light, your time crawls so slowly, that your time will basically never pass until some event slows you down.Keklas Rekobah wrote: ↑Fri Sep 10, 2021 8:38 pmOne oddity about lightspeed: To an outside observer, a photon would take all of eternity to transit the entire breadth of the universe; but a massless observer riding on the photon would perceive the trip to happen instantaneously.
This assumes, of course, that the first observer was capable of watching the photon for all eternity, and that the second observer was capable of riding on a single photon.
That's also why constant acceleration will not bring you beyond speed of light, as your time crawled to a stop, and you actually do not accelerate anymore (as seen by outside observers). But since your time is so slow, you still feel accelerated.
Now constant acceleration as seen by the theoretical outside observer is s.th. else. Because that WILL bring you beyond c pretty fast. But your constant acceleration will look to him like you=re reducing your acceleration slowly until your acceleration is 0 when you reach c.