Theoretical question involving relativity. Faster than light!

Wouldn’t work. You would need infinite energy to accelerate the disk.

Now, say you have a searchlight and you swivel it very fast (in outer space). The boundary of the search beam millions of miles distant will indeed move faster than the speed of light. But the individual photons in the beam won’t.

@Qingu
“The boundary of the search beam millions of miles distant will indeed move faster than the speed of light.”
I actually have my doubts about that. Wouldn’t the result be more like a lightspiral with the edge of the spiral moving at no more than lightspeed?
Just wondering.

Nope. You can’t generate enough energy to turn that gear either fast enough or at all because of the size of the diameter of the disk.

NEXT

@ragingloli, I don’t know. Maybe?

Create a giant disk that is so massive it bends space-time, then get Spok to give you his best guess at factoring in the whale, and run round it really really fast, then maybe you will go faster than light, but not likely.

If your gear-ratio was high enough…

What color is the bike?

Even if you did have infinite energy, materials are not infinitely strong and stiff. You need to make the disk out of something. Even getting a rim velocity a fraction of c will involve incredible hoop stress on the rim of the disk.

Ok, some good answers, but this is what would happen (I figured it out like 2 seconds after typing the question).

Some of you got it. As the rim moves faster, it gets heavier. Same as moving in a straight line. It will take an infinite amount of energy to get it to light speed! I thought I came up with a loophole, but it’s the same!