• Question: What are the effects of making particles move faster and how does that benefit us?

    Asked by mcgos003 to Jimmy on 13 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: James Holloway

      James Holloway answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      Hi mc,

      Heres an answer I wrote earlier:

      “As you make them move as fast as the speed of light strange things start happening.

      They get heavier and heavier (as the extra energy you give them cannot turn into more speed, because of the speed of light limit, so instead the extra energy turns into mass).

      Time slows down for the particle, which is even weirder.

      The particle gets shorter and shorter.

      So if we got a cup of coffee and made it move near the speed of light it would could compress to be as thick as a piece of paper whilst weighing as much as a bus. Welcome to the weird world of relativity!”

      They way it benefits us is that it enables scientists to perform experiments on fundamental physics, and probe the nature of the universe. It enables us to answer the big questions like ‘what are we made of?’ ‘where does mass come from?’ ‘what is light?’ and it also gives loads of technology along the way such as mobile phones, the internet, microwaves and lots more.

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