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Light-Speed Spaceships Would Have Trouble Phoning Home
(www.iflscience.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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What's the propagation speed of vibrations through carbon nantubes? I've done no math or experiments but back up this startup tech 100%. I pull on it at Alpha Centauri, it instantaneously pulls a receiver at Sol. I'd say a vat of liquid nylon with a thread pulled and dragged but that sounds sticky.
Edit /s no one is towing a rope
Now I'm imagining spider-ships traversing the galaxy making strings of filament behind them, connecting the galaxy in a vast web of communication lines.
Speed is always the same as the speed of sound through the item
Does a lower frequency signal travel the same speed? 1hz? I suppose it would be the same because the tether would have immense mass over it's length. So even though I'm picturing an impractically long tether moving as one solid length to tap slow morse code, the mass would be unfathomably high and therefore inducing significant stretch. That's without getting into vibration kinetic energy being lost to heat along the way
I'm obviously not genuinely proposing this. It's just a brain exercise.