Does milk spoil while traveling at the speed of light? - clubhi
======
lutusp
Because this is a relativity question, we must consider two perspectives:

Perspective 1: that of an observer watching the milk speed by. Answer -- no,
because the milk is (hypothetically) traveling as C, like a photon it doesn't
experience time, so it cannot spoil, and the independent observer so reports.

Perspective 2: that of the milk, hypothetically traveling at C. Because the
milk is traveling at C, the speed of time, there is no time dimension in any
meaningful sense. Lacking a time dimension, the milk isn't in a conventional
four-dimensional spacetime frame, therefore it cannot spoil, indeed nothing at
all can be said to "happen" in the conventional spacetime sense.

There's a reason why the speed of light is special, and why relativistic frame
comparisons break down at that speed -- primarily, there aren't four
dimensions essential to forming a basis for relativistic perspectives. So, if
we somehow get around the mass-moving-at-C limitation, time still poses an
insurmountable problem.

Further reading: <http://arachnoid.com/relativity>

------
dalke
Milk can't travel at the speed of light. Nor can anything else with mass.

~~~
sp332
Sure it can. It just requires an infinite amount of energy.

~~~
dalke
It requires infinite time in addition to infinite energy. It's also not a
"just", since it needs an engine which can always overpower the breaking
effect of the occasional particles of intergalactic space. Even in pure
vacuum, there's still an interaction with the 3K background background
radiation. (For cosmic particles this is the Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin limit.)
Beyond that, there may be vacuum Cherenkov radiation to overcome.

Infinite energy doesn't help if your engine produces waste heat, unless you
can also cool infinitely fast.

------
sp332
From its own reference frame, yes. As long as it's in an inertial reference
frame, it will spoil at the same rate.

~~~
trevelyan
That only holds up to the boundary of the speed of light. If you're actually
moving the speed of light time doesn't pass at all, no? Or at least that is my
impression -- that to a photon of light it is both simultaneously the big bang
and we are all already dead.

