Quote:
Originally Posted by Joebill
And that there is a barrier region where tachyons cannot slow down to, and tardyons cannot speed up to, the barrier of the speed of light.
I have read a few claims years ago that it sounds like the old Sound Barrier problem...
It isn't the same type of thing of course. A jet fighter doesn't get heavier, and closer to be an infinitely flattened plane, as it approaches the speed of sound.
I still see occasional claims that show me that some folks out there don't understand the Speed barrier and Light Barrier differences.
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Yes, sadly that is a very common misconception
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3v.html#barrier
Almost always it comes up because that big bully Scientific Knowledge is telling the author/fan/whatever
You Can't Do That.
You can't have a perpetual motion machine because the second law of thermodynamics forbids it. You can't have a starship with a FTL starsdrive because of that meany Einstein and the law of causality. And so on.
So these things come up as people desperately attempt to refute scientific theories they find inconvenient.
James Nicoll called this the SFnal Lysenkoist Tendency:
when actual, tested science contradicts some detail in an SF story, attack the science.