What science courses have you taken/are you taking/is in the curriculum for you to take before you teach? Sounds like you need to take a basic physics course, as well as a modern physics course (relativity). I'm a former science teacher. I have a B.S. in biology (meaning I had 4 years of biology courses, 2 years of chemistry courses, and 1 year of physics), as well as a M.A. in Marine biology and another Masters in Secondary Education, Biology. You need to be reading science books in your spare time, and try to take as much science as you can. That said, the main worry you should have in a teaching career is classroom management. All the content knowledge in the world is useless if you can't keep the students behaving and learning.
The problem is the mass increase as you get closer to the speed of light. It takes a lot of energy to increase that mass, so that extra thrust at low speed might add 1000 miles per hour to your speed, but at relativistics speeds, might only add 1 mile per hour. The faster you go, the more energy it takes to increase your speed by a certain amount. It is impossible, based on Einstein's theories to go faster than the speed of light, due to the mass and time effect. Basically speaking, at the speed of light you will weigh an infinite amount, which is impossible.
We have tested it as far as we can. We know at high speeds that the mass of particles increases as predicted by Einstein. We also know that time dilates as predicted by Einstein. Nothing that Einstein predicted in terms of the speed of light has failed to be shown. If they couldn't accelerate them faster than the speed of light, that's your answer. They can't. Why wouldn't they have tried to accelerate them faster? They did try, per what you said, the thing is the speed of light was the maximum. For a while there was a theory that things could go faster than the speed of light, but in that case those things could never go slower.
Well it would be a problem though. More speed requires more fuel which requires you to use more fuel to move more mass requiring more fuel.... You reach a point where the amount of fuel you need exceeds the ability of the engine to push you, it's a catch 22. To reach speed of light, you'd need some way to generate energy from fuel you take from the environment and don't keep on the ship (hydrogen scoops, solar, ion, some kind of nuclear based tech). There are other problems, including hitting tiny space particles at such fantastic speeds that would destroy you, and as you approach the speed of light increasing mass, radiation, gravity fields.... Then of course you have the problem of stopping.
According to Einstein and as tested, objects behave as if they get heavier the closer to the speed of light that they get, with objects at the speed of light behaving as if they have infinite mass. How much energy would be required to accelerate an object that is almost infinitely massive?
An almost infinite amount......... edited to add.... ...unless you want to accelerate by an almost infinitely small amount
That's because colleges don't teach any more. That and I doubt you knew as much in your 20's as you do now.
She's not done with her education. One of our serious problems today is that we have so many schools where the teachers haven't had any real education in the subject matter they will be expected to teach. They get training in education, and that's important. But, our schools need to have teachers who know the subject matter. For high school, a teacher of science needs a four year degree in science, as teachers need to be ahead of the students. Teachers can't chart a course or properly answer questions if all they know is what the students know.
where I lived teachers who only had a degree in education generally taught grade school....high school teachers usually had another degree to go along with their Education Degree... how to be a teacher and actually teach is very important, I've known a lot of bright people who couldn't teach, it's not as easy as people generally assume.... knowing how to teach plus being ahead of the students in what your teaching is crucial, a good teacher with a degree in what ever subject your studying is essential...
I might claim so, the faculty might beg to differ - I was an indifferent student at best.......but I have sadly forgotten most of what little I had learned in the intervening decades.
Lack of knowledge of Subject matter, for the most part, isn't the problem in American education. At least locally, the problem is that people who have degrees in a field, who have no idea how to run a classroom are failing to get the order and discipline necessary in order to impart the knowledge. If you can't keep kids in control and interested, you can't teach, even if you have a Ph.D. in a subject area.
But as I keep saying - WTF go there when we can't stay there, simply because we're unable to breathe? And how would we get all the raw materials and heavy machinery needed to build road, towns and cities, homes, office blocks, municipal buildings, railways . . . the list is endless - why doesn't someone answer that?
Is anyone on this board suggesting large scale habitation of Mars ? Manned missions are unlikely in the next few decades, unmanned missions are about scientific research. Indeed apart from going to say you've been, unmanned missions are cheaper and if anything more effective.
But why Mars is what I keep bellyaching about. The atmospherics there won't change in the next 5 million decades, never mind 'the next few decades'. I think Mars has been 'selected' for no other reason than its presumed mystique - War of the Worlds, and all that crap? NASA should have been using the funding to search for a planet like this one, where there are at least already the basics for habitation, specifically a suitable atmosphere and fields, and focus on that instead of on a dead planet.
1) Mars is the most Earthlike planet in our solar system. 2) Mars is the closest Planet to Earth in our solar system. 3) Mars is the closest thing to the Asteroid Belt in our solar system. 4) Mars has the materials on planet for rocketry, oxygen, water, food production and many other things required for human life. 5) Mars likely has basic life below the surface. 6) Not all humans lack the curiosity, knowledge, imagination and critical thinking abilities you do. Nasa IS searching for an Earthlike planet but is well aware humans cannot go there when they find it so many entities focus on Mars as an alternative. Whatever we do find will never be a 2nd Earth as the variables are so unlikely as to border on impossible but Mars is very close.
Mars is red because of oxidation, Mars is red like The Statue of Lieberty's green; I don't want to move to Mars, study Mars, sure, but migrate there as a species? I can't help but feel that that's like doing a 180° like going back into the ocean as it were. For argument's sake, let's say we're Martians who migrated to Earth but forgot... Why would I want to live on a rusted planet?
It does not matter what YOU want of if Martian water has rusted it's iron content, tell you what...stay home. Life on Mars very likely never advanced beyond single cell if that due to extremely adverse conditions and multiple extinction events as well as loss of magnetic field and water/atmosphere. Life however is very versatile and may very well have gone underground (probably already was) to avoid adversity.
You talk like I'm/we're not stuck on Earth. Newflash, IDK about you, but I'm far from Astronaut material, so what other choices would I have but 'to stay at home'?.. You want to focus on living on rusty planets instead of our own, then be my guest.
Some of us think beyond ourselves and enjoy thinking about the species or our grandchildren....even their grandchildren. Some of us even accept such things as Climate Change, asteroid impacts, of even simple overpopulation and resource depletion as possible reasons for hedging our bets. Humans have always been explorers and curious about what's over the next hill.....space is the next hill now. Think of Mars as the "New World" and NASA/ESA....etc...as the queen of Spain.
I am way past the age of being an astronaut but I am still fascinated by the probability of finding life elsewhere in the universe. It could be as close as Mars and so sending unmanned probes makes a great deal of sense to me. As far ever colonizing Mars goes that probably won't happen in my lifetime but if it ever happens then I wish them the best of luck. As a species we have always been explorers and having visited the moon it makes logical sense to continue to explore our solar system. The moons of the gas giants are highly intriguing and well worth exploring IMO.
