What is this fastest thing ever propelled by man?

[RATTER15]

Im not talking of "light" but can we actually propel anything at the speed of light? ie: dust particles or whatever.

[ChuckFickens]

http://en.wikipedia.o...Large_Hadron_Collider

[boxtops]

I am no scientist but does not the stuff in the Large Hadron Collider travel at the speed of light?

[boxtops]

woo, snap Chuck!

[ChuckFickens]

About 3 meters a second slower that light Boxy :)

"At this energy the protons have a Lorentz factor of about 7,500 and move at about 0.999999991 c, or about 3 metres per second slower than the speed of light (c)"

[Jane_32]

Chuck you said "About 3 meters a second slower that light". Will this help us in anyway for our quest to understand time travel?

[Teddio]

Any particle having mass cannot be accelerated to the speed of light. The nearer to the speed of light the object gets, the more massive it becomes. Therefore if a proton were accelerated to within a nanometer per second of the speed of light it would have a mass far exceeding that of a cricket ball. (No, I haven't calculated the Lorentz Factor!)

[RATTER15]

Thankyou for all your answers, im now more informed :-)

[jake-the-peg]

Neutrinos

OK we don't really propel them because they are the by-product of nuclear reactions but you can get some radioactive sorces and make a beam of them.

These were thought to have no mass and hence travel at the speed of light but in the last couple of years it's been shown that they do indeed have mass - it's just so small we can't measure it but it has to be over a million times lighter than an electron.

I guess the next question I'll be asked is if we can't measure its mass how do we know that it has any. Well there are three types of neutrino - electron, muon and Tau.

It turns out that nutrinos switch personality between these very rapidly - they couldn't do this if they had no mass and were travelling at the speed of light because time would stand still for them - therefore they have mass and do not travel at the speed of light damn close though

[heathfield]

I can create photons by switching on the light in my kitchen. They're a product of the heated element, I can focus them into a beam, and though I'm not really propelling them, they do travel at the speed of light,

[jake-the-peg]

I think Ratter did specifically exclude light in the question and yes I did rather cheat with "propel" too.

I think if we exclude subatomic particles the fastest think is the New Horizons Space probe at 57,000 Km/hr (discounting Voyager and other space probes that used gravitational slingshots - as not really propelled)

New Horizons is past Jupiter in 2007 and will reach Pluto in 2015

[joggerjayne]

If the particles in the LHC were going so close to the speed of light ...

... if the wind had been behind them, they would probably have made it !

[saxy_jag]

My old man's botty-burps take some beating!

[beso]

A bicycle.

http://wiki.answers.c...achieved_on_a_bicycle

[Ankou]

i know you were talking about prepulsion, but without the use of anything mechanical or structurally man made.....

a swimmer can go about 5mph
a fart goes about 7mph
a sprinter (mr bolt) goes at about 24mph
a sneeze goes about 35mph

if a person decided to climb up nanga parbat's rupal flank in the himalayas and jump off, then it is possible that they may start to get towards the first 10th of terminal velocity (about 122mph) ..... and end up about 6 feet below ground level :o).

the record free fall speed, done with some fancy man made gear and presumably from a man made aircraft is 614mph.

[heathfield]

Since no-one else has raised the issue, I'd point out that the speed of the particles in the vacuum of the core of the LHC is actually faster than the speed of light. (The speed of light through air, that is!).

[RATTER15]

I suppose a shadow can travel the speed of light? mmmmm interesting, not really propelled either.