Suppose you had a rigid steel beam of steel one light year in length. Would it not be a simple matter to rotate the beam only a few rad/s to make the end of the beam faster than light? Disregarding the enormous torque you would need (although if the beam was a single rigid carbon nanotube, that might make the job easier), if you rotated the beam at 1 rad/s, then the end would move at 9.46*10^15 m/s, well over the speed of light. Is there some complicated quantum effect or relativistic thing going on to prevent this?
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