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Asked by 07porterj to Alastair, Emma, Hywel, Keith, Vicki on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: General.
Question: Would it ever be possible to travel faster than light?
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Alastair Sloan answered on 21 Jun 2010:
Great question. It’s not my area, but according to Einstien the answer is no, nothing can exceed the speed of light. This is because the speed of light is a fundamental constant, the same to all observers everywhere in space.
His famous theory of relativity says that objects gain mass (get heavieer) as they speed up, and that speeding up requires energy. The more mass, the more energy is required. By the time an object reached the speed of light, its mass would be infinite, and so would the amount of energy required to increase its speed. Its impossible to go beyond infinate.
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Keith Brain answered on 21 Jun 2010:
I was about to say, “no”, but then I recalled that someone commented on an earlier question and mentioned “tachyons”, which travel faster than light. However, I don’t think that this counts, because we can’t turn ourselves into tachyons and they are somewhat theoretical!
There is a way I can think of going “faster” than the speed of light, as long as you’re willing to bend the definitions a bit.
– Use “time dilation” (or “length contraction”), properties of the special theory of relativity. For example, could I travel to the Andromeda galaxy, 2,500,000 light years away and still be alive to enjoy the sights? Yes – because if I hop in my space ship and accelerate to 99.999979% of the speed of light, if would appear on the space ship that only 1 year had passed. So, I’ve travelled between two points that it would take light 2,500,000 years to travel between … but to me, I’ve only aged by one year. Of course, people back on earth now consider me to be 2,500,038 years old.
PS: I’ve edited this entry, deleting a discussion or “quantum entanglement”, because having done some reading I don’t think it works for the faster-than-light travel.
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