if its not possible to travel faster than light, will we ever be able to spread humanity across the galaxy?

Answer 1

Can't go faster than light speed. There might be "short-cut" through wormholes but that is just science fiction. Humanity might not even be able to survive earth, much less the galaxy. Even living in a orbiting space station is risky and not good for our bodies. We evolved for life on earth. This planet is (or was) ideally suited for us -- unless we ruin it by releasing the carbon gases that took hundreds of millions of years to lock up in coal and petroleum.

Kathy/Coolcat, Einstein first said nothing is faster than light through space. Experiments have shown that he is right. Applying "Doppler Effect" to light, light can't go faster than light. Any physicist will tell you this. Only in science fiction movies can you go faster than light.

There was a recent experiment that made it appear that light appears to travel faster in gaseous Cesium. But space is space -- not Cesium.

Answer 2

Well it would not be strictly impossible, but it would be nothing like Star Trek. People would have to spend many years in a space craft traveling to the nearest other star that had a habitable planet. Maybe it would take more than a lifetime to make the trip, so that the original people who left Earth would die on the way and their decedents would arrive at the new planet. Then those people would have to build up a civilization on that planet from scratch until it had the industrial capacity to make it's own star ships. The they could send ships out to the next farthest star system. Radio communication of a kind would be possible between planets, with messages being sent at the speed of light. So the new colony could get 10 year old news from the home world and the home world could get 10 year old progress reports from the new colony 10 light years away. But a real dialog would not really be possible with a 20 year wait for a response to each message sent. It would be kind of like the way early man migrated across the bearing straight to the Americas. The decedents of the people settled in America and there was really no trade or back and forth travel between the two continents.

Answer 3

Assuming nothing ever comes of time-space warp theories...
Mankind may be able to spread across the galaxy someday, but the return trip would find all family and friends (and maybe the entire planet) dead. Quantum physics tells us that as we approach the speed of light, time seems to slow down (what might seem like a million-year trip to the people back home on Earth would seem like a 5-year journey to settlers on a spaceship travelling close enough to the speed of light. That would be enough time to settle the far reaches of the galaxy, but forget about sending a postcard or even a radio message back to Earth...

Answer 4

It was Einstein's theory that we couldn't travel faster than light. But even he did not foresee the rapidly developing tech. advances we see today. There are a lot of theories concerning bending space and time, worm holes in space, impulse power instead of propulsion, and on and on. As Steven Hawking says, if we do not destroy ourselves first it is inevitable that our species will reach out. As in the novel, "Brother John," some life forms out there may view us as "maggots jumping off a rotten apple." We can't seem to stop our violent behavior. If we're not actually killing others we are watching in movies and tv, or reading about it. We are obsessed with harming each other. However, in answer to your question, our survival as a species may very well depend on taking off to the "final fronteir."

Answer 5

Unless we develop a way to "travel faster than light" without voilating the laws of the universe, we may never do that. We could use a shortcut between space-time called a wormhole. You enter it, you move through the fourth-dimension, and you come out the other side.

Answer 6

Oh, uh, 'spread humanity'... I wish we would not be able to contact or be contacted by another civilization the longer the better. Even those who sent radio waves to 'other worlds' may be considered as criminals, endangering us without our consent. How would you call a person shouting at night in unknown area of large city “Heeyy! Here I am! Who else is here?! Find me! Let’s be friends!”
Does anybody know successful example of a contact between two civilizations? Say, contact of Europe with New World? Or contact with Africa? Is anything more encouraging happening now when stronger country 'contacts' weaker one? I think not.
I can imagine what kind of humanity we may bring to weaker civilization (‘for their own good’)… Or what stronger civilization may bring to us…

Answer 7

Who said it's not possible to travel faster than the speed of light?

The same people who said we'd never put a man on the moon? The one that said the earth is flat?
Do you understand quantum physics? I don't. But nothing is impossible.

Answer 8

We "can" travel faster than the speed of light. THey have had experiments where particles or energy or some **** goes faster than light.

Answer 9

Here's a funny thought. Maybe all the technology we develope (self contained habitats and life support systems) will help us live on our own world once we've turned it into a barren wasteland...

Dark humor tonight. Sorry.

Answer 10

for the galaxies sake I sure hope not. Humans have screwed earth up quite enough - don't think we would be to welcome in the galactic federation eh?

And for your question, how knows? How about using worm holes? Bend space time and take a short cut?