Will the speed of light ever be broken? Or is it totally impossible?

Question

Will it be impossible to populate other solar systems if the speed of light can't be broken?

Answer 1

Only light can travel the speed of light and nothing can go faster.

Other possibilities may be out there to populate other solar systems. There could be things like wormholes or "wrinkles" in space that could allow us to take a cosmic shortcut to other parts of the galaxy. But, there is no evidence that anything like these exist.
Spacecraft that could support many generations of life may be possible to populate other solar systems. But, you better be sure where you are headed there is a world that can support life before you depart.

Answer 2

Will the speed of light ever be broken?
I'm not sure but I think according to some theories it is being constantly broken. Such as the electron sniffing out its path (it goes everywhere instantly). Sounds goofy...w/e I'll look into it when I learn more.
Will we populate other solar systems?
Maybe....I kindof doubt it though. Even if it was possible it might require a world wide goal, and that may be at the cost of happiness. Short term happiness that is, but short term is the only thing the world is focused on apparently. There are limits. If someone was infinitley intelligent they would know all the limits, not break them.

Answer 3

The speed of light being an absolute limit is the bitter pill that came with Einstien's understanding of what light ,space and relativity is about. Their are two types of speeds if you like.
Normal transportation speeds and propagation (movement of electromagnetic energy, Light). Normal transportion was worked out by Newton. propagation was worked out amongst others by Einstien. Light in a vacuum always travels at the same speed regardless of your own speed. If you are traveling faster or slower next to it there will be no change in it's speed. What does happen is you change the frequency. This is called the doppler effect a dilation of space-time (only when light is inolved doppler for sound changes the aparent speed of sound).

Teleportation has hit the headlines a few times in recent years. This in my view is really an extension of the quantum leaps we have in atoms all the time. Nevertheless the particles being transported seem to go faster than light. but this is probably due to the wave like component of subatomic particles (and atoms interestingly).
Einstien did not think much of quantum physics.

The Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. Some galaxies are receeding from others at a rate that in relative terms exceeds the speed of light. How can this happen?
the answer perhaps is that space is expanding with the galaxies in it. Light is the fastest thing to travel in space but that doesn't mean space can't expand faster. So possibly the Star Trek type thing with (space)Warp drives so the space ship sits in a bit of space that then hurtles along through normal space. We can only dream.

Answer 4

Those who point to the sound barrier or going to the moon as examples simply don't understand what is going on. We have *never* seen anything go faster than light. Anything, ever. So unlike going faster than sound, it isn't simply a technology problem. It is really a question about whether faster than light travel is possible in this universe at all.

We have good theoretical reasons to believe it is impossible. But even more, those theoretical results describe how things act as they get closer to the speed of light. When we accelerate particles in particle accelerators, we see exactly this behavior. This happens for protons and electrons that are moving at speeds within .00001% of the speed of light. It is the agreement between what we actually measure and the theoretical predictions that strongly suggests that the theory is correct and that faster than light travel is impossible.

Not everything is possible.

Answer 5

It's not possible in this universe. So we're back to Einstein again. Mass and energy are just variations on the same thing. If you have enough of one you can convert it into the other. Velocity is kinetic energy, the energy of motion. Therefore, a moving object gets heavier than a stationary object. At the speeds we can travel this increase in mass is so small it doesn't affect anything but as you near the speed of light (c), 186282.399 miles per second, this increase in mass becomes huge. At 99.99% of c there wouldn't be enough energy in the entire universe to give you that little bit of extra speed to break the c barrier. And then there's the sticky problem of yer spaceship shrinking in the direction of travel. By the way, at near the speed of light you would see a flashlight beam ahead of you since time for you has slowed down.

Answer 6

Hmm, this is a tough one.

Technically it would be physically impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. This is because light is said to be made of particles (photons) that have no mass. Once a particle has mass there is no way that it could travel as fast or faster than a particle with no mass.

Another way of looking at this would be from Einstein's view. He described space as we know it as actually being space-time and consisting of four dimensions rather than three. In our lives we travel through space-time with a specific speed through space and at a constant speed through time. Light though is different: it travels at a constant speed through space, but never really passes through time (i.e. it never ages). So the speed of light essentially takes all the energy from traveling through time and puts it into traveling through space. How this stops us from traveling at the speed of light I don't know, but it would seem awefully odd of us to just stop aging all of a sudden yet still exist.

We would not need to travel the speed of light or faster in order to populate other solar systems. We would only need to travel a significant fraction of that speed (say 60%) in order to get there. With this you would be able to go from star to star and visit other planets. The problem is we don't have a way of doing that yet, but there are many ideas that would work. Probably the biggest problem is that from relativity you would be gone for a few years, but many years would pass by here on Earth so communication would be a huge problem.

Answer 7

As for the facts, the speed of light couldn't be broken due to the theory of relativity by Einstein. But, don't be discouraged by that, anything is possible. People say sound barrier couldn't broken, but we did then some say we couldn't travel around the world in 80 days but we did it. So ..as we leave that as it is for now. But there is another possibilities such as warping the space to travel in very short distance or travel to a black-hole and try to travel through a wormhole or you can call that rosen-Einstein bridge to cover a great distance in a short time. Then we can populate on one of any planet deemed hospitable!. Hope that helps! There are very good reading materials about the speed of light and interstellar space travels. Black-holes and Time-warps is a good book to read. I would recommend that as well as Black-holes: the traveller's guide. Good Luck!

Answer 8

I think so, just imagine a perfect sphere with a near-zero drag coefficient falling from a very high distance to a black whole, its speed will increase dramatically just seconds after starting its way down, if we consider that the space is empty the sphere wont find any resistance, now add to this experiment that the black wholes' gravity is enormous compared to that of the earth the sphere will go light speed and beyond no doubt

Answer 9

We have the ability to do anything we can put our minds to. The speed of light will eventually be achieved, but not with a person being involved as a guinea pig. Moving at such a pace would age a person beyond normal life expectancy. And quite possibly deteriorate the body.

Answer 10

The light barrier as of right now is impossible to transend, we have no known metal that could hold up against the sheering forces, nor do we have a power source to atempt such a project. Alpha Centuri which is a system 3.5 light years away is the best choice 3.5 light years is equal to about 30.5 million million kilometers. It would be a oneway trip