Can we really travel at the "speed of light"??

Question

Can we really travelat the "speed of light"?? because einstien said that "only light can travel at the speed of light" Is it true?

Answer 1

No.

You would be converted into Energy and from that point be converted to anything else, but not your original state.

According to the views currently held, you shrink the faster your travel. Thus you would be particle size by the time you reach light speed.

As you become a particle you suddenly interact with other particles.

You might reach the point were it's like travelling on a highway with lots of other cars, some coming at you, some coming from the sides, some from behind.

It's hard to say how you'd interact with them.

The fastest mass of any size we know of travels about 150,000 miles per second.

We currently travel at 400,000 miles per hour or greater.

So speeds of up to 1,000,000 miles per hour are possibly easily within grasp.

Currently the fastest we can travel is about 40,000 miles per hour with our space vehicles pushing the limits.

Answer 2

Interesting that you put "speed of light" in quotations, that's what I would have done. I don't think the phrase really means anything.

Light is not necessarily something that moves through space the way a physical object does. Experiments that have observed the EFFECTS of light have measured what its speed WOULD be if it were actually moving like an object. But that doesn't mean that it actually moved through anything before it produced its effect. Assuming it does just produces the simplest known explanation when combined with special relativity.

I believe all that is known is that the effects of a light source can be observed at farther and farther distances in space, increasing at the rate measured as the "speed of light."

Relativity was a solution on the uniformity of the "speed of light" (Michelson/Morley experiment) namely that this speed is the same regardless of the relative motion of the source and the destination. I consider Michelson/Morley evidence that light is NOT moving through space like an object.

Declaring that light moves at a "speed limit" was necessary for this solution to Michelson/Morley to make sense. But I haven't seen any physics theories yet that have abandoned the notion of light "moving" or having a "speed" or "velocity," so better theories that make more sense could be formulated.

P.S. the answer right before mine mentions that light being bent by stars or planets, showing that light has mass. This is another example of the way scientists make assumptions and rely overmuch on inductive reasoning:

we've only observed gravity affecting matter; now we see gravity affecting something we didn't consider material; therefore, what we didn't consider material, must have mass.

instead of also considering: gravity may affect more than just matter.
or (though it's a long shot) something other than gravity may affect the light.

Answer 3

Einstein's Theory is just that - a theory. The speed of light was said to be constant and the fastest speed of anything. Since then, it has been noticed that gravity can change the direction of light as it passes by a planet, indicating that light has mass, and that the speed of light might be variable. We haven't yet been able to get to the speed of light. The fastest we've managed by using gravity to fling a 'ship' around a planet is mind boggling, but I don't think light speed in an artificial vehicle will be reached in the lifetime of anyone here today.

Answer 4

Nothing with mass can travel at the speed of light. Relativistic effects include the increase of mass of an object as its speed increases. Thus, it takes an infinite amount of energy to reach the speed of light, even if the rest mass was only a single electron.

Light has no mass, so it can travel at the speed of light -- and not at any OTHER speed.

Theoretical particles called tachyons, which have "imaginary mass" (their mass is a product of the square root of -1) can travel FASTER than light but not SLOWER than light. They can't travel lightspeed either. As they move faster, their kinetic energy DROPS. They are very strange particles.

Answer 5

That is not so. Anything composed of matter cannot attain the speed of light, but if two very long, rigid beams of metal, say 1 light yearlong, and almost parallel, were to move past each other, and you were in the right position, you could observe the apparent point of intersection move from one end to the other in seconds. The same apparently faster than light effect can be given to waves of material substances, but it is virtual, not real.

Answer 6

I believe it's true since at the speed of sound the air crafts and other things barley hold on,and at the speed of light or slightly before the speed I thing any object would disintegrate or collapse even if the object is mega strong.

Answer 7

Not Possible!

One of the reasons that prevent any object with a mass going at or faster than the speed of light is that the mass is not constant - it increases with velocity and it goes to infinity at the speed of light. So that eventually you need infinite amounts of energy to accelerate infinite mass past the speed of light mark! (and as far as I know we have yet to find an infinite source of energy :-) )

Answer 8

Anything you see has photons. They all travel at Light-Speed.

Light has 2 forms. Waves and particle. It's called the split photon experiment. Check it out.

Answer 9

Einstein was a clever guy and he was right. Everything other than light in a vacuum has to travel slower.

Answer 10

i won't be hoping that much... but if one day we'll be able to do that, it would be fascinating to look back to the past,since we can travel faster than light, then it's possible to create a machine to look back in time.