How far is science from developing speed of light travel technology?

Question

Or a relatively close alternative.

Answer 1

Not anytime soon, and not ever. The laws of Physics as we know them (or as they are in our universe) can't just be changed or broken. Special Relativity prohibits anything with mass from traveling at the speed of light, because at that speed the mass will become infinitely large. This also means that it will take an infinite amount of energy to actually accelerate a massive particle to the speed of light. Even getting close to the speed of light will have other problems, I mean we can accelerate particles to speeds very close to that of light, but as far as space travel, it would require a massive amount of energy that we probably couldn't supply.

Answer 2

Perhaps a thousand years if at all. With chemical rockets it is not possible. Hydrogen which has the biggest bang for the buck of all known power sources go would never be adequate. Ion propulsion while slow at first can build up tremendous speeds given enough time because the acceleration is constant over a long period of time. The Voyager 1 space probe has been traveling towards the furthest reaches of our solar system since the 70s. It is traveling at close to the top speed that any of our space probes has ever achieved and it is only now on the verge of reaching interstellar space. There is no practical reason for wanting to go the speed of light because even at that speed interstellar space travel would still take years.

Answer 3

Until someone figures out how to think outside the Einstein box, the speed of light will not be broken. It certainly will not be broken using conventional rockets or propulsion systems. It would take infinite energy to reach the level necessary to propel anything with mass anywhere near the speed of light. Having said that, lets assume that we could come up with the technology to freeze human aging for as long as we want as well as the technology to revive the frozen human at a specified time. Then it would not matter how long it took to get to the next destination as long as navigation was not an issue. I think within the next 1000 years we will have the technology to get to the nearest stars if we do not get destroyed by some type of cataclysm.

Answer 4

Here's what we know:

1) Theoretically, it is impossible for matter to go the speed of light.

2) This theory is consistent with all the observations we have made. This includes making protons and electrons go faster than 99.999% of the speed of light.

3) To make a gram of matter go 86% of the speed of light would take the energy equivalent of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

4) To make a gram of matter go as fast as we have made protons go would take the equivalent of 10 thermonuclear warheads (2 megatons each).

5) We have no way to efficiently channel the amounts of energy need to make something that weighs even a gram go these speeds, let alone something the size of a spacecraft.

So, even going a substantial fraction of the speed of light is well beyond our capabilities right now. The fastest any space probe has gone is about .05% of the speed of light.

Answer 5

Travelling at the speed of light will never happen to anything that has mass...it would require an infinite amount of energy. A reasonably close alternative? It is hard to say what that means...but I think it's safe to say we are a long way off.

Answer 6

The only way a person is going to travel the speed of light is if he's converted to energy and beamed through space. Any volunteers?

Answer 7

On developing light speed, we are still in the stone age, unless some one fooling around happens to put the right things together and discoverers a light speed device.

Answer 8

It would take many many years just to accelerate an electron to the speed of light.
It would take a phenomenal amount of power to accelerate a large mass structure to the speed of light. All that would result ,is the structural energy holding the mass structure together wouldbe chalenged, causing the structure to break down.

Answer 9

Man has never even begun developing that technology.

Answer 10

We already have developed speed of light technology. In fact, in the time of Julius Caesar, they had speed of light technology (chariots). We didn't accomplish this by speeding up our vehicles, but instead by slowing down light.