Do you think that light speed will one day be possible?

Question

Yes I know that there will be people out there there who will quote Einstein and say that to travel at the speed of light you will need an infinate ammount of power. But...is it possible? or more to the point is it feasable?

Answer 1

As has been pointed out photons of light already travel at the speed of light. They do this not by having infinite energy but by having zero mass. According to general relativity a massive body can approach but never reach the speed of light so to travel at the speed of light we would need to shed all of our mass.

The current theory of choice when talking about FTL travel is quantum tunnelling. To pass from one energy state to another an electron must climb over an energy barrier. According to wave theory there is already a probability of finding the electron on the other side of the energy barrier. If this is the case then the electron has travelled instantaneously from one position to the other.

None of this is of much use for the immediate future but as long as there are theories people will look for a way to put them into practise.

Answer 2

We puny humans could never harness the power it would take to travel at the speed of light. There's been schemes brought forward to use a series of nuclear explosions behind a space craft to propel it to great speed but you must agree that that could never be practical not to mention dangerous. Building a space craft that could react to such a blast and remain in tack is beyond our reach. Since this is probably the biggest bang for the buck that we are likely to ever come up with, light speed travel will have remain the stuff of fantasy, unless we discover that illusive element or power source that some of the folks at NASA calls unknownium.

Answer 3

Light can travel at the speed of light because it has no mass. The closer you get to C, the more energy is converted to mass. My guess is that instead of trying to travel in this space/time, science will find a way to fold or bend space. (or punch a hole in it). Right now, this would seem to involve a HUGE amount of power. If you believe that earth is/has been visited by extra-terrestrial intelligences, something like this would explain the ability of someone to make a trip from even the nearest star in any kind of reasonable time frame.

Answer 4

Sorry to be one of those people who quote Einstein, but if he was right (and it's highly probable that he was) then no, it won't ever be possible to travel at or faster than light speed. The amount of energy required would be infinite - and there are not infinite amounts of energy available.

But there does seem to be some kinds of particles that MAY already be travelling FTL. Other than that, we can only speculate - who knows? I suppose anything is possible - until we know everything about our universe (and we are nowhere near that) then we will not know exctly what can be achieved and how

Answer 5

Colin:

This question is asked maybe twice per day, every day. The speed of light is 186,000 MILES PER SECOND.

The fastest speed man has ever accelerated a man made vehicle to at this point in time is around 30,000 MILES
PER HOUR.

Please note the last words...SECOND and HOUR.

And also note that there are 3,600 seconds in an hour.

So there is a range difference between what we can do, and what the speed of light is of about 22,000 times. Now it is fairly reasonable to assume we could crank in an improvement factor of maybe ten over time...but certainly not an improvement factor of 22,000 some odd. That is just not going to happen.

Answer 6

Doesn't matter become energy at the speed of light (and what about the unpredictability of energy/Heisenberg Principle=can you put the mass back together)? So, I highly doubt "light speed" will ever be possible, but there's so much about the Universe we don't understand.

p.s., Just read: as matter approaches the speed of light (~90%), matter starts to compress (will appear smaller/shorter) and increase in mass. Also, time begins to slow down (1 year might seem like 10min).

Answer 7

They calculated and measured easy speed to be the comparable for all observers, even whilst they are shifting relative to the easy source. Einstein confirmed that the existence of this variety of consistent speed consequences interior the top that this speed is the optimum achieveable speed. And why is it exacly easy´s speed? using fact easy (a photon) has no mass; no count how small the quantity of ability you provide it, that's going to run away as quickly as achieveable. we've got here across that element isn't an self reliant ingredient in our universe; it quite is inextricably tied up with area. it quite is loosely acknowledged as a process shuttle, like the three we are acquainted with. the faster you bypass interior the spatial instructions, the slower you will bypass interior the time course. once you're vacationing on the fee of sunshine interior the spatial instructions, you're no longer vacationing in any respect interior the time course. considering 'speed = distance divided by time', and time is 0, there is merely no way of going any quicker than that. it may take a limiteless quantity of ability to develop up a physique to easy speed and to bypass quicker than the fee of sunshine could take extra beneficial than a limiteless quantity of ability, which isn't achieveable using fact, for sure, you are able to no longer surpass infinity. yet what in case you have been status in an plane that replaced into vacationing on the fee of sunshine and you walked forward, you would be shifting quicker than the fee of sunshine! I merely blew my very own techniques!

Answer 8

I think that we're far too technologically immature at the moment to even contemplate the mysteries of covering vast distances in space. We are obliged (forced) to think of 'speed' within the parametors of what we know so far, because we have no other 'mental' solution (ability) as yet. But, just like discovering that the Earth is not really flat and that we can travell on a train (RLS's "Rocket") faster than the speed of walking without suffocating, we will, I feel sure, as our knowledge widens, eventually discover, how to get from one solar system or galaxy to another, with ease, at, say, for example, the equivalent to the speed of thought.

I realise what I said above is a massive stretch of the immagination, I can't really believe it myself (no more than I can conceive what's beyond the universe), but I base my suggestion on the natural progress of the human race, and with all that space and billions of other planets out there to explore, there just has to be a way for us to explore them (as we are pobably being explored right now, by much older and unbelievably adavnced beings from other planets, who's ability to visit us without being (fully) detected, is as equally incomprehesible to us at the moment, as their ability to move at such great 'speed' (as we think of it) over such vast distances).

So, my answer to your question (totally unfeasible as it sounds at this moment of our comprehension of all things possible), is that one day, in my opinion, we WILL (because we MUST) be able to 'travel(?)' even 'faster' than the speed of light.

Answer 9

And, to extend zahbudar's concept a bit:

There is less difference between a normal walking pace (3-4 mph) and the fastest-accelerated manmade object (about 10,000x), than there is between that fastest object and the speed of light (about 20,000x).

Answer 10

Sure, we know that many things travel at the speed of light: light of course, electromagnetic waves, electric energy.... and so on. None of these things need infinite amount of energy to travel.

Energy can be transform into another forms.
Matter is energy, so we are energy.
we already know how to transform matter in energy, and this transformed energy can travel at the speed of light if it is in the right form (i.e. light, electric energy..so on). So the only job left to be done is to transform energy in matter, so that when you get your destination you can get back to be yourself, easy?