Would Light speed travel ever be possible..?

Question

As this would be the only real way to reach out to other planets.

ok.. so what about Zero Gravity then..? would this help ..??

Answer 1

I would first like to point out that a few of the people that "answered" this question are mistaken. no energy, no particle, and no virus has ever traveled faster than light. as mentioned, the speed of light in water is slower than light in a vacuum, and scientists, using powerful particle accelerators, have made electrons go faster than light in water. nothing, absolutely nothing, not even other forms of energy can move faster than light. also, the space shuttle moves at around 1/37000 the speed of light. mind you I mention this because it has people in it. the fastest object without people in it, and is man made is Helios 2. Helios 2 is currently orbiting the Sun. it has a very eccentric orbit, and at its perihelion achieves about 150,000 miles per hour (1/4464 the speed of light.) lastly, according to the laws (theories actually, since we haven't actually had any way to prove such things) of physics, say that as one approaches the speed of light, time slows down. in other words, even though it might take 60 years (for the people on Earth) for the ship to reach its destination, time for the people on the spaceship might only have passed as less than half a year.

Light speed is not possible, at least not in our frame of reference (which I will explain in a moment). as one approaches the speed of light, theory also says that more and more of its kinetic energy is converted directly into mass, making the ship require more and more fuel to overcome inertia. of course once you obtained 99% the speed of light and stopped feeding it fuel, it would continue to go at that speed, and would continue for quite some time due to its increased inertia, but you could not continue feeding it more fuel until it broke warp.
NOW, there is a theoretical device called an Alcubierre warp drive that makes it possible to expand and contract space in such a way that the space ship is not technically moving, just the space around it. since space can expand faster than the speed of light, this would make it possible to move at speeds many times the speed of light. since such a device localizes space, it is unknown if the ship would experience time anomalies like going into the past/future or other undiscovered time defects. unfotunately, we have no idea on how the heck we are supposed to localize space like that. scientists think that a combination of exotic and anti-matter will do the trick, but seeing as they have no more an idea about what exactly anti-matter and exotic matter would actually do than the Alcubierre warp drive itself, I think we are falling a bit short of a breakthrough.

ALSO: light speed is not the only way to reach other planets. you wouldn't even have to experience mush time dilation. traveling at only 1/3 or 1/2 the speed of light would be a speed to reach the nearest possibly habitable planet we know of in only 40-60 years. unfortunately, since we wouldn't be experiencing that much time dilation... we would die before we got back. But we could still get there! =P but seriously, that is our only plausible option in the near future.

Answer 2

Exactly light speed? probably not.
Small problem with time dilation: time flows more slowly for spacecraft at high speed (we're talking very, very high speed).

At exactly the speed of light, time flow would be stopped.
In other words, for the people inside the space craft going at exactly the speed of light, the time it takes to cover any distance is exactly zero.

So, when do you decide to stop? As far as the driver is concerned, the time to get to planet A is zero, while the time it takes to go to planet B (at five times the distance) is also zero. She can't tell when to slam on the brakes.

Other planets (around our sun) are not that far. Going to Mars, for example, would takes months (well the whole trip might take more than 2 years if you want to save on fuel) even with our "slow" rockets. But that is still possible. Some people have been known to live more than 2 years.....

As for planets going around other stars, sure, we'd have to go very fast (almost the speed of light) to get there.

Although -- as seen by someone staying on Earth -- it would take more than 12 years to get to a planet 12 light-years away (if there is one), the crew inside the space craft may only feel that it took, let's say, three year -- if the ship is going fast enough (because of time dilation).

There is more about this on Wikipedia.


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I have assumed that you were talking about the "speed of light in a vacuum" which is the speed limit in this universe. When light travels in some mediums (like glass or water), it is slowed down. It is possible to send particles through water, faster than the "speed of light in water" and that is not impossible according to General Relativity.

But not faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.

Time dilation is calculated from the ship's speed in relation to "speed of light in a vacuum""

Answer 3

Near light speed travel might be possible, but we would have to overcome the massive G forces. Light is pure energy with no mass making it easy for it to travel at extremely fast speeds without friction. Traveling at light speed is impossible as far as we know, even if you are speaking in theoretical terms.

Answer 4

Light speed travel HAS been accomplished. Subatomic particles, certain energies, and some lasers travel at faster than the speed of light.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light#.22Faster-than-light.22_observations_and_experiments

Answer 5

It is possible. In fact it has already been done. Only the scientists that did it didn´t know what they did at the time. They accidentally made a virus travel at lightspeed. But that very simple trick could very well mean lightspeed travel for humans in maybe 50 years.

-edit-
Lol.. People here are so lacking of a functioning sense of imagination. Remind me. How fast does signals sent over the internet travel?

Answer 6

Maybe, but we have no idea how to do it now. The outer planets of our solar system are close enough to not need light speed travel, but all planets orbiting other stars are not.

Answer 7

They once said would the speed of sound ever be reached. Light speed will, one day, be reached. However, Einstein was right, it will not be reached using conventional methods of propulsion. So, to reach light speed will require a source of limitless energy, which by definition would be free energy. Free energy would destroy capitalism, as it could resolve all global problems (if you think about it) so the accumulation of wealth would cease, financial wealth would become meaningless, and Bush would not like that!!!!!!!!!!!! So yes, light speed travel is possible and can be achieved, but not in this society.

Answer 8

Yes, some scientists are alledging that they've broken the speed of light. Here's the proof :- http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=%22Speed+of+Light%22+Travel+Einstein&btnG=Search+News

or

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/16/scispeed116.xml

The technology could one day be used to power future satiellites and craft. Imagine that...

Answer 9

A friend of mine once said (after lots of beer we had a similar question) that it is all to do with matter and anti matter!
The thing is, this bits secret so don't tell anyone, that he has invented an anti matter receiver!!!!!! Don't tell anyone.......all he's waiting for is someone to invent an anti matter transmitter.
Then light speed travel will be possible!

Answer 10

Firstly I would like to say that there is a person who is currently is the process of proving einstein incorrect.
Second, no not right now. We can travel at speeds of upto 2/3's of light speed but that again not right now. We have the theoretical ways to do it but nothing in practise as of right now.