Faster than light travel.

[muckinscavitch]

Is it potentially possible? Yes.

But, from the universe as we accept it currently, as an object approaches the speed of light, it's mass will increase. It will then cost more energy to speed it up even further since it has a higher mass. Next, as the speed does get infinitly close to the speed of light, the mass of the object nears infinite. Therefore, it would cost and infinite amount of energy to speed it up even that 1nm/s faster to reach the speed of light. Making it impossible.


I think our best bet is the string theory and worm holes. Why travel from point A to point B when you can just bend them close to eachother making the travel distance virtually null.

 

[the_tralfalmadorian]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive


it's at least mathematically feasible. As the article states--and previous posters--states, however, we don't have an energy source powerful enough of allowing this. As far as I'm concerned, though, that just means we haven't come up with a way to surmount that yet. We will eventually create some form of FTL travel.

 

[GodsAndFishes]

They say that you can't go faster than the speed of light, but many years ago they also said that you couldn't go faster than the speed of sound. But eventually we'll probably find some sort of cheat code that works in the universe to get around it.

 

[Tiny116]

That just reminded me of Warhammer 40K's idea, the "Warp".

I also remembered the concept of travelling short distances by "folding" the universe. I forget the details.

Gravity drives??? Something like that?

It's impossible if we assume that Einstein was right, and lets face it he probably was.
Only shot we have is something that can travel on light rays (I'm pretty sure there was a film like that)
or make space move over the ship/object etc.

EDIT:

create a wormhole to bend time and space allowing you to "jump" across the universe. Find tachyons (particles that travel faster than light, we havent proven they exist yet) and emulate them.

I thought Tachyons were particles that "travelled backwards"??

 

[AfterAscon]

No. All the above responses are solutions about distorting time and space to get around the fact that you can't travel faster or at the speed of light.

 

[oppp7]

snip

Did you see the part where I said assuming we can develop the tech needed or are you just quoting a bunch of folks to look cool?

I just lumped you with the others to answer the point about warping space. No need to get hostile...
But I guess I should have answered the other part of your post. As far as I can tell that could be possible, but I'm trying for a discussion and "we just have to wait and see" is kind of a dead end for discussion.

 

[Captain Blackout]

snip

Did you see the part where I said assuming we can develop the tech needed or are you just quoting a bunch of folks to look cool?

I just lumped you with the others to answer the point about warping space. No need to get hostile...
But I guess I should have answered the other part of your post. As far as I can tell that could be possible, but I'm trying for a discussion and "we just have to wait and see" is kind of a dead end for discussion.

Fair enough. The lumping part, no matter what any of us posted, did look like a dick move, since you started the thread.......

 

[phoenix352]

light cant escape a black hole right? so the speed of a black hole suction would be faster then light ....

people cant achieve this speed...
nothing can ...
we cant even get to light speed meh...

 

[Datalord]

Well, einstein hypothesized that if you approach light speed, time slows down, but to my knowledge, this is only the theory that currently makes the most sense, and hasn't been verified with an experiment,

In short, we think not

 

[Datalord]

That just reminded me of Warhammer 40K's idea, the "Warp".

I also remembered the concept of travelling short distances by "folding" the universe. I forget the details.

Gravity drives??? Something like that?

It's impossible if we assume that Einstein was right, and lets face it he probably was.
Only shot we have is something that can travel on light rays (I'm pretty sure there was a film like that)
or make space move over the ship/object etc.

EDIT:

create a wormhole to bend time and space allowing you to "jump" across the universe. Find tachyons (particles that travel faster than light, we havent proven they exist yet) and emulate them.

I thought Tachyons were particles that "travelled backwards"??

Time is weird, when you approach the speed of light, time slows down, so logically when you go faster, time would reverse for you

 

[ribonuge]

Theoretically it is possible.

What I love about the idea of FTL travel is that if you were to travel in space at such a speed for say one month, when you come back time will have progressed into the future without you having aged more than a month. That was the case in The Forever War by Joe Haldeman anyway. What an awesome book.

 

[oppp7]

Time is weird, when you approach the speed of light, time slows down, so logically when you go faster, time would reverse for you

So why exactly does time slow down when you approach light speed? I thought mass just increased.

 

[Visulth]

Well, einstein hypothesized that if you approach light speed, time slows down, but to my knowledge, this is only the theory that currently makes the most sense, and hasn't been verified with an experiment,

In short, we think not

The side-effect of time slowing down (known as "Time Dilation") has been proved in experiment. They had two atomic clocks (clocks that never vary; they're synced down to the nanosecond or some ridiculous small scale of time) and put one on a plane, and left one on the ground. They then had that plane go around the world several times and land. What did they find? Less time had passed for the clock on the plane.

Mind you, it was an unbelievably small fraction since the plane was nowhere near relativistic speeds, but it was enough to prove the theory.

I once asked my physics professor if FTL travel was possible. I'm paraphrasing what he said, but basically he said that astronomers detect objects moving faster than light all the time. They once detected something move at 5C (5 times the speed of light). However, this was not caused by the object itself moving faster than the speed of light, but rather the space in-between us expanding faster than the speed of light.

The changing of actual space is not limited to the speed of light. So, a proposed method is to change the actual distance between two objects rather than moving either object (It's like if I'm standing a certain distance from you, rather than either of us moving, the hallway between us shrinks).

FTL Space expansion happens all the time. It's how the Big Bang worked too; in a unbelievable fractions of a second an explosion of space went from the size of an atom to the size of the universe, and far beyond what we'll ever be able to see.

Another cool thing is that space is still expanding. In fact, it's accelerating--so that the further something is from us, the faster it's moving away from us.

EDIT:

Time is weird, when you approach the speed of light, time slows down, so logically when you go faster, time would reverse for you

So why exactly does time slow down when you approach light speed? I thought mass just increased.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHjpBjgIMVk

 

[Outright Villainy]

Nothing goes faster than light. Bending space doesn't change that either, shortening the distance doesn't increase the speed.

Well, einstein hypothesized that if you approach light speed, time slows down, but to my knowledge, this is only the theory that currently makes the most sense, and hasn't been verified with an experiment,

In short, we think not

Time dilation has been proven pretty well actually, through experimental evidence, and fairly simple thought experiments (simple once you get your head around the speed of light being the same in all reference frames that is.)

 

[Gorog2]

Warp is possible if you convert the mass of Jupiter in to energy and place it at the back of a ship.
But how do you convert Jupiter in to mass

 

[Visulth]

Nothing goes faster than light. Bending space doesn't change that either, shortening the distance doesn't increase the speed.

You're right in that changing the distance doesn't affect the speed of an object, so really the answer is no; nothing can go FTL.

However, imagine this:

Ship A wants to go to Planet A. It is currently 6 billion kms from Planet A. Ship A powers up their space-warping-drive, and arrive at Planet A in 1 second. Ship A did not technically move, but it did go through 6 billion kms in 1 second, which is an apparent 2C.

Again, you're right, that ship did NOT move faster than the speed of light, but it did cover the distance so in effect that's all that really matters.

 

[oppp7]

Snip

Yes, but would shrinking vast amounts of space be plausible?

 

[yoshimickster]

Of course it's possible! A mile over the speed of light of course.