Faster than light travel.

[Maze1125]

Juuust think about it, if the fastest speed there is, is the speed of light, what happens to light when it gets caught by a black hole? According to the laws of physics, it SHOULD accelerate.. :/

Yes, but is aceleration from gravity the same as from energy?
I'm asking because I really don't know. But if they aren't the same it would explain why we don't feel the movement across the universe at huge speeds but we do feel the speed in a car. While a gravitational source would pull all mass of an object equally a car would start pulling at the tires and work its way up. But that's my guess for something that I'm not sure how to Wiki.

This is actually a key issue.

What happens is that you only feel the acceleration caused by gravity when you're not being moved by it.
For example, when you're stationary in your chair, you can feel the chair pushing up against you. That's gravity trying to move you towards the centre of the Earth, but the chair is in the way.
But if you're in a plane in free fall, you will feel weightless, even though you are accelerating towards the Earth.

This is the opposite of being accelerated by a car. If it's not accelerating you, either by being stationary or cruising, you don't feel anything, but if you are accelerating, you get pushed back into the chair.

 

[CrysisMcGee]

I'm sure somebody has already said something similar, but here's my thoughts.

No object that has mass can travel faster than light. In order for something to do this, it needs to have absolutley zero mass. They've been looking at certain particles that they believe can do this.

Also, this was the basis for the "Mass Effect" in Mass Effect.

 

[Virus0015]

Not with our current understanding of science, but only stupid people say it is impossible. We know far too little about the subject to get conclusive proof, and even if we did it is just plain bad science to say something is utterly impossible.

 

[IHaveNoCoolness]

No.

We will never travel faster than light.

We might find a way to cheat the distance like a wormhole or something, but we will not travel faster than light.

 

[Maze1125]

The speed of light is nothing like reaching the moon or the speed of sound. When people said those things were impossible they were just being pessimistic, there was no scientific law preventing it and no theory had to be proved wrong to do it.

The speed of light however is a law and the Theory of Relativity would have to be wrong to do it.

Exactly, the theory of Relativity, we don't know enough about the universe to be 100% sure about it. But yes it probably is true unless we invent some truly awesome piece of technology that completely smegs it up along with the rest of our knowledge of physics.

In science the word "theory" does not mean the same thing as it does to a layman.
Gravity is theory, germs are a theory. They're still true and undeniable concepts.

The Theory of Relativity has gone under more rigorous testing, and is more founded, than your belief that you are making posts on the internet,or that your house is stable and won't fall down tomorrow.

No, it's not 100% certain, but nothing is.

 

[logiman]

Use a Mass Relay.
It works is Mass Effect, i`m sure EA wouldn`t lie to us.

 

[BabySinclair]

Accelerating to the speed of light is impossible, however, if there was a way to jump to said speed without actually accelerating (breaks some basic physics but Newtonian physics, along with gravity, only works on a limited scale)then the only problem would be stopping but that would require the process to be reversible.

As for the Theory thing, Theories are statements regarded as truth as no evidence exists to disprove them and have been rigorously tested

 

[Skooterz]

Unfortunately true faster than light travel is impossible, due to the nature of relativity. The closer you get to lightspeed, the more time slows down. It might be possible to find some other method of traveling that is equivalent to lightspeed or even FTL travel. What it is, I can't really guess. Most science fiction explains it with some sort of subspace where the natural laws don't apply, which is theoretically possible, but not with our current technology. Doing something of the sort would likely require gargantuan amounts of energy.

 

[Skooterz]

Juuust think about it, if the fastest speed there is, is the speed of light, what happens to light when it gets caught by a black hole? According to the laws of physics, it SHOULD accelerate.. :/

Problem is- we don't know how black holes actually work. Hell, we're not even sure they exist, not for certain. I'm a big fan of empirical data, myself, and black holes are essentially still just a theory, with no actual evidence- as far as I know, anyway.

 

[Abedeus]

Unfortunately true faster than light travel is impossible, due to the nature of relativity. The closer you get to lightspeed, the more time slows down. It might be possible to find some other method of traveling that is equivalent to lightspeed or even FTL travel. What it is, I can't really guess. Most science fiction explains it with some sort of subspace where the natural laws don't apply, which is theoretically possible, but not with our current technology. Doing something of the sort would likely require gargantuan amounts of energy.

Yep, I had the same discussion with my Physics professor. The faster you go, the slower time around you goes and the heavier you are, resulting in more energy required.

Sub-spacial travel is our best guess, unfortunately. It's like... a circle. Going from point A to B on the other side of the circle might be long for 2D creatures, but for us, powerful 3D characters, it's just moving in straight line between those points. Same might apply to traveling through 4th dimension. Or, something like Mass Effect...

 

[Skooterz]

OF all the scifi representations of space travel, the only ones I find mildly plausible would be hyperspace or some form of subspace corridors. There is just too much stuff in space to make high-speed travel possible. A fleck of interstellar dust could tear a hole right through a ship if the ship was going fast enough, let alone asteroids, planets, or dark and powerful eldrich gods banished to the furthest depths of the deep black.

Or, you know, a sun. Or a black hole.

Spoiler

Or an ion storm.

Spoiler

I read too much Sci-Fi.

I for one am not holding out for FTL. Sleeper ships will most likely be our first long-distance method of travel. When we've gotten at least that far, dig up my corpse, re-animate it, and I'll gladly debate over what the next step might be.

Debate? Shit, put me ON the ship. Maybe we'll meet some aliens who will be kind enough to let us start importing FTL drives.

Spoiler

Wager on how long it'll take the Chinese to start making knockoffs? I know where MY money would be invested.

 

[Dapsen]

The problem with bending space is that it costs a lot of energy. Way more than we could ever find.

We'll go to pandora and get that awesome rock thing that the humans wanted from under home tree!
xD

 

[sarkeizen]

Where to begin...

Superluminal travel - is not excluded from current physics. However for a mass to accelerate to or move at superluminal speeds is (that is to say it would require infinite energy).

Keep in mind when conjecturing about "what if this theory is wrong" - especially if you don't actually hold a degree in that field - that we are pretty sure that it's impossible to even move information superluminally. Which is an easier task by far.

 

[Skooterz]

Unfortunately true faster than light travel is impossible, due to the nature of relativity. The closer you get to lightspeed, the more time slows down. It might be possible to find some other method of traveling that is equivalent to lightspeed or even FTL travel. What it is, I can't really guess. Most science fiction explains it with some sort of subspace where the natural laws don't apply, which is theoretically possible, but not with our current technology. Doing something of the sort would likely require gargantuan amounts of energy.

Yep, I had the same discussion with my Physics professor. The faster you go, the slower time around you goes and the heavier you are, resulting in more energy required.

Sub-spacial travel is our best guess, unfortunately. It's like... a circle. Going from point A to B on the other side of the circle might be long for 2D creatures, but for us, powerful 3D characters, it's just moving in straight line between those points. Same might apply to traveling through 4th dimension. Or, something like Mass Effect...

You're not actually heavier... its your mass increasing, not your weight. As a body approaches lightspeed, theoretically your mass would increase towards infinity. Which begs the question why photons have virtually no mass at all?

 

[kelsyk]

Ooo Ooo Ooo!!!!!!

We may already have FTL!

Quantum entanglement!

If I remember correctly, it's possible to send 1's and 0's a FTL speed. Ok, it's just data, but:

INTERGALACTIC EVE ONLINE!!!!!!!!!!

Quantum entanglement might work but has at least two serious flaws. First, we can't control whether a one or a zero is sent until after it has been sent. Second, the energy and difficulty of entangling particles increases the further away from each other they are. Meaning that either you need to entangle the particles at home and send one a sub-light speed to the destination of we need to develop much better methods for entangling particles. On the upside however, the information transfer is (as far as we can tell) instantaneous, regardless of distance. I know this because I spent a summer as a lab assistant at the Institute of Quantum Computing.

Personally I believe that humans will one day find ways to effectively travel faster then light. I have no idea how, but I think we they will. My reasoning is simple.

It would be AWESOME.

The universe is made of awesome stuff that allows us to do awesome things (like fly). FTL is so awesome that there must be a way for it to be possible.

 

[Daffy F]

There's also the string theory.

It states that time is like a piece of string, and to get from one spot to another, you simply fold the string together to put them next to eachother.

Surely that's time travel? Not Faster-than-light travel...

 

[A13X T3h NubCak3]

REAL SCIENCE ANSWER BELOW

Im a physicist.. its impossible for a body to move faster than the speed of light. There are some principles involving close to light speed travel but you have to take into account Enistiens equation E=mc^2 where as you gain more energy you increase in MASS.. which in turn slows you down (this is really simply put... increase in E would increase M because C is constant... E being energy M being Mass and C being the speed of light 3x10^8)

Even Photons have mass when travelling at the speed of light.

 

[Abedeus]

Unfortunately true faster than light travel is impossible, due to the nature of relativity. The closer you get to lightspeed, the more time slows down. It might be possible to find some other method of traveling that is equivalent to lightspeed or even FTL travel. What it is, I can't really guess. Most science fiction explains it with some sort of subspace where the natural laws don't apply, which is theoretically possible, but not with our current technology. Doing something of the sort would likely require gargantuan amounts of energy.

Yep, I had the same discussion with my Physics professor. The faster you go, the slower time around you goes and the heavier you are, resulting in more energy required.

Sub-spacial travel is our best guess, unfortunately. It's like... a circle. Going from point A to B on the other side of the circle might be long for 2D creatures, but for us, powerful 3D characters, it's just moving in straight line between those points. Same might apply to traveling through 4th dimension. Or, something like Mass Effect...

You're not actually heavier... its your mass increasing, not your weight. As a body approaches lightspeed, theoretically your mass would increase towards infinity. Which begs the question why photons have virtually no mass at all?

Yeah, of course I meant mass. Forgive me, it's hard to think in Polish and use English at the same time ;p

 

[Lemon Of Life]

We split the atom. It will only be a matter of time before we achieve this, technology is advancing at an incredible rate.