Faster-than-Light Travel?

[deo]

So, is it possible?

 

[CoolioVonHoolio]

dang dude dont post stuff you already know the answer to

 

[Elta]

A. You turn into light.
B. You don't go faster than light buy you do slow time down so you seem to be going faster.
thats as far as my high school education gets me

 

[potatokiosk]

Not in your lifetime.

 

[Perfection]

Simple answer: No.

More complete answer: Almost all physical theories that allow for FTL assume the existance of stuff with special properties that are contrary to that of confirmed theory. Given the speculative nature of such devices few scientists give them much credence and stick with the experimentally confirmed information speed limit.

 

[Warman17]

Didn't the freeze light? So technically you're going faster than it when you do that.

 

[Perfection]

Didn't the freeze light? So technically you're going faster than it when you do that.

Generally FTL refers to the speed in a vacuum.

 

[Azale]

The only way to break the "lightspeed barrier" seems to be using wormholes, a really iffy technology at this point. Its not TECHNICALLY faster than going lightspeed, but it gets you to point B from point A faster than light would, depending on where your going.

As for going faster than light, like, in a spacecraft starwars style? Poor Einstein is turning over in his grave right now at such a question

 

[Masquerouge]

You can't go north of the north pole. And you can't travel faster than the speed of light.

 

[Capulet]

Yeah. I just went to the bathroom in record time.

 

[jalapeno_dude]

Unless you define the speed of light as something other than its speed in a vacuum, than no.

 

[Cuivienen]

The wormhole concept, as Azale stated, would be "faster" than the speed of light without actually traveling faster than the speed of light, but otherwise it seems to all of our knowledge to be completely and utterly impossible to travel faster than light.

 

[Bluemofia]

It is not possible.

The faster you accelerate, the more energy it is required to accelerate more.

So by the time you are close to the speed of light, it would take an infinite amount of energy to get you to the speed of light.

 

[jalapeno_dude]

To elaborate: information can't travel faster than the speed of light.

So you could theoretically travel throught a wormhole, but in the process all of your constituent particles would lose their relationships to each other. So they might all come out eventually, but you wouldn't.

 

[Bluemofia]

You know, after thinking about it, I'll cave, quantum mechanics allows it.

But only temperarily.

EX:

A black hole, since it is a singularity, you are very certain of a particle's location. (that freaking singularity) Thus, you are extreemly uncertain about it's velocity, and it can temperarily travel faster than light. But, it can't do that very long, so they would fall back to sub-light speeds and fall back to the singularity.

Thus, larger black holes evaporate slower than smaller ones, because the particles need to travel at FTL Speed for longer times.

This is how black holes evaporate. (along with the virtual particles giving the black holes negative mass, and the positive mass escaping)

IIRC from Stephen Hawking's book "A Universe in a Nutshell". (or "A Brief History of Time")

 

[jalapeno_dude]

You know, after thinking about it, I'll cave, quantum mechanics allows it.

But only temperarily.

EX:

A black hole, since it is a singularity, you are very certain of a particle's location. (that freaking singularity) Thus, you are extreemly uncertain about it's velocity, and it can temperarily travel faster than light. But, it can't do that very long, so they would fall back to sub-light speeds and fall back to the singularity.

Thus, larger black holes evaporate slower than smaller ones, because the particles need to travel at FTL Speed for longer times.

This is how black holes evaporate. (along with the virtual particles giving the black holes negative mass, and the positive mass escaping)

IIRC from Stephen Hawking's book "A Universe in a Nutshell". (or "A Brief History of Time")

But the total uncertainty of the particle would be such that you can't get any information out of it. See my post above.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

He's right, according to Mr. Hawking's book, information does not escape a singularity.

 

[Bluemofia]

Well, that was essentially implied.

But it is possible. (and quantum tunneling! I blame quantum tunneling whenever I loose things. )

 

[Perfection]

He's right, according to Mr. Hawking's book, information does not escape a singularity.

Hawking later changed his mind about this (not that reality is dictated by a what Hawking says).

 

[Souron]

He's right that it is possible to temporairily travel faster than light. However, the odds are astronimical against it. Individual particles Travel faster then light for short increments of time. And In such a case the "information" would travel faster then light, if you call it travel at all. This kind of travel is compleatly uncontrolable and tends to still leave the average speed less then the speed of light. It is therefore compleatly usless.

Wormholes do not constitute FTL travel, and as such would be a perfectly acceptable way to travel faster then light where there any way to create or control them. But they may not even exist.