Faster than light travel?

Question

ive been thru the archives and looked at other questions and answers on this subjeect and read a good deal on it and it seems the biggest responce to this question would be "because you cant" i have yet to see an answer that gives a real reason for it. im sorry but just cant accept because it cant as an answer. none of the reasons makes sence to me. if we cant even get to those speeds yet to see what happens how can we say what will happen. the speed of sound was thought to be unbreakable, the 4 min mile and so many other things why does this one thing have to be so firmly entrenched in our minds. if we had this attitude with all science wede have never gotten this far. and if im not mistaken scientist have been wrong before, why not now. so if anyone could give me an easy answer to this i would love it/.

Answer 1

How about fast as a bullet.

Answer 2

This may be wrong but I believe that since light is travelling so much faster than anything else we don't see it - it appears colourless. Yet if we are travelling at the same speed we would see it, meaning we can't see anything but it. Also - it was Einstein who suggested it is not possible to travel faster so he is probably a reliable source. But as you say, they have been wrong before.

Answer 3

The reason is based on practical experience. The foundation of special relativity is that nothing moves faster than the speed of light. Special relativity and general relativity explain many observable phenomena that can't be explained by classical mechanics. Classic mechanics assumes that things can move faster than the speed of light. Judging by everything that has been observed relativity is correct so we accept that nothing moves faster than the speed of light. One day we might discover a new theory.

"ok if we use the theory that as you increase speed you increase mass, do shuttle astronauts weigh more in space traveling at 17000 miles an hour than they do on earth?"

Yes they did, but only a very slight amount more because 17000 miles per hour is very slow compared to the speed of light. The factor is 1/sqrt(1 - (v/c)^2). As v approaches c this factor approaches infinity. When v is very small compared to the speed of light the factor is very close to 1.

"dosent light acting as a photon though have mass. so if it has mass how can light go the speed of light"

Excellent question. It does in fact have mass, but because it is electromagnetic energy it can move AT, not faster than, the speed of light. Travel at light speed is theoretically possible if the mass being transported can be converted to energy, and then the energy converted back to mass at the end of the trip. We have absolutely no idea how to pull this off.

The way to study relativity is to accept the theory. It does not mean you are excepting it as the final be all and end all theory on time and space. You are simply acknowledging the fact that it's the best we have right now, and the fact that it explains everything that classical mechanics explains plus a bunch of things that classical mechanics can't , like how a nuclear reactor and an atomic bomb works, and the observable difference in the half-lives of subatomic particles at rest and the same types of particles in motion.

Answer 4

I can give you two reasons why faster than light travel is impossible and both stem from laws of physics brought to us by Einstein.

His special relativity states that basically physics is the same no matter what your frame of reference. A frame of reference is basically a speed and direction relative to something else, say the Earth. In all cases, no matter what your frame of reference, you measure the speed of light to be exactly the same.  So it stands to reason from this, that no matter how fast you go, light is still traveling the speed of light away from you or towards you etc. This is not just hypothesized, it is measured and is true.

Second, from E=mc2, and E=.5mv2, two proven equations, when you accelerate, you pick up mass. When you start approaching speeds close to that of light (relative to something else of course, say, again, the Earth), you gain mass, and the force required to get you going faster starts increasing too, due to this picking up of more mass. It happens that if you do the math, due to your increased mass, you will need an infinite force to get to the speed of light. This is impossible.

There are actually many other ways to demonstrate this, but these are the easiest for me. If you're still not convinced, you need to look into Einstein's special relativity and understand exactly why he came to the conclusions that he did.  

Answer 5

what exactly is your question?

well, if it is why you can't go faster than the speed of light?

well because modern technology is incapable of reaching speeds that fast, and the human body would rip apart with that force and strain put on the body from going that fast. look at the theory of relativity, it somewhat explains why you can't go that fast.

Answer 6

The problem is, as speed increases, the object's mass increases.  The more mass an object has, the more energy it takes to speed it up, so as it gets closer and closer to light speed, the amount of energy required to keep accelerating it would get closer and closer to infinity.  This boils down to an equation for mass w.r.t. speed being divided by the difference of the speed of light with current speed subtracted from it.  As you get faster and this gets closer to zero, the mass would get closer and closer to infinity, since X/0 is infinity, regardless of X.  Any physics book should have this information in it, mine did back in high school.

In modern physics, there are things that can go faster than light, but they can't carry information, such as mass ... that's a bit too much

Answer 7

It has to deal with Plancks Constant and many other universal constants. You cant break constants.

Answer 8

even if humans could travel the speed of light, in the unlikeliness that it would ever occur I highly doubt any living creature could sustain it long enough to live.

think about it,

cars, airplanes, rocket ships...

none of them have even come close to what the speed of light is

If I'm not mistaken its 3.00x10*8 m/s

but really,

what does it matter?

there are more important scientific answers that need to be solved

like oh gee, I don't know, a more accurate way to treat cancer or even the cure, a way to supply fresh drinking water to 3rd world countries

people are dying of diseases and all you care about is the fact that we cant go the speed of light?

seriously I just find it kind of ridiculous.

oh yeah,

maybe before you start questioning the scientists

perhaps you should learn how to spell.

Answer 9

Light is fastest thing that trvels because it covers all that distance in much less than a second to earth so that we have light. Hope this makes it sound better.

Answer 10

There is always the possibility that the scientific community could be off. People used to think the world was flat.  As humans in this universe we are very much in the infancy of our existence. Who knows what may or may not be possible in the future. Think of what technologies we will have in a million years?

Answer 11

1.    Light does not have mass.

2.    You can travel faster than the speed of light in a medium like water or plastic. It happens all the time. You just cannot travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, like space.

3.   FOR THE LAWS OF PHYSICS TO WORK FOR EVERYONE, INCLUDING someone traveling past you at say 1/2 the speed of light, you would both have to agree that the speed of light was the same. Otherwise the laws of Physics would NOT be the same for both of you and then they wouldn't be very good laws for everything to obey.

4. Stranger is that moving clocks have to run slower and lengths and rulers get shorter if they moving relative to you.

5.  It works and no-one doubts it anymore. The experimental evidence is completely convincing. We could not build some of the stuff we build if it wasn't true. It would not work.  

Answer 12

The common answer is to say that "your mass increases infinitely" as you approach the speed of light; but it is more fundamental than that.  It has more to do with our understanding (since Einstein) of the relationship between space and time.

Before Einstein, everybody assumed that space and time were not related at all.  And this meant that, in theory at least, you could cover an arbitrarily large amount of space (say, a trillion miles) in an arbitrarily small amount of time (say, 2 seconds).

But now we know that space and time are NOT independent.  We've found that there is no absolute answer for how much space separates two locations; or for how much time separates two events.  Space and time bend in different ways according to how fast you're are traveling through them and how much energy is in your vicinity.

In particular, space and time are related by the universal constant "c".  As you move through space, your perception of passing time, and of distances, is different from those who are moving differently.  And your description of distances and time intervals are critical to your measurements of speed, since speed equals distance divided by time.

Without going into technical detail, the equations that describe these warps of space and time, show that, in YOUR reference frame, when you measure the "distance" traveled by some passing rock and divide it by the "time" it took, the answer will never exceed "c".  That means no rock (or planet or spaceship) can never pass you at faster than "c"; and the corollary is that YOU cannot pass any rock or planet or spaceship, or anything else, at a speed exceeding "c".

This is a fact that is based on the universal relationship between space and time.  It is the way our universe is "shaped."  Unlike the situation with the sound barrier, it is not simply a lack of sufficient technology.

Answer 13

I can not answer your question about faster than light. But, we have all heard "because you cant" many times in our lives. Remember "because you cant because I SAID SO"  Thank Mom

Answer 14

study this equation.

m = m₀/√(1-v²/c²)

substitute in different velocities closer and closer to c. You will see the mass become higher and higher. This means that as you get closer and closer to c the energy required to go just a little bit faster increases. Which is why you cannot reach the speed of light, the amount of energy becomes infinite.

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Answer 15

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

and

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Re...

have what you need to know to understand this. Simply put, you can’t use layman’s term to explain it without math equations.  You better learn some math especially calculus to understand it.

For a comparison, the speed of light is 186,282 miles per second. The current fastest rocket goes for ONLY about 10 miles /second.  (That is fast….I can fly from Seattle to Miami in like 5 minutes.)

Below is just the way I would explain in layman’s term.

Fact:  Did you know I am only 20 seconds away from winning the Olympic in Swimming?  (and I am a computer nerd...)

Fact:  Did you know it took me only 6 months to train from 3 minutes down to 50 seconds for a 50 meters in freestyle? But it took me 1 more year to improve from 50 seconds to 40 seconds?

Fact:  Did you notice that when you push a shopping cart. Each time you double the energy you spent you do NOT double in speed?  

Fact:  Did you notice when you have a car that’s double in horsepower, its’ maximum speed weren’t doubled?

I think base on above. An average person should have no trouble understanding why that's almost impossible to reach that kind of speed...

But if you truly want to know in a scientific way.   Use those 2 links above and start reading… =)

Answer 16

Although speculative and currently theoretical, the Alcubierre drive allows FTL.

Experts can be, and sometimes often are, simply wrong.

William Thomson, also known as Lord Kelvin, had proclaimed in 1895 that "Heavier-than-air fly machines are impossible", and in 1900 that "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." All which proved to be incorrect.

I believe that although within humanity's current understanding of physics, FTL is thought to be impossible, but as our understanding increases, events like this may become common place just as the "impossible" airplane is today.

Answer 17

relax ,get a slurpee