Why is it physically impossible to travel faster than the speed of light?

Question

Just out of curiosity as i'm an avid watcher of space documetaries.

Answer 1

It's not. Simply put, we are too primitive to understand how to go faster but it is possible.

Answer 2

Yep impossible.  And if you plan to experience it, you have to be massless first.

Answer 3

It would take infinite energy for a massive object to achieve light speed.  A massless object, on the other hand, can ONLY travel at light speed.  Relativity allows for particles that travel only faster than light speed, but they would have imaginary mass, and noone is sure how they would interact with regular matter.  Of course, we've never seen such things.

Answer 4

In a very basic sense:

The faster you go, the more mass you take on in the form of kinetic energy.  The more massive you are, the more energy you need to go faster.  Until you get to the speed of light, and you are infinitely massive.  So a particle can only go 99.999.... % of c (speed of light)

Answer 5

it is totally impossible...

im avid watcher of space documentaries too.

maybe after a 100 years or more... we can do it...^_^

Answer 6

its just not possible . have a nice one

Answer 7

As acceleration increases, mass increases.  At the speed of light the mass of an object would be infinite.  Which is why photons happen to be massless.

Answer 8

yep... what dude said

Answer 9

The reason we believe it comes from Einstein's theory of special relativity in which he theorized that when an object sppeds up it's mass also increases and as it gains mass it requires more energy to speed up so by the time an object reached the speed of light it would have an infinite mass and to to speed up it's speed would have to be more than infinite, which Einstein says is impossible. There have been tests done to reflect his theory.

Researchers have been able to accelerate subatmoic particles to 99 percent of the speed of light, but not equal to it which seemingly supports the theory.

So, basically it's all a theory, but it's apparently a pretty good one.

Answer 10

it's not the machine but the human physiology is the great barrier that is going to prevent time travel in the past because such velocity is never going to be pleasant for human boy to sustain.

Answer 11

The formula causes the mass to increase as it approaches the speed of light. So the more energy is required for each increasee. At the speed of light its mass would increas to infinity. The only force that can create a black hole is gravity. As its mass increases the acceleration increases.