Will we ever travel at the speed of light?

[Hadriel]

It's at least a bit curious that the collective knowledge of physics in this thread is greater than that of the scientific community.

Yeah, I wondered about that, too.  At first I chalked it up to alcohol.  Then, after further consideration, I chalked it up to alcohol.  I think I've been attributing way too many things to it.

The scientific basis for relativity and thus the notion of not being able to exceed c is grounded in James Clerk Maxwell's theories on electromagnetism.  His measurement of c was derived from measuring the propagation of magnetic field effects.  In order for Maxwell's equations about the behavior of such things to hold true universally, there must be one absolute frame of reference that everything else varies against, which turned out to be the speed of light.  That's a vastly oversimplified summary, but dammit, it's good enough for 4 in the morning.

[uzerzero]

Hm, being an idiot, I'm just wondering, "Why is it that light speed is THE fastest one can get? Why can't we go faster? How did we work out that speed? What is so special about the properties of light, and its speed?"

Once you hit lightspeed, your mass turns into energy. Theoretically. And once you become an energy being, you become like Q from Star Trek and you can control whatever you want. Jk. Despite the fact that Star Trek is purely fictional, I like to use it as a basis for some of my space travel knowledge, since they hit some very good points on almost all the theories of effective space travel. Yes, the Enterprise does travel faster than light. MUCH faster in some cases. I'm not sure how on earth they manage to keep the ship together going warp nine, but to quote Scotty

"Cap'n, she canna hold together much longer!"

It's interesting to note that there in many cases, there is a bottom to everything, but rarely a top. It puts meaning to the term "the sky's the limit". Think in terms a temperature: we have 0 Kelvin (-273 celsius) which is the coldest that you can possibly get. But there is no top to the temperature. It will continually increase. On a much larger scale, look at the earth. It has a bottom, the core, yet there is technically no top. You could send a rocket out in a straight line and it would continue forever unless it hit another object. So light speed is NOT the fastest you can travel. Light is just the fastest traveling particle that we know of, so we use it to define the term "light speed". According to Star Trek (which is purely fictional), warp nine is equivalent to approximately 2,000c^2. For most of the world, that's around 2.33x10^21 kph in scientific notation. In comparison, the American space shuttle on re-entry accelerates to only 28,163.52 kph. Continuing on the Star Trek subject, in some of the episodes set into the future, they have vehicles capable of accelerating beyond warp nine, some of them upwards of warp thirteen.

I'm keeping in mind that Star Trek is purely fictional, but I know for a fact that they aren't lying about how fast warp speed is. Here's a little more random info about warp speed, just to keep your brains awake. Warp 9 requires a little under 100,000,000,000 megajoules of power. In comparison, the United States uses 432,300,000,000 joules of power in a year. So travelling at warp nine would require all the energy of several United States to generate it.

In conclusion, there's MUCH that we have to work on before we can even achieve anything close to light speed and have a human occupant survive. Power consumption is one issue, the whole "who knows what happens when you hit light speed" issue, and the issue of "what if they hit light speed and arrive a lightyear away and they can't get back".

[Hadriel]

Hm, being an idiot, I'm just wondering, "Why is it that light speed is THE fastest one can get? Why can't we go faster? How did we work out that speed? What is so special about the properties of light, and its speed?"

Once you hit lightspeed, your mass turns into energy. Theoretically. And once you become an energy being, you become like Q from Star Trek and you can control whatever you want. Jk. Despite the fact that Star Trek is purely fictional, I like to use it as a basis for some of my space travel knowledge, since they hit some very good points on almost all the theories of effective space travel. Yes, the Enterprise does travel faster than light. MUCH faster in some cases. I'm not sure how on earth they manage to keep the ship together going warp nine, but to quote Scotty

"Cap'n, she canna hold together much longer!"

First of all, go look up Lorentz transforms and get back to me.  Second, you don't seem to understand what the concept of energy is.  It isn't some quasi-magical substance, as it's been depicted in numerous instances of sci-fi brainbugs.  Energy is defined as the ability to do work.  It's held within particles; it does not exist independently.  The closest thing that could be said to be "pure energy" is light itself.

Second, Star Trek's warp drive doesn't scratch the surface of "possibilities" nor is it all that realistic, ever since they incorporated the nonsensical subspace "mass-lightening" component.  Originally, it wasn't bad on the realism scale; that was when they cared about what their technical advisors said.

It's interesting to note that there in many cases, there is a bottom to everything, but rarely a top. It puts meaning to the term "the sky's the limit". Think in terms a temperature: we have 0 Kelvin (-273 celsius) which is the coldest that you can possibly get. But there is no top to the temperature. It will continually increase. On a much larger scale, look at the earth. It has a bottom, the core, yet there is technically no top. You could send a rocket out in a straight line and it would continue forever unless it hit another object. So light speed is NOT the fastest you can travel. Light is just the fastest traveling particle that we know of, so we use it to define the term "light speed". According to Star Trek (which is purely fictional), warp nine is equivalent to approximately 2,000c^2. For most of the world, that's around 2.33x10^21 kph in scientific notation. In comparison, the American space shuttle on re-entry accelerates to only 28,163.52 kph. Continuing on the Star Trek subject, in some of the episodes set into the future, they have vehicles capable of accelerating beyond warp nine, some of them upwards of warp thirteen.

Again, look up Lorentz transforms.  Go read about inertial reference frames.  Look up the relativistic kinetic energy equation and set v equal to c.  Seriously, you don't know what you're talking about here.  Without radical new discoveries in physics, light speed is most certainly the fastest we can travel.  The equations of general relativity permit motion at velocities above c, but only for imaginary-mass particles, which are strictly theoretical as they've never been observed.

I'm keeping in mind that Star Trek is purely fictional, but I know for a fact that they aren't lying about how fast warp speed is. Here's a little more random info about warp speed, just to keep your brains awake. Warp 9 requires a little under 100,000,000,000 megajoules of power. In comparison, the United States uses 432,300,000,000 joules of power in a year. So travelling at warp nine would require all the energy of several United States to generate it.

I'll say this once: JOULES ARE NOT A UNIT OF POWER.  THEY ARE A UNIT OF ENERGY.  The two are distinctly different concepts.  Power is energy used over time.

Second, even assuming your figure is true, you're talking about yearly energy generation.  Assuming you misspoke and meant that Warp 9 is sustainable at a production rate of 1E17 W, a year's energy production means sustaining that for over 31 million seconds.  Rounding off at 30 million because I don't want to do a lot of math until I've eaten, you're talking about 3E24 J in a year.  It would take almost a trillion clones of the United States to get to that level of production, using your 432 GJ figure.

In conclusion, there's MUCH that we have to work on before we can even achieve anything close to light speed and have a human occupant survive. Power consumption is one issue, the whole "who knows what happens when you hit light speed" issue, and the issue of "what if they hit light speed and arrive a lightyear away and they can't get back".

Well, assumably, if you ever got a ship to go FTL under its own power for a substantial time period, they wouldn't have a problem getting back.

[grey_the_angel]

star trek: serious business.

[grey_the_angel]

interesting side note: http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/060217_teleclone.html

[uzerzero]

Hadriel, thanks for the comments. I'd never even heard of Lorentz Transformations (although now I have, and I understand much more about what I'm saying, or trying to say).

I know that joules is not the same thing as power. But I completely forgot to convert it to watts/hour. Which would be the equivalent of 27,777,777,777,777 watts/hour.

A warp drive is still a very feasible product, although many many many years in the future. I'm basing those numbers off early Next Generation episodes, back when Roddenberry was still alive and Star Trek was decent.

And yes, I do understand the concept of energy. There's energy all around me. I know that it's not some "quasi-magical" substance, and I wasn't attempting to make it sound anything like that.

The figure for the US power consumption is from 2001, and I got it from Wikipedia.

Again though, thanks for correcting me and showing the light. No pun intended. It's sort of hard to word what you're trying to say and then type it. It's easier face to face. But yeah.

[Hadriel]

A warp drive is still a very feasible product, although many many many years in the future.

I don't know how you can say it's feasible when there's apparently a complete lack of the theoretical materials required to make it happen.  Keep in mind that I'd love to be convinced, but reality has its way of destroying dreams.

[grey_the_angel]

Hadriel, thanks for the comments. I'd never even heard of Lorentz Transformations (although now I have, and I understand much more about what I'm saying, or trying to say).

I know that joules is not the same thing as power. But I completely forgot to convert it to watts/hour. Which would be the equivalent of 27,777,777,777,777 watts/hour.

A warp drive is still a very feasible product, although many many many years in the future. I'm basing those numbers off early Next Generation episodes, back when Roddenberry was still alive and Star Trek was decent.

And yes, I do understand the concept of energy. There's energy all around me. I know that it's not some "quasi-magical" substance, and I wasn't attempting to make it sound anything like that.

The figure for the US power consumption is from 2001, and I got it from Wikipedia.

Again though, thanks for correcting me and showing the light. No pun intended. It's sort of hard to word what you're trying to say and then type it. It's easier face to face. But yeah.

uh.. you might wanna read that side note, user.

[uzerzero]

I don't know how you can say it's feasible when there's apparently a complete lack of the theoretical materials required to make it happen.  Keep in mind that I'd love to be convinced, but reality has its way of destroying dreams.

I'm not saying a warp drive like exactly how they have it in Star Trek. Warp drive is just a different term I use for a FTL ship. Albeit, Star Trek attributes their space travel in later series to subspace crap.

Think about the advances we've made though in the last century. In 1900, I don't think any moving vehicle exceeded 100 mph. So in another 100 years, who knows what we might achieve?

[Magus22]

I got a summer job at Bausch and Lomb and I just got back here.

Seems as though multiple things have been discussed here...

I've seen Gray's "maybe" and other people stating whether it may or may not be possible. I believe that some day we will be out there traveling space. It's just a matter of time though. Warp drive on the other hand would be near impossible to calculate. There is so much junk and crap in space that you could end up in an asteroid or planet withou precise and long range sensor calculation.

With Blackholes, since everything in the universe seems to have an opposite, could there be a White Hole some where? Rather if you could travel into a blackhole, if you could survive the super massive gravitational pull, and break the event horizon and travel into the singularity, then where would you go? It is said that time itself is mixed with the singularity.

Radical_Dreamer, I read that releasing negative energy could distort space time. It was in a recent article of Time and Space magazine or something. Quite frankly, I don't believe it because manipulating space time is almost near impossible.

[but2002]

And this comes from Jean Luc himself?

[uzerzero]

With Blackholes, since everything in the universe seems to have an opposite, could there be a White Hole some where? Rather if you could travel into a blackhole, if you could survive the super massive gravitational pull, and break the event horizon and travel into the singularity, then where would you go? It is said that time itself is mixed with the singularity.

Ever heard of something called a white dwarf? That's the opposite of a black hole pretty much. Actually, just about any sun is the opposite of a black hole.

[Hadriel]

All mass and energy bends spacetime.  Negative mass, and lots of it, is required to distort it in a way conducive to warp travel.

[uzerzero]

Found this interesting article in the May issue of Popular Science. Applies to a lot of the theories discussed here.

[Ramsus]

I think the problem is that too many people expect the future to resemble something out of a Star Trek episode, but why should it? Faster than light travel will become less important as people begin living longer with the aid of technology. When you can easily live a healthy several millenia or more, spending a few centuries on a space voyage isn't quite so bad. It's not like you'd have to work. Just bring a few centuries of video games, books, movies, and a few friends with you.

Seriously, I bet we'll have nanomachine-riddled cyborgs that can survive several hours in a vacuum, take a constant 20G, and live five times longer than a normal person before we have any reasonable means to travel beyond the solar system. So by the time faster than light travel would come along, it'd just be a convenience thing, like super sonic jets (assuming you also figured out how to detect what the hell is in front of you, since you wouldn't be able to see it).

I wouldn't say it's impossible though. I mean, we can't even answer questions like "Where's all the matter?" and there was a time when light seemed instantaneous. I just don't expect it to be as necessary for space travel as people make it out to be.

With Blackholes, since everything in the universe seems to have an opposite, could there be a White Hole some where? Rather if you could travel into a blackhole, if you could survive the super massive gravitational pull, and break the event horizon and travel into the singularity, then where would you go? It is said that time itself is mixed with the singularity.

Ever heard of something called a white dwarf? That's the opposite of a black hole pretty much. Actually, just about any sun is the opposite of a black hole.

The question he's really asking is what happens to information when it enters the black hole, and if it escapes somewhere. Within that context, the opposite of a black hole would not be a slowly cooling, glowing ball of carbon and oxygen, nor would it be anything like our sun. It would be an object that emitted radiation or matter with information from whatever entered the black hole.