Will we ever have the technology to travel to the speed of light?
452909
Believe it or not, we already have it and use it everyday. I want to answer this in detail, but I cant disclose the true nature of how light travels until I publish.\nI will say that light that is propagated within a closed system can and does move at superluminal speeds relative to a location outside the closed system.\n\nI know-Everybody has a theory, but I can also explain why light bends at every instance without once referring to the fabric of space/time.\n\nWhat if Einstein was WRONG...errr...ok... (just so I dont offend anyone) not completely correct? What if light actually didnt travel by propelling itself into the electromagnetic field created by....itself? What if there was no such thing as a pure vacuum with zero atomic content? (by the way, there is no such vacuum.)\nResearch it, its true, there are always atoms left over to fill the space left by the vacated ones.\nDon't you find that at least a little interesting?  No such thing as a pure vacuum?
313161
about 186,000 miles per second.  With our present technology, it would take hundreds of thousands of years. At the speed of light, it would only take thousands of years.
989387
The only thing that can travel at the speed of light is light. So basically yes.
644825
According to Special Relativity Theory, when you are transporting a mass at a speed near lightspeed, the energy needed to increase your speed rises to infinity. We can't provide the system with enough energy to reach the light of speed.\n\nEnergy, though, can travel at the speed of light because it has no mass. If we could transform a mass in energy (remember: E = m c^2) and re-create it at destination, travelling at lightspeed would be possible.\n\nBut, as Dark Helmet said, speed of light is too slow. We need ludicrous speed!
160542
Remember back 60 years ago? The times when traveling at the speed of sound is considered impossible? Or 50 years ago, when people would laughed at you if you were talking about landing man on the moon?\n\nMany impossibles yesterday becomes our daily routine today. \n\nTravelling at the speed of light or faster than that will be our reality in the future. Mankind will develop energy source huge enough to propel us at warp speed, and anti-inertia technology to keep us in one piece. \nFor instance, the fussion of matter and anti-matter. This is not science fiction guys, anti-matter does exist. \n\nWhen matter and anti-matter collides, transforming all its mass into pure energy, it releases far bigger energy than that of a nuclear energy. Antimatter is the perfect fuel. And as we speak, there are hundreds of man and women at NASA working day and night trying to convert them into controlled energy.\n\nNever say Impossible...
366136
Not really - As it would travel at the speed of light (or the lack of) - but there would be a delay of a few picoseconds.....
3115
This is considered to be impossible.  As you APPROACH the speed of light, your energy and/or mass change.  If  you HIT the speed of light, your energy and mass approach zero and infinity.  So there would be nothing left of you to actually EXCEED the speed of light.\n\nBut I encourage you to try.  Write us and tell us how it goes!
739346
yes it exists...\nbut cant be achieved by man....\nmay be in near future he may achieve tht too...i dont know coz now i cant travel into future..\nk...according to this guy called einstein..\nwhen some body travels at a speed relative to tht of light,lets say some 0.9c where c is speed of light then in tht frame the time contracts..he told a twin paradox to make it clear..\nlets say there r 2 twins of age 25...if one of them travels at a speed of some 0.9c for some 20 yrs (this 20 yrs is in our frame)\nthen after tht when he comes again to rest then he finds himself to be some 27 yrs old when his brother is 45 yrs old..\nso its equivalent to going into future...\nbut till now there is no theory to prove that travelling into past is possible..\ni think thts not possible...coz past is already happened n if its possible we can change the past....which is not possible as it is already happened....\nits all just theory...i wonder how can anyone achieve a speed relative to that of light....can any material sustain that much of speed???no way...so i think we cant make such time machine which can travel at a speed relative to that of light...
376581
Theoretically it is possible to build a spacecraft with that speed. Nasa came to me with that proposal. I gave them a design and asked them to design an engine that would generate INFINITE amount of energy. They are working on that.[you see an object offer more and more energy as it nears speed of light till at c it needs infinite e. Sure a body can theoretically have speed GREATER than light.
878573
You wanted a serious answer so here goes.\n\nWhat you ask is impossible to put into practise. It is impossible under Einsteins theory for anyone to travel at the speed of light.\n\nSimply put I will try to explain why,, as you approach the speed of light matter expands or rather the mass does. According to the research , the speed of light would produce infinite mass so it is impossible to travel at that speed.\n\nThat's were the theory of worm holes came about, by creating a rip through space you can jump if you like from one point to another, crossing several light years of travel in an instant. But as you have made use of a warp in space itself you don't actually go the speed of light.\n\nSo basically, you cannot answer your question,, I can see were you get this idea from though as it is true that the faster an objects velocity is, the slower time passes for that object.\n\nThis was proven some 50 years ago by use of atomic clocks on a plane, one flew round the world while the other remained in London. When they were brought together it was noted that time passed slower for the moving clock.\n\nHope this helps.
1139606
Im afraid I do not think time travel is possible.  Einstein’s theory says that as you move faster time slows down.  The problem lies in getting to a speed that is so fast that time actually moves backwards.  Anything with mass cannot reach the speed of light, because as its speed increases the amount for energy required to push it increases, so it would take an infinite amount of energy for something with mass to reach the speed of light.  Photons have a zero-mass and therefore light can travel at... well the speed of light :)\n\nSo if it was possible to break ourselves down into zero-mass pieces then it would be possible to travel the speed of light.  What is unknown is if you could travel so fast that you could actually "turn back time" which I do not believe is possible.  Or else we would see people from the future already coming back to the past.\n\nAnd then you would get those crazy little problems of ... if you went back in time and killed yourself at say 12 years old.   How would you have ever been old enough to actually travel back in time to kill yourself... because you would have been dead...\n\nIt could be possible to slow time down in relationship to yourself, so that the earth ages faster... If you consider that time travel.  Say for example you get into your space ship, and travel near the speed of light, then the earth would age faster relative to you.  If you consider that time travel then yes I believe that is possible.  But the thought of going forward, and back in time is not possible in my humble opinion.
855043
It's all theory, we don't know if (something) can exceed the speed of light. I would argue that time would be void at that moment, but again it's my theory. Interesting thought though.
1161934
Your understanding of relativity is wrong.\n\nYou cannot even accelerate to the speed of light, let alone beyond it. Relativity predicts that infinite enrgy would be required to accelerate a mass to the speed of light. IT makes no predictions that would make travel backwards in time possible.
25993
No.  No terrestrial object can travel at the speed of light.  If you were traveling at the speed of light you would literally dissentigrate from the millions of pounds of air resistance pinning you down.
72176
If you're asking about some mass being accelerated up to and beyond the speed of light, no it is NOT possible. Einstein theorized that the faster an object moves, the greater will become its mass. This increased mass would require more energy to accelerate it even more, which in turn would increase its mass, which would require more energy to go faster, etc., etc.,. Ultimately to get this object up to the speed of light would require infinite energy, and that's impossible. This isn't just theory anymore either; mass increase versus velocity has been observed countless times in modern particle accelerators.\n\nOf course there are plenty of sci-fi novels, TV shows and movies (like Star Trek and warp drive) where things move faster than light, but unless someone can find a way around Einstein and all the evidence that he was right we'll never be able to attain FTL travel.\n\nBy the way...worm holes don't provide a way to MOVE faster than light. So-called worm holes, if they exist at all, are nothing more than short cuts; going through a worm hole you'd still have to obey the speed limit imposed by Einstein.\n\nPersonally I hope that some day some radically new branch of physics is found that would allow us to get around Einstein, but right now it doesn't look too good.
50535
OK, first fo all Mr cliffx has it backwards.  As you continue to acellerate tworads the speed of light time will slow down for you and stay normal for everyone else.  Thus at that speeds you could travel 10000 lightyear in only 1 year, your lifetime, but thousands of years could pass on earth.\n\nIt has been theorized that time travel is posible but you could not simply accelerate to that speed.  Even if we could travel that fast the economical need would be currently beyond what any country has, even if they put all there funding into that one project.  but I am getting off the subject.\nOne theory is to travel into a black hole.  The gravetational field in a black hole is so strong that it has been theoryzed that even time cannot escape.  Thus if we were able to travel into a black hole we could use the captuered time there, so to speak, and transverse the timeline.\n\nThen there are ideas of actually traveling on light waves, lasers, to allow us to travel to the speeds necisary.  Of course then we could only travel to the time of how long that peice of machinery is on.  Also we would have to convert ourselvesinto an electrical signale, data (essicially transport), which would then bring up the promblum of measuring matter without moving it and blah blah blah.\n\nSummery, Yes it is possible to travel through time.  We just do not havet he knowledge and/or technology to do it yet.
560353
Not we as humans, but scientists are working on the technology to send atoms back in time.  The logic to behind this makes no sense.  Here's part of an article I read once on the website Space.com:\n\nTaught in physics classes the world over, Albert Einsteins theory of special relativity holds that no object or information can move faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, or 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second. But NECs Lijun Wang says he created an experiment in which a light beam raced through a gas-filled chamber so quickly, it exceeded the speed of light by a factor of 300. Whats more, the light pulse appears to have left the confines of the chamber before it even entered a seemingly impossible occurrence according to theories of causality, which predict that causes must always precede their effects.\n\nSo, this possibly hints that the light is going back in time, but if this is what it means it violates laws of causality and sends quantum physics into disrepair.  \n\nTraveling to the past is impossible given our current views of the universe and physics.  However, if the universe isn't a universe, but rather a multiverse of infinite parallel universes we could jump to another universe that exists simulatneously at an earlier time.  This would not violate causality or the grandfather paradox (which is that if you could go back in time you could kill your grandfather  which would mean you would never be born to kill your grandfather).  YOu could kill your grandfather in another universe and you would never exist in that universe, but you would still exist because in your universe your grandfather had never died.