How Do Space Ships Travel Faster Than Light?

Do Space Ships Fly Faster Than Light?
Do Space Ships Fly Faster Than Light?

Can anything travel faster than light? Answer is NO, nothing can travel faster than light. This is not a question about technology, but of fundamental physics. Einstein’s special relativity Explains that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, which is approximately 299,792,458 meters per second.

This limitation applies to everywhere such as baseballs, protons, space ships and cell phone signals. No alien species, no matter how advanced, can travel faster than light. Universal laws physics forbids it.

Do Space Ships Travel Faster Than Light?

As objects approach the speed of light, they get harder and harder to accelerate further. It would take an infinite amount of energy to exactly reach the speed of light, let alone pass it which is impossible.

This universal fact is proven in particle accelerators, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) built by CERN. The LHC currently accelerates very small bunches of protons to 99.999997% of the speed of light. The LHC uses 800,000,000 kilowatt energy per year to get those tiny bunches of protons up to those speeds. That’s as much energy as released by 30 plutonium-core nuclear bombs combined. All that energy is used to get just for a handful of hydrogen nuclei close to the speed of light which is approximately 299,792,458 meters per second.

Do Space Ships Travel Faster Than Light?

We can see in movies and televisions that depict space ships traveling faster than light are portraying pure fiction. As we know nothing can travel faster than light, this limitation does not necessarily rule out rapid travel to the stars. Physics has not yet invalidated the concept of wormholes and warp drives, which are shortcuts to other parts of the universe by curving space-time.

Those ideas of faster-than-light travel are in science fiction only. But like warp drives in Star Trek and wormholes could be more realistic and accomplish interstellar travel. Fiction writers and producers purposely break this law of physics to enable their heroes to travel to alien planets without taking thousands of years to do it.

It concept relies on theoretical physics that are not currently supported by scientific evidence or advanced technology either. These theoretical concepts, such as wormholes or warp drives, often involve manipulating space time itself, which would require such immense amounts of energy and exotic matter which is impossible.

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