Can anything travel faster than the speed of light?

Can anything travel faster than the speed of light?

Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity famously dictates that no known object can travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum, which is 299,792 km/s. ... Unlike objects within space–time, space–time itself can bend, expand or warp at any speed.

What happens if you travel faster than light?

The special theory of relativity implies that only particles with zero rest mass may travel at the speed of light. Tachyons, particles whose speed exceeds that of light, have been hypothesized, but their existence would violate causality, and the consensus of physicists is that they do not exist.

Is traveling faster than light theoretically possible?

So-called “warp drives” have been proposed before, but often rely on theoretical systems that break the laws of physics. That's because according to Einstein's general theory of relativity, it's physically impossible for anything to travel faster than the speed of light.

Is a black hole faster than light?

Supermassive black hole bigger than 7 billion Suns is spinning so fast that it's close to breaking the laws of physics. Messier 87, star of the first image of the black hole , is spinning between 2.4 to 6.3 times faster than the speed of light .

What is faster sound or light?

The speed of light as it travels through air and space is much faster than that of sound; it travels at 300 million meters per second or 273,400 miles per hour. Visible light can also travel through other things besides through air and through space. ... Speed of light in water = 226 million m/s or 205,600 mph.

Why is travel through a wormhole impossible?

A Harvard physicist has shown that wormholes can exist: tunnels in curved space-time, connecting two distant places, through which travel is possible. ... "It takes longer to get through these wormholes than to go directly, so they are not very useful for space travel," Jafferis said.

Is there any chance we can travel faster than light?

• Most textbooks say that nothing can go faster than light, but that statement actually should be qualified: The answer is yes , you can break the light barrier, but not in the way we see in the movies. There are, in fact, several ways to travel faster than light: 1. The Big Bang itself expanded much faster than the speed of light.

What would happen if we travel faster than light?

• Firstly, the physical consequence of traveling at the speed of light is that your mass becomes infinite and you slow down. According to relativity, the faster you move, the more mass you have. The same works on Earth when you’re driving down the freeway. You weigh a tiny bit more driving around than you do when you’re completely at rest.

Is there anything that can travel faster than light?

• There is nothing that can travel faster than the speed of light, and that includes the photon, or any other massless particle which propagates at the speed of light. Science fiction often portrays vehicles which can travel beyond lightspeed.

Why is it not possible to travel faster than light?

• Actually accelerating to the speed of light itself would take an infinite amount of energy, which is impossible. By this reasoning, no particle that is moving slower than the speed of light can ever reach the speed of light (or, by extension, go faster than the speed of light).