As far as we know, not everyone can move at twice the speed of light. In fact, this is not possible for anyone Goal With the kind of mass that you or I should be moving faster than the speed of light.
However, for some exotic particles, traveling at twice the speed of light may be possible – and it may return those particles in time.
global speed limit
One of our best physics theories at the moment is Theory of relativityDeveloped by Albert Einstein. According to this theory, the speed of light acts as a universal maximum speed for anything that has mass.
Specifically, relativity tells us that nothing with mass can exceed the speed of light.
To accelerate an object with a mass, we have to add energy. The faster we want the body to move, the more energy we need.
The equations of relativity tell us that anything that has mass – no matter how much it has – requires an infinite amount of energy to accelerate it to the speed of light.
But all energy sources that we know of are finite: they are finite in some ways.
In fact, it is plausible that the universe contains only a finite amount of energy. This means that there is not enough energy in the universe to accelerate something with a mass up to the speed of light.
Since we have mass, don’t expect it to travel at twice the speed of light anytime soon.
takyons
This global speed limit applies to anything we might call “normal mass”.
However, there are virtual particles called takyons With a special type of mass called “imaginary mass”.
There is no evidence of tachyons. But according to relativity, their possible existence cannot be ruled out.
If it does exist, then the tachyon motion must always be faster than the speed of light. Just as something with an ordinary mass cannot be accelerated beyond the speed of light, the speed of movement of tachyons cannot be slowed below the speed of light.
Some physicists believe that if tachyons exist, they will constantly travel back in time. This is why tachyons are associated with time travel in many science fiction books and movies.
There are ideas that we may harness one day building a time machine. But for now, this is still a distant dream, as we don’t have the ability to detect potential tachyons.
abbreviations?
It is disappointing that we cannot travel faster than the speed of light. Our closest star, other than the Sun, is 4.35 light-years away. So, traveling at the speed of light, it would take more than four years to get there.
The farthest star We discovered that it is 28 billion light-years away. So you can pretty much give up on drawing the entire universe.
However, relativity allows for the existence of “wormholes“.
A wormhole is an abbreviation between any two points in space. While the star would normally be 4.5 light-years away, it might be only a few hours away through a wormhole.
If there were any actual wormholes, they would allow us to travel long distances in a very short period of time – allowing us to reach the farthest regions of the universe within a single lifetime.
Unfortunately, like tachyons, wormholes remain completely virtual.
Strange possibilities
Despite the fact that we can’t really travel faster than light, we can still imagine what it would be like to do so.
By thinking this way, we are engaged incounter thinkingWe think about what things would or might be if the reality were somehow different.
There are many different possibilities we can think of, and each has a different set of physical principles.
So we can’t say for sure what would happen if we could travel faster than light. At best, we can guess what Probably Happen or occur. Will we begin to travel through time, as some scientists think the tachyons might?
I’ll leave it up to you and your imagination to come up with some ideas!
Sam BarronCo-professor, Australian Catholic University.
This article has been republished from Conversation Under a Creative Commons License. Read the original article.
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