• Question: is it possible to go faster than the speed of light? if so how much energy would be required?

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      Asked by Green632 to Angus, Catherine, Jenni, Melissa, Waqar on 19 Jun 2016.
      • Photo: Angus Cook

        Angus Cook answered on 19 Jun 2016:

        I’m not up to date on the most recent research on this, but I don’t think so, no.

        The universe it a bit of a funny place in terms of space and time. There does seem to be a universal speed limit to how matter can travel though the universe, but it’s not just speed that’s important, the experience of time also seems to be part of this…

        Essentially the sum of your ‘speed through space’ and your ‘speed through time’ can’t be above a certain amount. If you’re not moving through space (i.e. static) then you’re moving through time the fastest you can. Because we (as humans) are usually travelling pretty slowly compared to the speed of light, this is how we experience the world.

        Now, imagine you’re able to travel through space at a good fraction of the speed of light. That means that your spacial speed is taking up much more of your allowed ‘total’ speed (i.e. spacial and ‘temporal’ (meaning time)). This means that the rate you travel through time is lessened, so you’re actually moving slower through time.

        As for energy (or fuel in the case of a rocket) this gets tricky. Say you need to get a rocket from stationary (speed = 0 mph) to going fast (speed = 100 mph). To do this you need to accelerate the mass of the rocket up to the speed that you want, and to do this you need to burn fuel. But, you need to carry this fuel on the rocket, so you need to accelerate the rocket AND the fuel you’ve not burnt yet.

        It’s a bit like carrying enough food for you to walk across the UK, or even further. The further you want to go the more food you’ll need to take, but the harder it will be to carry all the extra food.

        This is part of the reason that we’ve not tried out near-lightspeed travel yet, we’ve not figured out a good way to do it.

      • Photo: Melissa Ladyman

        Melissa Ladyman answered on 20 Jun 2016:

        As Angus explained, it doesn’t seem like we will ever be able to travel faster than the speed of light. But, that doesn’t mean we won’t figure something else out that will make it possible. I bet mobile phones would seem utterly impossible to people living in the Victorian times.

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