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Asked by whittallewh to rhysphillips, David, Helen, Ian, Sarah on 24 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by emilywhittallwh.
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Rhys Phillips answered on 11 Jun 2011:
The speed of light is about 300,000,000 metres per second (that’s over 670 million miles per hour) – otherwise known as “very fast”! At the moment, it hasn’t been possible for anything to travel faster than the speed of light but a bloke called Einstein had some interesting ideas about what might happen if it was possible.
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Ian van der Linde answered on 21 Jun 2011:
It is probably not possibly for any mass to reach the speed of light because physics says that the mass of an object increases as its velocity increases. As we approached the speed of light, the mass of an object would become infinite and all the energy in the Universe wouldn’t be enough to make it go any faster.
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David Corne answered on 21 Jun 2011:
186,282 miles per second. So, it takes light about 1.4 seconds to get from the Moon to here. When you look at the moon, you are seeing it as it was 1.4 seconds ago. The Sun is 93 million miles away, so when we look at the Sun(but don’t look directly at it) we are seeing it as it was about 8 minutes ago. But there are non-physical things that can be faster. Think of the Sun for one second; now think of the Earth. Your thoughts have just travelled 93 million miles in one second – that’s 500 times the speed of light.
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Helen Fletcher answered on 24 Jun 2011:
No material object can travel faster than the speed of light, but there are arguments that some other things can. Like if you shine a light into the night sky, its image is travelling across the universe which is many light years away, so technically the *image* of the light is travelling faster than the speed of light. Hypothetically, you cen send actual signals faster than the speed of light in the form of something called ‘negative matter’, for example through a wormhole, which allows you to make a short-cut through space-time. Well, according to Red Dwarf, anyway!
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