The way I think I understand it, even if we had some “element 0” like in mass effect to keep a starship from reaching unmanageable mass while accelerating, faster than light travel still wouldn’t be possible because you’d be violating causality somehow, but every explanation I’ve read on why leaves me bamboozled.
In: 608
Imagine your friend Bob is in his bedroom playing with a ball. Bob throws the ball to you, and you catch it. There’s a cause (Bob throwing the ball) and an effect (you catching the ball). This makes sense because Bob is right there in the same room as you, and you can see each other.
Now imagine that Bob is on the moon and you’re on Earth. Bob throws the ball really fast towards you, faster than the speed of light. According to science, the ball can’t actually go that fast, but let’s pretend for a moment that it can. Even if the ball could travel that fast, you still wouldn’t be able to see it coming because the light from the ball’s movement wouldn’t have had time to reach you yet.
So when you suddenly catch the ball out of nowhere, it seems like it happened for no reason, because you didn’t see it coming. That’s what violating causality means – there’s no clear cause and effect. This creates a paradox where something can happen before, during, and after something else all at the same time, and science doesn’t know how to make sense of that.
Latest Answers