Why have we ruled out the possibility of finding something faster when we’ve only scratched the surface of space exploration and understanding?
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Anything with mass requires energy to accelerate. The faster you go, the more you actually get a diminishing return on the energy you put in. This effect is tiny at first, but as you approach the speed of light, it gets so big that, for example, a particle accelerator has to put in gobs of energy just to get an elementary particle to go from 99.98% the speed of light to 99.99% the speed of light. And the energy required to get to 100% would be infinitely large, and thus impossible.
The expansion of the universe means there are parts of the universe that are moving apart from eachother faster than light.
The expansion of the universe means there are parts of the universe that are moving apart from eachother faster than light.
Actually, it’s not like there can not be a thing faster than light.
This is an additional assumption on top of an Einstein General Relativity theory.
That theory (that so far we have no evidence to think it’s not correct), does put a limit of a speed that any object with a mass can reach.
In simplification, the faster an object goes, the more energy it’s need to accelerate it further, and the light speed is a limit, where You will need infinite energy to achieve that speed.
But the value of the limit (~300k m/s) is not coming from the theory, theory only says there is “some” limit, actual value comes from real world measurements.
For the same reason, objects that don’t have a mass (like photons, that are the “light particles”), have to travel with this speed all the time.
But, interesting fact now, the theory didn’t exclude objects with speed greater than a limit (light speed), we just don’t observe such things in our world, so we make an additional assumption for the Einstein Theory that those objects faster than light doesn’t exist.
And if those objects exist, they have to obey the same limit, but from “opposite side”, I mean, in that case, slowing down the object will require energy, and slowing it to a speed of light, will require infinite energy.
And also very important things to know is if we do not exclude those objects, their existence will have huge impact on how we understand world and modern physic.
Because of the space-time nature, and how it behaves, those objects have to break the Causation Law. Basically, it will be looked like those objects travel back in time in a sense, so for them the result comes first, and the cause of that result comes later, in reverse order compared to all objects that travel with a lower speed of light.
If You interested in a topic, I recommend to watch Andrzej Dragan series about General Relativity:
[https://www.youtube.com/@relaTVty/playlists](https://www.youtube.com/@relaTVty/playlists)
It’s pretty ELI5, for a such difficult subject like General Relativity.
The expansion of the universe means there are parts of the universe that are moving apart from eachother faster than light.
Actually, it’s not like there can not be a thing faster than light.
This is an additional assumption on top of an Einstein General Relativity theory.
That theory (that so far we have no evidence to think it’s not correct), does put a limit of a speed that any object with a mass can reach.
In simplification, the faster an object goes, the more energy it’s need to accelerate it further, and the light speed is a limit, where You will need infinite energy to achieve that speed.
But the value of the limit (~300k m/s) is not coming from the theory, theory only says there is “some” limit, actual value comes from real world measurements.
For the same reason, objects that don’t have a mass (like photons, that are the “light particles”), have to travel with this speed all the time.
But, interesting fact now, the theory didn’t exclude objects with speed greater than a limit (light speed), we just don’t observe such things in our world, so we make an additional assumption for the Einstein Theory that those objects faster than light doesn’t exist.
And if those objects exist, they have to obey the same limit, but from “opposite side”, I mean, in that case, slowing down the object will require energy, and slowing it to a speed of light, will require infinite energy.
And also very important things to know is if we do not exclude those objects, their existence will have huge impact on how we understand world and modern physic.
Because of the space-time nature, and how it behaves, those objects have to break the Causation Law. Basically, it will be looked like those objects travel back in time in a sense, so for them the result comes first, and the cause of that result comes later, in reverse order compared to all objects that travel with a lower speed of light.
If You interested in a topic, I recommend to watch Andrzej Dragan series about General Relativity:
[https://www.youtube.com/@relaTVty/playlists](https://www.youtube.com/@relaTVty/playlists)
It’s pretty ELI5, for a such difficult subject like General Relativity.
It’s helpful to flip this on its head.
Nothing can go faster than light, because light travels at the fastest possible speed for any object because it has no mass – it weighs nothing.
The heavier something is, the slower it has to travel. Light travels at the maximum possible speed, as it weighs nothing.
The heavier something is, the more energy it needs to speed it up. That’s why it’s easy to throw a tennis ball, but harder to push a car.
The amount of energy that it takes to move something heavy goes up exponentially – meaning that to push something that has weight as fast as light would take more energy than can exist in the universe (we think).
Photons have no mass, so they travel as fast as anything can go. Anything that weighs something, by definition, cannot go that fast as there’s nothing that could push it any faster.
It’s helpful to flip this on its head.
Nothing can go faster than light, because light travels at the fastest possible speed for any object because it has no mass – it weighs nothing.
The heavier something is, the slower it has to travel. Light travels at the maximum possible speed, as it weighs nothing.
The heavier something is, the more energy it needs to speed it up. That’s why it’s easy to throw a tennis ball, but harder to push a car.
The amount of energy that it takes to move something heavy goes up exponentially – meaning that to push something that has weight as fast as light would take more energy than can exist in the universe (we think).
Photons have no mass, so they travel as fast as anything can go. Anything that weighs something, by definition, cannot go that fast as there’s nothing that could push it any faster.
It’s helpful to flip this on its head.
Nothing can go faster than light, because light travels at the fastest possible speed for any object because it has no mass – it weighs nothing.
The heavier something is, the slower it has to travel. Light travels at the maximum possible speed, as it weighs nothing.
The heavier something is, the more energy it needs to speed it up. That’s why it’s easy to throw a tennis ball, but harder to push a car.
The amount of energy that it takes to move something heavy goes up exponentially – meaning that to push something that has weight as fast as light would take more energy than can exist in the universe (we think).
Photons have no mass, so they travel as fast as anything can go. Anything that weighs something, by definition, cannot go that fast as there’s nothing that could push it any faster.
Actually, it’s not like there can not be a thing faster than light.
This is an additional assumption on top of an Einstein General Relativity theory.
That theory (that so far we have no evidence to think it’s not correct), does put a limit of a speed that any object with a mass can reach.
In simplification, the faster an object goes, the more energy it’s need to accelerate it further, and the light speed is a limit, where You will need infinite energy to achieve that speed.
But the value of the limit (~300k m/s) is not coming from the theory, theory only says there is “some” limit, actual value comes from real world measurements.
For the same reason, objects that don’t have a mass (like photons, that are the “light particles”), have to travel with this speed all the time.
But, interesting fact now, the theory didn’t exclude objects with speed greater than a limit (light speed), we just don’t observe such things in our world, so we make an additional assumption for the Einstein Theory that those objects faster than light doesn’t exist.
And if those objects exist, they have to obey the same limit, but from “opposite side”, I mean, in that case, slowing down the object will require energy, and slowing it to a speed of light, will require infinite energy.
And also very important things to know is if we do not exclude those objects, their existence will have huge impact on how we understand world and modern physic.
Because of the space-time nature, and how it behaves, those objects have to break the Causation Law. Basically, it will be looked like those objects travel back in time in a sense, so for them the result comes first, and the cause of that result comes later, in reverse order compared to all objects that travel with a lower speed of light.
If You interested in a topic, I recommend to watch Andrzej Dragan series about General Relativity:
[https://www.youtube.com/@relaTVty/playlists](https://www.youtube.com/@relaTVty/playlists)
It’s pretty ELI5, for a such difficult subject like General Relativity.
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