why is faster than light travel impossible?

Question

I’m wondering if interstellar travel is possible. So I guess the starting point is figuring out FTL travel.

In: 1302

Answer 1

We don’t know.

The answers here are focusing on our attempts to understand what we observe about how light travels, and how things interact in our universe.

But the bigger question is, why does light travel the speed it does, rather than a different speed?

We have zero idea about that. Not even a theory or any math.

We may never know. Or we might be able to manipulate whatever makes the universe the way it is. That might make FTL possible, or it might mean the concept of FTL isn’t relevant.

For now, the answer is, we don’t know.

Interstellar travel is perfectly fine without FTL. It’s slow, but even at a fraction of the speed of light, humanity could colonise the galaxy faster than the time it took us to spread all over Earth.