Yeah in order to move faster then the speed of light you technically have to be massless because the energy required to go a certain speed increases exponentially as you approach the speed of light eventually reaching a limit of infinity. It's all very abstract and confusing, very cool to think about though.
I've been studying the way the universe works and all that stuff for about 3 years now, It's been quite the fasination really. Any other scientist or astrophysist will tell you that it is not possible to go the speed of light, But I do believe they are wrong because if going the speed of light is possible by the "light" in the first place, Is there a reason why it shouldn't be possible for something else? People deny stuff saying it's "impossible", But there is no such thing. If the universe and reality is already exsistent, Anything else can exist aswell. Please respond if you understood anything I said
Exactly light has no mass, where as most other particles do. "Photons, the tiny packets that make up light, do not have mass. However, they do have momentum, even though we learn in physics class that an object's momentum is proportional to its mass. Scientists discovered that a photon's momentum is proportional to its frequency - a property that we usually use to describe things like sound waves." - http://www.ccmr.cornell.edu/education/ask/index.html?quid=240
Don't mind me if I am just confused, but saying its impossible seems to be making a whole bunch of assumptions. Sure, now it isn't, but no one can predict what technology in the distant future will bring. Edit and off-topic: It seems my post count has been stuck at 296 for quite a while now. Or am I just imagining it?
General Relativity has been mathematically proven...but that doesn't mean other theories can't build onto it with their own equations which could form "loopholes" that allow faster than light speed travel. However, that is extremely unlikely.
Einstein says for a object to go the speed of light its mass would be infinite, and so would the energy required to increase its speed, to go beyond infinite is impossible. Its his theory of special relativity. We have accelerated particles over 99% the speed of light but never at or over the speed of light. Look up tachyons.
Extremely unlikely for the current technology, Like an obove poster stated no one can predict what the technology in the future can bring. EX: Look at the Hadron Collider, They're going to simulate a real big bang in 2009. It's going to be on a very very small controlled scale but still. That would be HUMANS creating another UNIVERSE inside the universe.
Ye you have to remember we as humans are a fairly slow learning breed! If you told a guy 200 years ago we will be talking to each other across the world on a small box or will be travelling to the moon he would call it impossible. Time is key. Unfortunately we wont be traveling speeds anywhere near that speed in our life time, but in the future, who knows? Just because something seems impossible at the moment doesn't mean it wont happen eventually.
While there is some leeway with accurately predicting technologies...physics doesn't really fall into that catagory. Look at Newton. His equations are still the basis of all modern day physics, even though he didn't fully understand gravity. General Relativity BUILDS on Newtonian Physics, explaning gravity fully threw the addition of more complex equations. Mathmetical laws have no exceptions. The only way I can think of that General Relativity would allow for light speed travel is if we devised a way to dissasemble mass and recreate it in somewhere else (AKA "Beam me up" in Star Trek). Other than that, the numbers are clear: Light speed travel cannot be reached if an object has mass.
Exactly, now just construct one . I think you'll find it difficult to make a machine which can take something that has mass and make it into massless particles like a photon. Not to mention the reconstruction of these massless photons into their previous form identically.
Oh how I try. How is another topic altogether, but no one is going to go and shatter my childhood star trek delusions.
To put it in more imaginable terms...it would be like trying to construct a space ship from a radio wave.