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Possible Duplicate:
Accelerating particles to the speed of light

I have heard about atomic rockets in novels which have the capability to travel faster than light. I have also heard about fictional stories where objects capable to travel faster than light.

My question is:

Is it scientifically possible to build an instrument which can travel faster than light?

And atlast i like to clarify that whether this question suitable to your site or maybe asked in anyother stackexchange site's,usually downvote will be awarded when there is lack of research ,i am seeking answer where the research be-ginned for it,am i wrong ?

if my question is off the topic here please let me to know where can i ask this question?

Community
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BlueBerry - Vignesh4303
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5 Answers5

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No, unless we find the laws of relativity to be seriously incomplete or incorrect (not very likely to happen as both SR and GR are well-tested theories.) "Building an instrument" would presumably mean that it has some finite mass and unless that rest mass is 0, you will be limited by c.

Xavier
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What you should understand is that because of the way special relativity works, going faster than the speed of light would mean travelling backwards in time, so you're really asking if we can build time machines.

Another way to think about is is that while the speed of light is finite, it's indeed an infinite velocity in a very real sense: Because of time dilation, a moving clock ticks slower, and it would stop if speed of light were reached. This means that photons travel along their path instantaneously. In fact, from the point of view of the photon, there's no need to travel at all, because length contraction will have reduced the distance between start and end to zero.

Christoph
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Is it scientifically possible to build an instrument which can travel faster than light?

No, it is not.

Do remember that the stories you've been reading are fiction. I'm not sure what you've seen to suggest that such a thing might be possible in reality, but no massive object can accelerate up to the speed of light.

David Z
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It's a basic principle of relativity (both special and general) that if you measure speed locally the fastest speed you can travel is the speed of light. My favourite way to explain this is that it's a consequence of the geometry of spacetime. In fact I've just answered a question on this: Special Relativity Second Postulate

In special relativity the local invariance of the speed of light means there is absolutely no way to travel faster than light, however in general relativity this limitation no longer exists globally. It still isn't possible to travel faster than light relative to spacetime, but in GR spacetime itself can stretch and carry matter along with it, and the net effect is that FTL travel is possible - though physically unlikely.

The most commonly quoted example of this is the Alcubierre drive, varients of which crop up regularly in Science Fiction. Another is the wormhole, though the physics of wormholes are far subtler than (most) SciFi books think.

As a simple example of FTL motion, you probably know the universe is expanding and the recession speed of distant galaxies is (roughly) proportional to their distance. This means that if a galaxy is distant enough it must be moving faster than the speed of light relative to us. Note however that he distant galaxy isn't moving away from us in the sense that a bullet moves away from you when you fire a gun. Instead the spacetime in between us and the distant galaxy is expanding.

You'll probably find the Wikipedia article on faster than light travel an interesting read.

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John Rennie
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Many particles have been observed to travel faster than light. But only when the light is moving through some material that isn't a vacuum.

In order to go faster than light you can make a tradeoff between how fast you want to go and how slow you want the light to go!

FTLFTW
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