Can you go faster than light

Reset your password. Please enter the e-mail address you used to register to reset your password Enter e-mail address. Registration complete. Warp drive: could positive-energy solitons move a spacecraft faster than the speed of light? Want to read more? Register to unlock all the content on the site. E-mail Address. Benjamin Skuse is a science writer based in Somerset, UK. Physics World Jobs Take the next step in your career and find your perfect job. Read next Quantum mechanics Research update Quantum mechanics gives new insights into the Gibbs paradox.

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Such tachyon-like neutrinos would supersede photons as the fastest particles in the universe. In general relativity, spacetime is dynamic, not static, warping and bending in response to the presence of mass or energy.

Alas, once again we face an energy problem: achieving that degree of curvature would require enormous amounts of energy — and negative energy at that — equivalent to the mass of Jupiter. To propel a spacecraft across the Milky Way galaxy may require more energy than can be found in the mass of the entire universe. A more energy-efficient ring-shaped design for such a warp drive was described recently at a symposium on interstellar space flight, offering a meager shred of hope to diehard space acolytes that for future generations, warp drive will be a reality.

It was based on the assumption that, in this fictional world, the Colonials had merged theories of electromagnetism and gravity, such that if you could create a very intense electromagnetic field, it would be functionally equivalent to an intense gravitational field capable of warping spacetime. Turning that ingenious fiction into a viable reality is another matter altogether. If we really want to get speculative, Olum suggests FTL travel would be possible if exotic concepts, like those that emerge from superstring theory, prove to be correct.

Olum explains that, hypothetically, one could take a shortcut through the bulk, thereby arriving at your destination sooner than if you had travelled along your four-dimensional surface, or brane short for membrane as it is known. Even then, there is a catch. So one would need to invent a machine that could scan an object and transmit the information in the form of gravitons to a second machine on the other end which would then reconstruct that object — shades of teleportation, only with gravitons.

Considering we have yet to observe gravitons in our most powerful accelerators, and the current record for teleporting small clouds of atoms is the relatively non-Cylon-troubling distance of kilometres 88 miles , this scenario must also remain firmly in the realm of science fiction, at least for now.