The real reason you can’t go faster than the speed of light

Often regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time, Albert Einstein had extraordinary insights into the laws of nature. However, his work has met with very disappointing results, especially for science buffs who hope to one day travel to distant stars. His theory suggests that there is the fastest speed in the universe: the speed of light. That means the shortest round trip to the nearest star will take nearly a decade.

But how does it work? Even the most enlightened science buffs often have an incorrect, or at least incomplete, understanding of why you can’t move faster than light.

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This speed limit is a strange fact and totally goes against our common intuition. After all, if you zoom in on your car and hit the gas, it will go even faster. And even though your car has top speed, we know about faster things like fighter jets and bullets.

However, the acceleration eventually stopped working. No matter how hard you try, you can’t go faster than about 186,000 miles per second (about 300,000 km/h).

The most common explanation for cosmic velocity is that as an object moves faster, its mass increases. This explanation makes sense. After all, pushing a mountain was harder than pushing a rock. If an object’s mass becomes infinite as it approaches the speed of light, it stands to reason that you can’t break through the speed barrier – it would take an infinite amount of energy to complete it.

There are many uses for this explanation, and it is often explained this way in undergraduate physics classes as well. (Heck, even I was taught it from time to time.) But it wasn’t Better Answer.

Everything moves at the speed of light

To really understand why you can’t go faster than light, we need to study the basic ideas of Einstein’s theory. While our experiences together tell us that space and time are two different things, he acknowledges that they are more similar than different. Instead of space and time, there’s something called space-time.

Perhaps this idea is more intuitive by analogy. Take a look at any map of the world. We can define a location on a map as two numbers: latitude (north/south numbers) and longitude (east/west numbers). While there are some slight differences (for example, it gets hotter or colder as you move from north to south), there are no differences between the two directions.

In spacetime, it’s much the same. Individuals may move in space or time, just as travelers may decide to move east/west versus north/south.

Now for the main insight. One of Einstein’s professors, a mathematician named Hermann Minkowski, studied Einstein’s theory of relativity and realized that at its deepest and most fundamental level, the theory states that any object only moves through spacetime, some through space and others across time. . When Einstein’s theory was pushed further, it was revealed All Objective It moves in space-time at the same speed – light speed.

To understand this more easily, let’s say we’re in a large, flat place, like the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. Let’s say you’re in a car with the throttle locked so it can only go at one speed, 60 mph (100 km/h).

Now let’s get behind the wheel and drive. If you are going east at 60 mph, you are not going north/south at all. Similarly, you can drive north at a constant speed, but you can never travel east/west. Or you can choose to drive northeast at 60 mph, thus traveling east to north at approximately 42 mph (69 km/h).

If you’re moving at a constant speed, the point is, you can move in any direction you want, but you can’t move in any direction faster than that constant speed.

They are identical in spacetime. Objects move through space-time at the speed of light. Objects at rest don’t move in space at all, so they move in time at the speed of light. Also, any object moving through space at the speed of light no longer has the speed to move through time.

Therefore, the absolute maximum speed that an object can individually achieve through space or time is also the speed of light. Note that this idea also explains strange features of relativity, such as the slowing down of time for an object as its speed increases. An object that moves more in space moves less in time.

Speed ​​limits are a harsh reality

The reason it is so difficult to travel through space at the speed of light is because you have to push an object away from its motion in the direction of time in order to move farther in the direction of space. And it’s difficult. However, even if you do, you can’t beat that single speed.

There he is. The real reason you can’t travel through space faster than light is because you always travel through spacetime at the speed of light. The best thing you can do is transfer all your efforts to moving in space; But once you’ve pushed all your moves into space, there’s no more speed. Just like a car can’t go faster than 60 mph, you’ve outgrown it.

This means that the day we finally go out into interstellar space, we will be destined to travel No faster than light? The round trip to the center of the galaxy and back takes 50,000 years to travel at the speed of light. Can we do better?

Unfortunately, the answer is no, at least without new scientific discoveries. Warp drives, hyperspace, and all the faster-than-light options of familiar science fiction don’t exist, or at least are unknown to our best understanding of natural laws. Keep in mind that scientists have discovered previously unknown things, like radio waves and radioactivity, so it’s conceivable that these discoveries will change everything. So I think there is still hope.

On the bright side, now that you know spacetime, the next time your boss takes on your case just for sitting there, you can tell him it’s nonsense. You move as fast as you can.