(ORDO NEWS) — As far as we know, a person cannot move at twice the speed of light. In fact, no object with such a mass as you and I can move faster than the speed of light.
However, for some strange particles, traveling at twice the speed of light is possible – and this could send these particles back in time.
Universal speed limit
One of the best physical theories at the moment is the theory of relativity developed by Albert Einstein. According to this theory, the speed of light acts as a universal speed limit for anything that has mass.
In particular, the theory of relativity tells us that nothing with mass can accelerate beyond the speed of light.
To accelerate an object with mass, we must add energy. The faster we want to accelerate an object, the more energy we need.
The equations of relativity tell us that everything that has mass – no matter how much mass it has – will need an infinite amount of energy to accelerate to the speed of light.
But all the sources of energy known to us are finite: they are limited in some way.
Indeed, it can be assumed that the universe contains only a finite amount of energy. This means that there is not enough energy in the universe to accelerate something with mass to the speed of light.
Since you and I have mass, we should not expect to be traveling at twice the speed of light anytime soon.
Tachyons
This universal speed limit applies to anything we can call “ordinary mass”.
However, there are hypothetical particles called tachyons that have a special kind of mass called “imaginary mass”.
There is no evidence for the existence of tachyons. But according to the theory of relativity, their possible existence cannot be ruled out.
If they exist, then tachyons must always move faster than the speed of light. Just as something with ordinary mass cannot be accelerated beyond the speed of light, tachyons cannot be slowed down to below the speed of light.
Some physicists believe that if tachyons exist, they are constantly moving backwards in time. This is why tachyons are associated with time travel in many science fiction books and films.
There are ideas that someday we will be able to use tachyons to create a time machine. But for now, this remains a distant dream, as we have no way of detecting potential tachyons.
Short cuts?
Unfortunately, we cannot travel faster than the speed of light. The nearest star to us, other than the Sun, is 4.35 light-years away. Thus, to get to it at the speed of light, we need more than four years.
The farthest star we have been able to detect is 28 billion light-years away. So the mapping of the entire universe can be practically abandoned.
However, relativity allows for the existence of “wormholes”.
A wormhole is a short path between any two points in space. While a star may be 4.5 light-years away in the conventional sense, it can be reached through a wormhole in just a few hours.
If wormholes do exist, they would allow us to cover vast distances in a very short amount of time, allowing us to travel to the furthest corners of the universe in a single lifetime.
Unfortunately, like tachyons, wormholes remain entirely hypothetical.
Strange Possibilities
Even though we can’t actually travel faster than light, we can still try to imagine what it would be like.
By thinking in this way, we are using “counterfactual thinking”. We think about what would or could be if reality were to change in some way.
There are many different possibilities that we could consider, each with its own set of physical principles.
Therefore, we cannot say with certainty what will happen if we can travel faster than light. At best, we can guess what might happen. Will we start traveling back in time, as some scientists think tachyons can do?
I leave a few ideas to your imagination and imagination!
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