It’s been 50 years or so since I stumbled through introductory physics, but wouldn’t it take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate any mass to the speed of light?
Cannot assume Einstein’s theory is the end all to light and travel.
Yes, but the warp drive skirts that problem because it doesn’t actually accelerate any matter at all. The matter that is inside the warp bubble remains perfectly still, while the bubble of space itself is what gets accelerated.
It’s only been 40 years or so since I stumbled through introductory physics, but that is what I was taught too.
Of course, the idea is to somehow go faster than the speed of light without ever going the speed of light. You just need to figure out how to jump from 1/2 the speed of light to 2X the speed of light without accelerating in between.
Yes. If you are considering travel as “pushing” yourself to that limit.
The concept of “warp” drives means moving within a pocket of “space time.” The traveler never exceeds light speed—but the bubble bends the space around it.
All very theoretical. I know the back of the envelope description. But they say it might work in theory. Practically? Not in our lives.
You aren’t accelerating the mass, you’re compressing and stretching the warp bubble (like reference frame). Relativity theory does not put limits on the speed the bubble can be manipulated. The occupants of the spacecraft would feel no acceleration, AT ALL.
In simplest terms that leave out all the details, the Space-Time coordinates establish a light cone the boundaries of which represent a light beam's trajectory and which cannot be crossed by either the time coordinate (which represents the path of an object in an inertial frame) or the space coordinate (which lies outside the light cone)...
However, there are instances where the "observed" speed of light is slowed down as the light beam passes through a solid like water... then you can see the results of certain charged particles traveling faster than that light through the same medium...
Cherenkov radiation is the best example...
Including the blue glow of a nuclear cooling container or detecting the Cherenkov radiation from a muon from space passing through a block of plexiglass...
Also, quantum entanglement has information passing between objects faster than the speed of light... (Einstein's "spooky" meme)
Finally, the universe (way way way)?? out there is most likely expanding faster than the speed of light...
I'll close by pointing out a critical case of superluminal speed... Consider the speed by which our new ruling communists have attacked all of our unalienable freedoms & liberties...