What happens if you travel faster than the speed of light?
Question: What happens if you travel faster than the speed of light?
Short answer: “for an object to travel at the speed of light, its mass would become infinite the energy required to move such a heavy object would also be infinite so which is simply impossible as we can’t provide infinite energy to any object moreover we have to break certain laws of physics(special theory of relativity) to move at the speed of light.”
Long Answer:
light is traveling at a speed of 3× 10⁸ m/s which is the fastest in our OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE now from the special theory of relativity mass increases with an increase in speed.
but since most of us travel at a very slow speed as compared to the speed of light so the change in mass due to an increase in speed is negligible.
but if we travel at the speed of light then the change in mass is infinitely large.
given the equation to calculate the mass of an object traveling at the speed of light is :
now if we put the velocity with which an object is traveling then it comes out to be
now if our mass becomes ∞ at the speed of light then we will need infinitely large energy to move such a heavy object at the speed of light which is just impossible because we can’t provide infinite energy to any object as we have a limited amount of energy.
from Energy-mass Equivalence Relation:
here p is the relativistic mometum.
and along with the Energy Formula of
from “Einstein’s Special theory of relativity”, it is possible to travel at the speed of particles but there are “some special particles” (which will be discussed in this answer later on) that can travel at such a high speed.
there are a few more predictions that if we travel at a speed faster than the speed of light then times become imaginary.
now, from the “Theory of Relativity” let me show how it works
let the speed with which we are traveling be “v=2c “ then using:
we can say that
now, what does this imaginary time means?
suppose the time on a graph is the time in which we are presently living in “REAL TIME” and ‘it’s constantly moving the horizontal plane.’
but “coming to imaginary time, it is perpendicular to the real-time axis.”
you can say that every incident will occur all at once and at the same time, and the time on the real axis won’t move.
maybe this imaginary time could be a possible reason behind some cases that scientists are unable to explain while dealing with real-time.
this reminds me of one of the quotes from Stephen Hawking, it goes something like this:
“Because imaginary time behaves like another direction in space, histories in imaginary time can be closed surfaces, like the surface of the Earth, with no [existential] beginning or end.”
~Stephen Hawking
The Fastest Object which we humans have ever made is the “Parker Solar Probe” having a record speed of 692,000 kmh^-1 or about 0.064 % of the speed of light.
even though it’s the fastest object that humans have ever made, its speed in comparison to the speed of light is very slow.
now you can just imagine how hard it will be to build a spacecraft that has infinite mass and needs infinite energy to travel at the speed of light. it’s nearly impossible for us now.
but in the end, it’s all just theory and hypothesis and it’s not necessary that it’s all correct, this particular field still needs a lot more deep research and it may take a few more decades to make any final conclusion.
you can read this answer as well, here I’ve given a brief idea about “Space-Time relations” https://qr.ae/pGx8w2
you can also check out this answer related to “Time-Dilation” https://qr.ae/pGxXA9
“Some Special Particles that could travel at the speed of Light”
There are a few Hypothetical Particles that could travel faster than light, that is “Tachyons”.
from the equation for Energy.
if this particle travels at a speed faster than the speed of light then Energy comes out to be an Imaginary number, and we know that energy cannot be complex it must be real in order to have any particular meaning for such energy. then the Numerator terms must be an imaginary number as well( because if we divide two pure-imaginary numbers then we get a Real number)
which means that the “mass of the particle must be an imaginary number” as well. and then the “Value of Energy which we get is a \Re number”. and further, we can travel at the speed of light.
this Particle is still undiscovered in scientific experiments as a real particle traveling through a vacuum, yet we have just predicted it theoretically that tachyons-like particles exist as faster-than-light ‘quasiparticles’ moving through laser-like media.
now summing up the whole answer
“It’s currently impossible to travel at the speed of light as our mass will get infinitely large and we need infinitely large energy to travel at such speed even if we somehow did travel at such speed then we have to break some well-known physics laws and maybe we even need more complex and advanced physics/maths to deal with such calculations.”
now an interesting question could be
“What would we see, if we could travel at the speed of light”
“maybe nothing but just complete darkness, as photons travel at the speed of light and if we try to travel faster than photons then there won’t be any visible light that could enter our eyes ( as we are traveling faster than light) so it is more likely we have to live in complete darkness if we cross light speed.”
To find an answer to this question we have to think out of the box and do some extraordinary calculations to get the end results. maybe this could be a debatable topic.
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Footnotes:
What would you see if you could travel at the speed of light?
How Fast Does Light Travel? | The Speed of Light
Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity
What Would Happen If You Traveled At The Speed Of Light?
Parker Solar Probe — Wikipedia
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Thanks for Reading
~ Vaibhav Dubey
