People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear non-subjective viewpoint,it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff. ~The Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) This is part three of a multipart series on faster-than-light travel. In the first part of the series, I explained why the speed of light is constant, no matter the observer. In part two, I explained why this invariance prevents us from going faster than light. This time, I’ll explain how we might use general relativity to get around this restriction. Fair warning: although general relativity
faster than light
Physics / Relativity / Science And Math
FTL Part 2: The Universal Speed Limit
It is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, and certainly not desirable, as one’s hat keeps blowing off. ~Woody Allen This is Part Two of a multipart series on faster-than-light travel. This time, I’ll describe why it’s difficult to travel faster than lightspeed. At the end of my last article, I told you that the speed of light is constant, independent of the speed of the observer or the source. If I drive past you at half the speed of light with my headlights blazing, the photons of my headlights will be going past you at