Exploring Researchers: Can You Travel Faster Than Light?

Created: 01/04/2022, 09:17 AM

Albert Einstein once stated: You can't travel faster than light.

But maybe it is?

Various researchers are looking for loopholes.

© - / NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team / dpa

Science fiction shows how it is: In series such as “Star Trek”, spaceships move faster than light.

According to the theory of relativity, this cannot and must not be.

Could there still be a way?

Berlin - He clearly defined the physical limits of our world: Albert Einstein, Nobel Prize winner and one of the most important natural scientists in history, presented his theory of relativity over 100 years ago.

“It is not possible to be faster than light.” With these words, the physicist and science fiction expert Sascha Vogel sums up an important aspect of the work of the brilliant researcher.

That means: A spaceship cannot accelerate to "faster than light" by itself.

But maybe a trick will help?

The template comes from science fiction: At the end of the first episode of the cult series "Star Trek", broadcast in 1966, Captain Kirk gives the order to go to "Warp 1".

The wiki about the adventures of the spaceship Enterprise with the title "Memory Alpha" defines this as the speed of lightning ".

A wave that warps space-time

The Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre claims to have found a loophole to implement this in real life - at least in theory.

The move in his “Alcubierre drive”: It is

.

That means: The vehicle hardly moves at all, but travels through space in a so-called warp bubble.

Explained figuratively: The spaceship rides on a wave that bends space-time and thus shortens the path.

Physicist Vogel sees “many ifs and buts” with this idea.

A prerequisite for the “Alcubierre drive” would be

- although it is not yet clear whether it even exists.

Physics experts suspect that a negative flow of energy could arise at the edge of a black hole.

Alternative: an extraordinary amount of conventional energy

“Things are only impossible until they are no longer.” Kirk's successor, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, explains in the series “Star Trek - The Next Century” how circumstances change when there are innovations.

Because one thing is clear: if travel to distant stars is to be possible at all within a person's lifetime, such a drive would have to be found.

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In any case, a researcher at the University of Göttingen is trying a different approach.

For example, astrophysicist Erik Lentz managed to do without “negative energy” in his considerations.

“There is currently no verifiable possibility of even producing them in microscopic quantities,” explains Lentz.

His solution: There would have to be an extraordinary amount of conventional energy.

On this basis,

could then be

possible faster than is currently possible - the closest star outside our solar system.

For comparison: The Voyager 1 space probe, launched in 1977, which has now left our solar system and covered more than 23 billion kilometers, would take around 75,000 years for this journey.

Also interesting

Can such an energy demand be met at all?

The challenge: The energy requirement for this new type of space propulsion would be huge.

Lentz speaks of an "astronomical source of energy".

The scientist explains: "The energy required for this propulsion for the speed of light for a spaceship with a radius of 100 meters is in the order of 100 times the mass of the planet Jupiter." Einstein's famous equation E = mc² says that mass ( m) and energy (E) can be converted into one another.

Jupiter is about 2.5 times as heavy as the rest of the planets in our solar system combined.

The earth would fit in 318 times.

That means: According to Lentz's theory, the approximately 100-meter-tall spaceship would have to have a lot more mass or pretend space than it actually has.

How this will work is still open.

Implementation of the theory would be a sensation

The theoretical consequence of this large mass, however, would be that

.

The spaceship would fly into the curve, would have moved only minimally and would emerge again light years away in a distant galaxy.

It would have moved very little itself, but the curvature of the space would have made it much further than what is possible with today's drives.

The idea has some advantages: fans of “Star Trek” should cheer, Einstein, the father of the theory of relativity, on the other hand, continue to rest in peace - because his definition that an object cannot accelerate itself to the speed of light is not affected.