Will Light Speed Travel Ever Be Possible For Humans?

Rishikesh Singh
3 min readJun 3, 2021

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Speed of Light It would be a really amazing experience for humans

In 1908, Hermann Minkowski presented a paper consolidating the role of time as the fourth dimension of spacetime, the basis for Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity. Non-relativistic classical mechanics treats time as a universal quantity of measurement which is uniform throughout space, and separate from space.

Classical mechanics assumes that time has a constant rate of passage, independent of the observer’s state of motion, or anything external.

In the context of special relativity, time cannot be separated from the three dimensions of space, because the observed rate at which time passes for an object depends on the object’s velocity relative to the observer. General relativity also provides an explanation of how gravitational fields can slow the passage of time for an object as seen by an observer outside the field. So according to the special theory of relativity time can not be separated from the 3 dimensions in fact it co-exists with 3-D and making the fourth dimension.

After that, the idea of travelling at the speed of light is an attractive one for sci-fi writers. The speed of light is a large figure of 299,792,458 meters per second. At that speed, we will be able to circle Earth more than seven times in one second, and humans would finally be able to explore outside our solar system also.

If we travel through only space in spacetime, our speed will be maximum in space, we will have no experience in time and distance will be just as a point. The acceleration of a mass for this speed would require an infinite amount of energy, which is why only massless particles can travel this speed through space.

Suppose you built a very fast spaceship and took it for a ride at an increasing speed, seen from earth, time slows down in the rocket and it will look shorter since time changes according to the frame of reference. Now, let's assume that you suddenly managed to move away from earth with exactly the speed of light. The distance between any point ahead of you and behind you would suddenly be zero! The effect of it would be that our three-dimensional universe would lose the dimension in the direction of your speed and become two-dimensional (like one plane of the paper).

Based on our current understanding of physics and the limits of the natural world, the answer, sadly, is no. According to Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, summarized by the famous equation E=mc2, the speed of light c is something like a cosmic speed limit that cannot be surpassed. If we achieve this speed then our mass will become infinite and would require an infinite amount of energy which is not possible. The only massless quantum particle-like photons, gluons, phonons could achieve this speed.

Three Ways to Travel at (Nearly) the Speed of Light

  1. Electromagnetic Fields
  2. Magnetic Explosions
  3. Wave-Particle Interactions

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Hopes this will be helpful to you.

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Rishikesh Singh
Rishikesh Singh

Written by Rishikesh Singh

My name is Rishikesh Singh guys and my hobby is to write something amazing & mind-blowing. Wanted more stories visit https://fact-fiction-decoder.blogspot.com

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