Only thing stopping you is gravity, mass and other matter between you and the place you want to be. An anti-gravity drive capable of moving the matter in front of you out of the way would solve the 'you can't go faster than the speed of light' problem. Why do you need to move matter out of the way? Well, pretty simple really. If you threw a baseball at 90% the speed of light, the following link explains the rest: https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/
What? Is that why massless photons in a space vacuum with negligible effects of gravity move at that speed? Let's create an anti-gravity drive. Zoink Zoink. Everything seems simple in this thread.
But that's why there are wormholes, a thought to digest. Thousands of years.. Our closest "biggest" spiral galaxy is Andromeda, which is 2.5 MILLION lightyears away, .. imagine that, you travel 2.5 million years at the speed of light to reach it. But I think that's why there are wormholes to rectify that.. I'm pretty sure wormholes are an advanced form of travel.. Yeah exactly.
I thought I was underestimating tbh... if I recall correctly, the closest star to us is Alpha Centauri which is some thousand light years away, maybe that threw me off Wormholes etc. are part of very experimental physics theories I think. Really not too familiar with them, but afaik they are little more than "educated guesses" atm with lots of speculation and assumptions. Not meaning those things couldn't be possible, but I think I'll stick to Newtonean or Einsteinean mechanics for a couple of millennia still...
It does not imply energy has mass, it presents the correlation between mass and energy based on Einstein's theory of relativity. In short, if you convert a mass X to energy, you get XC2 amount of energy. In theory. Imagine you burn wood to heat your house. You convert mass into thermal energy (with the exothermic process of oxidization). You have either mass or energy, in this respect / context.
We have a lot to learn about the universe still, that's true. However, I think it's reasonable to assume some limitations or laws of physics are the same throughout the universe. Photon is the fastest moving, known particle in existence atm. Whether it ultimately turns out to be false or not, the basic problem with space travel remains the same.
^ oops, so it seems. And actually the closest single star to us is Proxima Centauri, apparently. Still, the point remains the same.
lol yeah because Proxima is close in latin lol. only 4.24 LY guys, w00t! Let's do it, one day we go there yeah? Just 4 years of travel at the speed of light.. we could do it.. XD But yeah I'm sure there are other ways of advanced travel because travelling at the speed of light would just take too long.. so I guess what loobyluggs suggested would be pretty good, find a way to remove the matter/mass infront of you so the movement/motion is instant basically.. like teleportation, right? XD So cool to think about these things lol.. advanced technologies, OMFG! XD
Michael Shermer on Aliens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKAXrmkx12g http://www.michaelshermer.com/tag/ufos/
Energy and mass can be converted between forms in certain circumstances. That doesn't mean that a photon has mass. Photons are a wave phenomena, not a particle one. Therefore the only thing that affects their pathway are giant gravity wells. Not because of centripetal acceleration, but because space time is actually being caved in by the star/object.
If we want to get technical, yes. It's a wave phenomenon that acts like a particle. Still doesn't mean that it has the physical properties of a particle though. People have tried before to "weigh" light, and it just can't be done. I guess it's unfair to say he's "blatantly wrong", because it's not a proven law, and I can see where he's coming from. Here's the math behind it, if anyone is curious. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/photon_mass.html Relativity is a complex beast in this regard.
Light can be both wave and particle, depending on observation. When observed it is a wave, but when unobserved it travels as particle, that's where it gets interesting........:infinity: Edit- I think I got that ^^ backward ...I can't remember tbh and don't have time to look it up, something I watched about a dual slit experiment.
