8 Sci-Fi Inventions Ruined By Science
5. Light Speed
The universe has a speed limit and we’re stuck in the slow lane.
This one’s a total bummer when it comes to exploring the cosmos. We want so badly to achieve light speed because we’re currently sitting at point A with a point B marked in hundreds of locations across the cosmos.
Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, is 4.37 light years from our solar system. Even at the speed of light it sounds like a terrible road trip, but it would be far better than travelling the 39 trillion km in our current fastest vessel, New Horizons, at 58,536 km/h. Juno achieved a speed of 266,000 km/h as it plunged into Jupiter’s orbit this summer but that was owed to gravity. Averaging the speed between the two crafts would still cost us upwards 27 thousand years to get there. Bummer dude…
Why won’t we achieve light speed? Because Einstein declared it.
Short story, we haven’t figured out a way to propel matter without expending infinite energy, meaning that the faster we send something along, the more energy we use. As matter, even a particle, moves closer to the speed of light, its mass increases and, as a result, it would require an infinite amount of energy to achieve light speed. There was a report about five years ago that a neutrino was detected at the LHC that had traveled faster than the speed of light, but the claim was quickly debunked.
Only light will travel the speed of light.
Einstein! *shakes fist*