11th July 2003, 10:52 PM
Yeah, it's totally impossible to travel at the speed of light relative to anything. Essentially as speed raises, weird stuff happens, like the distance physically shortening (one way to look at it) so the speed is still lower than light. Only light can travel at light speed. More than that, light's speed is constant. So let's say you start moving away from a light source at some speed, well, the speed of light is STILL the speed of light faster than you even though you are moving away from the light bulb. This creates some weirdness in perspectives, but it's all a constant.
Even if we did travel at light speed, it would take 4 years just to get to the nearest star (besides our sun), and after that, more than the average human life span to reach the 3rd farthest star. We need something FAR more than light speed for realistic travelling, unless we plan on sending a self-sustaining colony into the depths of space and essentially forgetting about them (after a certain distance, we'd loose track of any communication for years to come, and eventually it would take centuries for us to hear from them, unlike Star Trek's instantaneous communications and not a single amount of time lag as a result of travel :D).
Even if we did travel at light speed, it would take 4 years just to get to the nearest star (besides our sun), and after that, more than the average human life span to reach the 3rd farthest star. We need something FAR more than light speed for realistic travelling, unless we plan on sending a self-sustaining colony into the depths of space and essentially forgetting about them (after a certain distance, we'd loose track of any communication for years to come, and eventually it would take centuries for us to hear from them, unlike Star Trek's instantaneous communications and not a single amount of time lag as a result of travel :D).
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)