Faster than light travel

[Dr Jekyll]

Suppose someone (NASA, aliens, mad scientist, Musk, whoever) eventually manages to achieve faster than light travel. What's the least implausible method to use?

[Dr Jekyll]

Not really, if you warp space or take some kind of extra dimensional shortcut you might get there in less time than light would take but are not actually going faster than light. It would mean Einstein didn't have the whole picture but wouldn't exactly be wrong.

[Dr Jekyll]

p1stonhead said:

Only one I have heard of which even remotely is theoretically possible within our understanding of things is the Alcubierre Drive? I dont know much about the issue however.

Everything I have read in practical terms says no chance.

+1 and I think the Alcubierre drive is the one where you measure your energy consumption in galaxies per light year.

[Dr Jekyll]

Yipper said:

For sure. Consensus theories rarely stay consensusal forever. People once believed going faster than sound was impossible.

No they didn't.

There was some dispute as to whether a controllable aircraft that could survive passing mach 1 could be built. But this arose when bullets and rockets were already exceeding it quite happily.

Speed of light is a physics problem not just an engineering one.

The idea that it can't be exceeded MIGHT be wrong, just as gravity MIGHT not exist. But we can be pretty confident both are right.

[Dr Jekyll]

paua said:

Another issue to overcome is : humans can't sustain acceleration of more than just a few G & it takes rather a while at (say 6-10 G ) to reach anywhere near C.

+1

At a nice comfy 1 g it would take a year.

[Dr Jekyll]

Halmyre said:

There's a school of thought that says, if we invent a time machine at some point, we wouldn't be able to return to a time earlier than that point. Don't know what the reasoning is though.

That was based on a particular idea for a time machine, which would be a sort of landing pad that you could jump back to from the future rather than a vehicle.

[Dr Jekyll]

peterperkins said:

If you accelerate at 2/3g (sustainable by the human body) how long would it take you to get to C?

2g six months, 3g four months.

[Dr Jekyll]

Halmyre said:

Wasn't Newton's quote a sarcastic dig at someone (Hooke?) who had claimed that Newton was riding on the efforts of others?

+1

Hooke was a bit on the small side.

[Dr Jekyll]

RobDickinson said:

thebraketester said:

Buy surely if you were in space and accelerating in a straight line at 9.8m/s/s , wouldnt the "force" effect to you feel exactly the same as the gravitational force when stood on the surface of the earth?

Yep, identical

Subtle difference surely, in gravity you are being pulled towards the centre of mass, standing on a accelerating platform it would feel although every part of your body was being puled in exactly the same direction. Not that you would notice the difference unless your gravitational force came from a very small dense object.
The force itself would be indistinguishable I agree.