Ways To Travel Faster Than Light Without Violating Relativity

StartsWithABang writes: It's one of the cardinal laws of physics and the underlying principle of Einstein's relativity itself: the fact that there's a universal speed limit to the motion of anything through space and time, the speed of light, or c. Light itself will always move at this speed (as well as certain other phenomena, like the force of gravity), while anything with mass — like all known particles of matter and antimatter — will always move slower than that. But if you want something to travel faster-than-light, you aren't, as you might think, relegated to the realm of science fiction. There are real, physical phenomena that do exactly this, and yet are perfectly consistent with relativity.

Comments

Re:faster than light never violates Relativity

[catmistake]

You're at a very straight, very long beach. Imagine parallel waves striking the shore at a vanishingly slight angle. The point that the wave meets the shore moves along as the intersection of wave and beach occurs. As the waves get closer and closer to parallel with the beach, but not quite parallel, eventually that intersection point will be moving much faster than c.

But the interesection point between waves and shore doesn't have mass, isn't really a "thing" that's moving.

Re:C is not what people think it means

[firewrought]

except for the part about bringing your own fuel

And the part about obliterating your spacecraft by colliding with interstellar dust at super-high relative velocities. The speed limit for arriving in one piece is way lower than c.