Answer 1:
Well, there's a very good physical law that says nothing can move faster than the speed of light. And that's relativity. No, unfortunately given currently established theories you cannot move faster than light through space-time. Experiment has shown this again and again and again. However, space-time itself can stretch itself faster than light can travel, which is what happens when you have a black hole. The reports you are reading are unfortunately written for laymen by laymen. Think of it this way: if you take a laser pointer, and point it at a very distant galaxy, and then swing your arm all the way across the sky, then the 'dot' would move faster than light (it moves billions of light-years with one swing!). However, you cannot transmit energy or information faster than light in this way (it still takes the actual photons the billions of light years to reach the specified place). Likewise, you can take an infinitely long wall, have a light-house rotate and shine a light on the wall. As you get further and further away from the light-house, the spot moving along the wall achieves infinite speed as the lighthouse rotates away from it... but the real physical things (the photons) generating the spot itself still move at the speed of light. The experiments that you're thinking about are actually experiments set up such that no information or energy (and therefore matter) is transmitted faster than light. Its a fabricated thing. It is cool, but does not violate relativity. It is just a more complicated version of the lighthouse thought experiment described above. And since you are matter and energy, you cannot be transmitted at faster than the speed of light =) |