Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel

Faster-than-light travel is a staple of the science fiction genre because it allows for expedient travel to distant worlds. Likewise, it has been a topic to which modern scientists have given much serious thought.

Although Albert Einstein (1918-1955) is one of the most celebrated physicists of all time, he considered himself a failure for much of his early adulthood and didn’t receive recognition for his genius until he published his papers on his revolutionary theory of special relativity in 1905. This theory addressed contradictions between the two major pillars of contemporary physics (Maxwell’s theory of light and Newtonian mechanics) by showing that the speed of light was a constant. Einstein showed that traveling faster than the speed of light is impossible, that mass and energy are interchangeable forms of the same entity, and that the passage of time and the mass of an object change depending on the object’s speed. He summarized this discovery in his famous equation E=MC2, which states that energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared. Einstein’s discoveries revolutionized modern physics and have since been confirmed through countless experiments. These principles are reflected in modern technology, such as GPS, and shown clearly in experiments where protons approach the speed of light in particle accelerators.