3 Ways To Travel Faster Than Light!

What Happens When We Try To Travel At The Speed Of Light?

• The speed of light in a vacuum is an absolute cosmic speed limit. Nothing can go faster than 3.0x 108 meters per second (that's 300,000,000 m/s or 1,080,000,000 km/h!). According to the laws of physics, as we approach light speed, we have to provide more and more energy to make an object move. In order to reach the speed of light, you'd need an infinite amount of energy, and that's impossible! 
• You may have heard that an object traveling at the speed of light gains infinite mass. But that's not exactly true. The object doesn't actually gain physical mass but it behaves like it has. For example if a 65kg person was travelling at 50% of the speed of light, they would behave like they had a mass of 87kg. At 90%, they would behave as if they weighed 172kg. So, if mass can't travel at the speed of light, how come light can? Light is made up of photons, which are massless particles and therefore they don't require energy to move.
• "As objects travel faster and faster, they get heavier and heavier the heavier they get, the harder it is to achieve acceleration, so you never get to the speed of light," says Roger Rassool, a physicist at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
• "A photon actually has no mass," he says. "If it had mass, it couldn't travel at the speed of light."

The 3 Ways To Travel At The Speed Of Light!

1. Electromagnetic Fields

Most of the processes that accelerate particles to relativistic speeds work with electromagnetic fields the same force that keeps magnets on your fridge. The two components, electric and magnetic fields, like two sides of the same coin, work together to whisk particles at relativistic speeds throughout the universe.

In essence, electromagnetic fields accelerate charged particles because the particles feel a force in an electromagnetic field that pushes them along, similar to how gravity pulls at objects with mass. In the right conditions, electromagnetic fields can accelerate particles at near-light-speed.

On Earth, electric fields are often specifically harnessed on smaller scales to speed up particles in laboratories. Particle accelerators, like the Large Hadron Collider and Fermilab, use pulsed electromagnetic fields to accelerate charged particles up to 99.99999896% the speed of light. At these speeds, the particles can be smashed together to produce collisions with immense amounts of energy. This allows scientists to look for elementary particles and understand what the universe was like in the very first fractions of a second after the Big Bang.

2. Magnetic Explosions

Magnetic fields are everywhere in space, encircling Earth and spanning the solar system. They even guide charged particles moving through space, which spiral around the fields.

When these magnetic fields run into each other, they can become tangled. When the tension between the crossed lines becomes too great, the lines explosively snap and realign in a process known as magnetic reconnection. The rapid change in a region's magnetic field creates electric fields, which causes all the attendant charged particles to be flung away at high speeds. Scientists suspect magnetic reconnection is one way that particles for example, the solar wind, which is the constant stream of charged particles from the Sun - is accelerated to relativistic speeds.

Those speedy particles also create a variety of side-effects near planets. Magnetic reconnection occurs close to us at points where the Sun's magnetic field pushes against Earth's magnetosphere its protective magnetic environment. When magnetic reconnection occurs on the side of Earth facing away from the Sun, the particles can be hurled into Earth's upper atmosphere where they spark the auroras. Magnetic reconnection is also thought to be responsible around other planets like Jupiter and Saturn, though in slightly different ways.

NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale

spacecraft were designed and built to focus on understanding all aspects of magnetic reconnection. Using four identical spacecraft, the mission flies around Earth to catch magnetic reconnection in action. The results of the analyzed data can help scientists understand particle acceleration at relativistic speeds around Earth and across the universe.

3. Wave-Particle Interaction

Particles can be accelerated by interactions with electromagnetic waves, called wave particle interactions. When electromagnetic waves collide, their fields can become compressed. Charged particles bouncing back and forth between the waves can gain energy similar to a ball bouncing between two merging walls.

These types of interactions are constantly occurring in near-Earth space and are responsible for accelerating particles to speeds that can damage electronics on spacecraft and satellites in space. NASA missions, like the Van Allen Probes, help scientists understand wave-particle interactions.

Wave-particle interactions are also thought to be responsible for accelerating some cosmic rays that originate outside our solar system. After a supernova explosion, a hot, dense shell of compressed gas called a blast wave is ejected away from the stellar core. Filled with magnetic fields and charged particles, wave particle interactions in these bubbles can launch high-energy cosmic rays at 99.6% the speed of light. Wave-particle interactions may also be partially responsible for accelerating the solar wind and cosmic rays from the Sun.