Speed of Light Barrier

I believe if we can warp space itself we can simulate the wormhole effect and in truth travel faster than light. This gets around the paradox that the faster something gets to the speed of light the more massive it becomes.In essense, a spaceship would be stationary and would bend the space around itself using massive quantities of energy. This is similar to the effect that gravity has on the fabric of spacetime. Thus it is not really that you are travelling faster than the speed of light to get to the stars/galaxies/etc but rather you are shortening the space in between you and your destination.Of course this is all hypothetical and the energy required would be enormous. However, possibly by harnessing the energy from antimatter and matter collisions this energy could be tapped. Also, the implications of how this effects the 'fabric' of spacetime and matter in between these two locations is unknown.BTW, Gene Roddenberry was a science fiction genius and well ahead of his time, techonologically speaking (though he did get many of his ideas from just perusing contemporary theoretical physicists and other futurologists speculations and ideas).Cavediver (and other resident physicists), do you see this as being plausible or just science fiction?Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

The laws of the universe are really a metaphore for the phenomena of how the universe operates. Layman take the word "law" too literally. This is an anthopomorphic term conjured in the minds of men. In other words, we see through human-centered glasses and attempt to label things on the edge of human comprehension with human centered language. Asking why matter has a speed limit is akin to asking why does the universe aka spacetime exist in the first place. These two concepts are one in the same, are fundamental in nature and have yet to be fully understood. There is speculation of faster than light zero-mass particles/energy called tachyons (yes, Star Trek borrowed this idea from main stream science). However, this idea is purely hypothetical with no evidence yet supporting it.The limit of the speed of light (or more accurately electromagnetic radiation) in a vacuum is tied up to the very concept of spacetime itself. They are indistinguishable as described by Einstein's Special/General Theory of Relativity. A good book that describes the nature of spacetime and the speed of light limit is Brian Greenes's "The Fabric of the Cosmos" and the classic Hawking book "A Brief History of Time". I whole-heartedly agree with this. If we stop asking questions we become non-sentient beings.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Like Taz stated earlier, the individual photons of light always precede at c, the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s) between being absorbed and retransmitted by the atoms encountered enroute. It is this absorption and retransmission of light that is slowing down the "beam of light" not the individual photons of light themselves that are slowing down. What does the speed of light have to do with evolutionary theory?!? The speed of light through the relative vacuum of space is c. There is no issue here. It is only when light travels through atomically dense material that the speed of light (or I should more accurately state the speed of the light beam) decreases enough that it becomes noticable. It depends. The average atomic density given for interstellar space is between 0.1 and 5 atoms per cubic centimeter. This density is extremely low and only measurably affects the speed of a light beam over extremely long distances i.e. billions of light years or proceeding through relatively dense gasesous regions such as nebulae and galactic cores. Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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"In the beginning, the Universe was created.

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This has made a lot of people mad and been widely regarded as a bad idea." Douglas Adams

You really can't define photon's in this fashion. They are not physical tangible particles of mass per se but rather are energy concentrations in relatively small regions of spacetime. They have 0 mass and therefore it really makes no sense to say whether this is the "same photon" as there is no way possible to identify one photon from the next.

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"In the beginning, the Universe was created.

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This has made a lot of people mad and been widely regarded as a bad idea." Douglas Adams