Faster-Than-Light Travel: Are We There Yet?

Long before the Empire struck back, before the United Federation of Planets federated, Isaac Asimov created Foundation, the epic tale of the decline and fall of the Galactic Empire. Asimov’s Empire comprised 25 million planets, knit together by sleek spaceships hurtling through the galaxy.

I can get you there fast! Flickr: Craig Cormack

And how did these spaceships cross the vast gulf between the stars? By jumping through hyperspace, of course, as Asimov himself explains in Foundation:

Travel through ordinary space could proceed at no rate more rapid than that of ordinary light… and that would have meant years of travel between even the nearest of inhabited systems. Through hyper-space, that unimaginable region that was neither space nor time, matter nor energy, something nor nothing, one could traverse the length of the Galaxy in the interval between two neighboring instants of time.

What the heck is Asimov talking about? Did he know something about a secret theory of faster-than-light travel? Hardly. Asimov was participating in a grand science fiction tradition: when confronted with an immovable obstacle to your story, make something up. READ MORE

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At one point,  in the early expansion of the universe,  the expansion did,  in fact,  exceed exceed the speed of light.  So,  like most things we learn about nature,  we do have a clue as to whether or not it can be done.  Obviously,  the theories of how the "big bang" progressed,  include a clue that the speed of light can be exceeded.  Now,  the hard part will be,  determining just what those conditions were, that allowed hyper light speed way back then.  Of course,  even if we manage that,  it's no guarantee that we'll be able to duplicate it.  It may,  very well,  be dependent upon the condition of the universe at that point in time,  which we have no way of duplicating.  Or,  it may reveal that there is a way to do it.

Of course, it's a very mind bending piece of work that's probably best left to the geniuses.  Thank heavens we finally have a program afoot to find these people,  who may,  right now,  be some kid living in abject poverty in some foreign and very backward land.