Sometimes it just seems unfair that the universe has a speed limit to how fast one can travel. If you didn't know, the laws of physics don't allow an object to travel faster than light.

I mean, there is so much space out there (pun intended) that it seems bizarre that there would be a speed limit set by the universe but it is what it is. Jokes aside, the light barrier does pose some huge problems for any would be intelligent species like us.

You see, we are explorers by nature and that's exactly the reason why we spread from one continent to the entire planet over hundreds of thousands of years of our evolution. We've also gone to the moon and are preparing to go to Mars. It's just what we do - we are explorers.

But the distances in space are so huge that we cannot meaningfully explore the cosmos beyond our solar system. It would just take too much time, even at the speed of light. So, is there any way we can ever find a way to travel at much faster speeds than that of light? Will our sci-fi dreams ever come true?

Faster Than Light

Although there are natural phenomena that kind of happen faster than light speed, like the behaviour of two entangled particles or the expansion of the universe beyond a certain distance, this is of no use to us for travel purposes.

Therefore, we look towards theoretical physics for some answers and the first one will be immediately familiar to you. It's a wormhole. Although we do not have evidence of any real wormholes, Einstein's equations do allow for them.

If we can find one, or better yet learn to build one (which sounds almost impossible today) then we could effectively link extremely long distances in such a way that we would only need to travel a fraction of those distances to get from point A to B. Therefore, two points which are millions of light years away, could be accessible through a wormhole, within minutes.

Another way which has been prominent in sci-fi movies, is that of a warp drive. You might have seen this on Star Trek or Star Wars. A spaceship with a warp drive basically compresses the space in front of the spaceship while expanding space behind it.

Such a warp drive would still follow the laws of physics but still allow the spaceship to travel at speeds faster than light. The energy requirement for such a technology would be insanely huge, but who knows, few thousand years down the line, we might actually be able to make one! I mean, there was a time we thought that the sound barrier can't be broken. Maybe the same will happen with the light barrier as well.