Faster-Than-Light Travel: Difference between revisions
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== Real Life ==
* Quantum mechanics does allow for a "faster than light" connection between two particles in quantum entanglement. Unfortunately it is not actually possible to send information (let alone matter) FTL with this method, since it's impossible for an observer to determine whether an entangled particle state is due to the particle partner's involvement or by the simple act of observing the particle. It's a simple matter of probabilities.
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20121115150321/http://news.discovery.com/tech/teleportation-quantum-mechanics.html Scientists have recently been able to (sort of) send information using quantum entanglement at FTL speeds.] Getting any information out of the process still requires a normal slower than light connection between the sender and receiver.
** Also, at a quantum mechanical level, time is just another physical dimension: it is conceivable for a atomic or smaller scale object to travel in any direction along the temporal axis (as with "[http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/virtual_particles virtual particles]")and even spontaneously appear somehere, or some''when'' else.
* During the writing of his novel ''[[Contact (Literature)|Contact]]'', Carl Sagan reportedly asked a fellow scientist (none other than [[wikipedia:Kip Thorne|Kip Thorne]], a leading expert in relativistic astrophysics) if FTL travel would be possible without breaking the laws of physics, as he didn't want to do it in his novel. The scientist sat down and wrote a few equations which became the basics of the [[Portal Network|wormhole network]] seen in the book and film. Sagan himself was optimistic about this and thought that a [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|sufficently advanced civilization]] could build and maintain a network of these wormholes.
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