Is it possible to transfer information faster than the speed of light?

transferring data at faster than light speeds will make communication between planets and solar systems a lot bearable than waiting 4 years for a message to get to the nearest solar system. Faster data transfer might allow for real-time communication between planets. Nothing has been observed by scientists,  to travel faster than light, and maybe nothing will ever be observed to travel faster than light. There have been studies to determine if neutrinos can travel faster than light, and some of them even said neutrinos could travel faster than light[1], but the measurements were faulty and not set up the right way. in order to make something go faster than the speed of light, we need to find out if light has mass because mass is closely linked with speed and energy, if light does have mass, there could easily be a particle with less mass than light or we could make one. So does light really have any mass? E=mc² proves that energy can become mass, and light does have a lot of energy. The short answer: no, nick lucid does a good job of explaining why light has no mass in this video:

light has no mass, but can there be something with negative mass?[2] particles with negative mass can actually work with Einstein’s theory of relativity [3]. Some Particles with negative mass are called tachyons.

 

Tachyons 

Tachyons were in Star Trek to explain faster than light travel and real-time communication over very long distances. Tachyons were first proposed by O. M. P. Bilaniuk, V. K. Deshpande, and E. C. G. Sudarshan in 1962, the term they used was “meta-particle”. If tachyons do exist, they would break the law of causality, allowing them to travel back in time[4], allowing us from the future to communicate with the past. If tachyons did travel back in time, why haven’t we seen any transmissions from the future yet? Is it because tachyons don’t exist? or for some other reason maybe? tachyons aren’t the only theorized way to send data faster than light, there are also wormholes.

 

Wormholes

Wormholes can work with general relativity but they are only a theory. Here is an explanation for wormholes “A wormhole could connect extremely long distances such as a billion light-years or more, short distances such as a few meters, different universes, or different points in time.” [5]. a wormhole can work like a teleporter, linking large distances. If we are to make a wormhole between 2 places it would require an immense amount of energy and the bigger it gets, the more energy it will take, so it might be practical to make a wormhole a few atoms wide to transfer signals through. There are some theories that going through a wormhole could be time travel [6] but it might not. Wormholes aren’t proven to exist and no one really knows if they are real but there is something that is proven and it might help us transfer information faster than the speed of light, quantum entanglement.

 

Quantum Entanglement

Quantum entanglement is proven to work and scientists can even entangle particles with experements[7]. I can’t explain how quantum entanglement works but Veritasium does a good job at explaining it here. the problem with quantum entanglement is with sending information if you force an entangled particle into a state it breaks the entanglement [8]. Unless more research happens in quantum entanglement we won’t be able to transmit data at faster than light speeds.

 

In the end, there is no way to transfer data faster than the speed of light at the moment. If more research goes into this topic and more experiments happen then it might be very possible. If I had to guess how we would transmit data at faster than light speeds I think it would be wormholes.

 

 

my self assessment: