We’ve read it in our beloved science fiction books. Superheroes and intelligent beings from other worlds harness massive amounts of energy and cross through different dimensions – traveling faster than the speed of light. It’s the kind of thing space-obsessed kids (and adults, alike) dream about. We dedicate movies, like “2001: A Space Odyssey,” directed by Stanley Kubrick, to the very thought of such developed technology.
Stanley Kubrick’s take on Arthur C. Clark’s “The Sentinel”
Yet, is traveling at hyper speeds really the dream? Many of us come into college-level astronomy courses excited to learn about game-changing developments that scientists at NASA or researchers at Caltech somehow, miraculously discover. The reality, however, is that we should really be dreaming about traveling at light speed first.
How boring, right?
Actually, it’s pretty exciting. The speed of light is often referred to as the “speed limit” of the universe. Perhaps our dreaming about hyperspace is attributed to the notion that we see speed limits as suggestions. Light speed? We can go faster than that.
Oh, 300,005 km/s won’t get me pulled over.
Wrong. This speed limit isn’t a suggestion at all – there’s no exceeding it with our current technology. Light travels through space at 300,000 km/s. That doesn’t necessarily look like an impossible number. Something like 1 million km/s might seem like a stretch to the ordinary citizen. So, let me put it into perspective. The fastest known aircraft on Earth, the SR 71, travels at a measly 1 km/s. A speedy space probe only zooms through space at 50 km/s.
We haven’t come close to breaching even 1/3 of the speed of light. Our “limit,” as far as we know, is currently 6,000 times slower than the universe’s.
If this basic knowledge changes our perspective at all, it may be valuable to look at our other attitudes towards space with new eyes. Why limit ourselves to dwelling on Pluto’s classification as a planet, when there are other objects (Planet 9, for example) to observe excitedly?
Instead of regarding the speed of light as a boring limit to pass up, what if ordinary citizens regarded its sheer speed with wonder? At least this way, in the miraculous event that the human race ever discovers a way to reach light speed, we’d all understand the true weight of such a discovery. Let’s not set ourselves up for disappointment.
