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I read in one article that it might happen in this century, does anyone have any information about the prospects of us being able to break the light barrier?
Currently faster than light travel or even information transmission is forbidden by the laws of physics as we understand them. Before a warp drive can be made, new physics will have to be discovered. It's at least plausible to predict the timescale for things that are technologically impossible but allowed by known laws of physics--I would say it's decidedly more difficult to predict when new physical laws will be discovered. Faster than light speed may very well be impossible, in which case we will never have warp drive. As for my prediction--I will make the only one relevant for us--we won't have warp drive in our lifetimes (i.e. >100 years).
Physicists Suggest it May Be Theoretically Possible, but Unlikely
Here's the good news for all those "Star Trek" enthusiasts out there -- a couple of physicists think they've figured out how to travel faster than the speed of light without breaking the laws of physics.
I think the only thing we MAY be looking at in the future is a true warping of space time, not a "Warp Speed" a per most of our Sci-Fi to date.
The concept of a Stargate (or any permutation thereof) seems more likely, but that nasty side effect of having your own dimensions ripped apart when folding space time may be a problem.
Who knows. Maybe this has already happened. We may all be decendents of the original Telephone Sanitizers.
Oddly enough, something more like Doctor Who than like Star Trek is more likely, from what I have read. By that I mean some sort of "worm hole" phenomenon, rather than a "brute force" type approach.
We must also keep in mind Sol was once thought to orbit Earth.
Personally , I believe it's possible. It may take hundreds of years , but it is possible.
Perhaps if we as a species focus our collective intellect upon advances in these areas that are beneficial , as opposed to the 'kill , weapon , destroy' military and primitive 'us versus them' mentality , it can be done sooner. But the way it is now , there are those who would rather launch all nuclear weapons at each other prior to stepping from 'behind the tree' in order to see the forest. It will take an effort of monumental proportions to convert humanity into true universal thinkers as opposed to what we are at present.
ETA, sometimes you donot have to step from behind teh tree, you just have to look the other direction. Most forests do not just start at one tree!
While I see your Sol reference and agree, the problem is, you can also look at the science fiction we had even at the beginning of the century and see how silly most of it was.
I think subspace communications might be possible (transmission and reception of strange particles or quarks I guess) but actuall transmission of "normal" matter may be a LOT more difficult (lead to gold kind of thing).
I read in one article that it might happen in this century, does anyone have any information about the prospects of us being able to break the light barrier?
IMO...as far as I am aware you need to bend or warp spacetime to achieve these "velocities". This will take an astronomical amount of power.
We will need to use matter/antimatter annihilation and/or an artificial, naked singularity. Either process is in the distant future; plus we need to understand gravity with a theory of everything before we can even dream of warp speed.
Fusion power may get us to light speed if we are lucky; but that too is probably decades away; fusion power that is. Accelerating and decelerating at/from light speed will take a long time to figure out.
Well, Zephram Cochrane isn't supposed to be born until 2013, and the first warp flight isn't scheduled until 2063. So then, I guess.
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