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I was wondering is there any possibility of FTL technology being invented in the future or is it just science fiction?

Karim Mansour
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  • it's just science fiction. There has been suggested that it may be possible through wormholes, but most theories predict wormholes to be unstable and collapse almost immediately if somehow created. There are still though, some physicists that pursue the idea that stable wormholes might exist, but the general consensus is that they are unstable. – TheMercury79 Aug 10 '21 at 17:18
  • @TheMercury79 what if the reason entanglement happens is because of there a wormhole connection between the entangled particles. Is it possible to theoretically entangle particles that far away from each other and create wormholes to any place in the universe that way? – Karim Mansour Aug 10 '21 at 17:22
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    No, quantum entaglement occurs because the particles are linked to the same quantum system, somehow it turns out the physical distance doesn't matter. But entagled particles can not become entagled without having interacted locally sometime in the past,. Also note that when they are separated, there is no faster-than-light communication between them, they behave as they were never separated mainly due to conservation of angular momentum. Ftl implies information is being sent, there is no exchange of information between the entagled particles. – TheMercury79 Aug 10 '21 at 17:43
  • Does this answer your question? Is it possible to build an instrument which can travel faster than light? – Thorondor Aug 11 '21 at 00:04

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No it's completely disallowed by relativity. Anything that is travelling slower than the speed of light cannot accelerate to a speed faster than the speed of light, it's impossible. This idea is mathematically equivalent to asking, if I rotate a ruler enough, can I shrink its length to zero? The answer obviously being of course not, rotating doesn't change length.

The only possibility would be through wormholes, but even those are speculative and we have no evidence for their existence so far.

Arturo don Juan
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  • what if the reason entanglement happens is because of there a wormhole connection between the entangled particles. Is it possible to theoretically entangle particles that far away from each other and create wormholes to any place in the universe that way? – Karim Mansour Aug 10 '21 at 17:14
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    Your answer ought to distinguish local and global velocity, and note that your argument is only against the former exceeding $c$. This is a famous if hard-to-exploit loophole. – J.G. Aug 10 '21 at 17:32
  • @KarimMansour I don't know much about this topic, but with a bit of searching I found the supposed ER=EPR conjecture, which is essentially what you just said. Proposed by Susskind and Maldacena in 2013, it basically suggests that all entangled particles are in fact connected by non-traversable wormholes. It should be noted that this does not violate causality. – Arturo don Juan Aug 10 '21 at 17:39
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    @J.G. It does, that's why I mentioned that bit about not being able to accelerate anything past the speed of light. It was my attempt at a lay explanation of the impossibility of a local velocity greater than $c$ (or in other words, an infinitesimal spacetime interval changing its proper length). That's also why I mentioned the bit about wormholes. – Arturo don Juan Aug 10 '21 at 17:43
  • I see thank you for your answer. – Karim Mansour Aug 10 '21 at 17:48
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    @KarimMansour No problem. I should stress again that even in this ER=EPR conjecture, you don't have "faster-than-light" travel of information in the conventional sense. These are non-traversable wormholes. It would be impossible to harness these wormholes to somehow develop FTL "technology". Also, entanglement begins locally (as TheMercury79 said) so you couldn't initiate entanglement between widely separated particles, and therefore you couldn't randomly create a wormhole between any two places in the universe. Nevertheless, it's a very interesting idea that I've never heard of before now. – Arturo don Juan Aug 10 '21 at 17:57
  • I see. That is very interesting! – Karim Mansour Aug 10 '21 at 18:34