• Question: why would you rewrite the laws of the universe?

    Asked by maggsboy to David on 20 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: David Freeborn

      David Freeborn answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      Hi maggsboy,

      This is a great question. There are a bunch of things that aren’t possible that I’d like to make possible.

      Einstein’s laws of relativity say that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Given that even the nearest stars to the Sun are 4.4 light years away, it would take years to travel another solar system. And the nearest Galaxies to the Milky Way are 70,000 light years away, so it would take tens of thousands of years to reach, even with the fastest spaceships possible.

      This seems a bit of a shame: we live in a really amazing Universe, and it would be great to be able to explore it more easily. It would also make it much easier to search for alien lifeforms on other planets.

      Undoing the laws of relativity would also make time-travel possible, or at least a lot easier to do!

      I’d also change the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That says that we can never build a “perpetual motion engine”. If we could build one, we would have access to infinite amounts of energy for free. I think that would be a very cool outcome!

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