Now that this thread has quieted down somewhat, let me address
a couple of misconceptions here. Usually the objections to possible
interstellar travel stem from the time involved and the energy
required. First, the statement is usually made that without faster
that light travel, it would take "generations" to reach even some
of the closer stars in our galaxie. Not considering travel by the
more speculative science, such as wormholes, interdimensional
methods or the not quite as speculative travel by warping spacetime
involving gravity and repulsive-gravity, we are left with simple travel
by straight-line acceleration. Some argue that rules out reaching
a star a few tens of light years away "since you can't go faster than
light." There is a problem here. The Theory of Special Relativity has
as its main components the effects of time dilation and length
contraction. Those are the elements that state that IS possible
to reach a star say, 10 light years away, in less than a year of the
travelers time. The details of the theory are avaliable through a
simple google search. It has been around since 1905 and is usually
the first thing a physics student studies when intering into the
realm of theoretical physics. But you say the theory may be wrong?
I certainly won't argue that point, but there is something else to
consider. It is THE SAME theory that says faster than light travel
is impossible. Other theories, such as General Relativity, Quantum
field theories and the various string theories do not specfically
rule out FTL. So you say Special Relativity may be wrong, but
faster than light velocities are still impossible? There is a problem
with that statement also. Have you heard of the muon? It is one
of the very short-lived particles, and it does possess mass. They
are created routinely in particle accelerators, and lifetimes measured, which is in microseconds. They are also observed by
particle detectors placed on the surface of the earth. Muons are
created naturally when cosmic rays from interstellar space hit
the earth's atmosphere. Even travelling at speeds near light, they
don't have time to reach the earth's surface before winking out
of existance, if calculated by regular methods. But they do. This
means they are traveling at least seven times the speed of light,
or Special Relativity's time dilation and length contraction must
hold true, the Lorentz transformations. Relativists assign (true
speeds cannot be measured) a speed generally from .99c to .995c
to the muons and declair length contraction is proven to be true.
The muon "sees" the atmosphere as only 600 meters thick, instead
of 4000+ meters, allowing it to reach earth before winking out of
existence. Whether Special Relativity is correct or the muon is
actually traveling over seven times the speed of light I don't know,
but one has to be. Either way, it is shown that reaching a star in
less time than it takes light to travel must be possible, although
we don't have the technology to do it at present. By the way, SR
was based on the philosophy of Einstein that nothing with mass
could travel the speed of light (c) and that c in a vacuum was a
universal constant. All the maths were developed to make that
philosophy true within the framework of Special Relativity itself.
The "infinities" arise from the maths, which lead to a division by
"0", thus the infinity. They are mathmatics, not necessarily reflecting reality. The "infinite energy" part is what I was leading
up to. Assuming SR's infinite energy maths are correct, that still
does not rule out traveling relativistic speeds where the time dilation and length contraction effects are huge. The line on a
graph showing the amounts of energy needed for travel from
a moderate speed to the "infinite energy" requirement is NOT a
straight line going from moderate to infinite. The huge increases
in energy, going to infinite, is right at the speed of light. Relativistic
speeds are possible without huge amounts of energy, just accelerating at a constant, moderate rate will get you near the
speed of light. The biggest problem with, say, sending an unmanned probe to a nearby star at present is, the method of
acceleration. The particles comming out the rear of a chemical
rocket are too slow for relativistic speeds to be reached. The
limitations of interstellar travel is not based on "the laws of physics," but on the level of technology.