A physicist friend taught me something really cool once that I thought I’d share.

I’m an engineer. Those of you who know engineers know that when it comes to theory… well, let’s just say, we like empiricism juuuuust fine. This truism (which like most truisms isn’t really true; without theory we engineers would have nothing to work with in coming up with practical applications, and without empirical data, scientists would have no way to falsify and thus prove their theories; still, there is a grain of truth there) is best explained by a mathematics joke illustrating infinity by halves.

Imagine that a scientist and an engineer are standing across the room from your favorite movie star, who is giving them both the bedroom eyes and showing them gorgeous female cleavage/ male pecs (depending on your preferences). Put yourself in their shoes. Ooh la la! They want you, you want them; let’s go, baby!

But Einstein’s ghost appears, looking sympathetic yet unyielding, and puts up a hand. “I’m sorry, my friend,” he says, “but you may travel only by halves in each move.”

In other words, you may go half the distance in the first move, and in the second move half the remaining distance, and so on.

With a frown, the scientist says, “Wait a minute. That’s no good! I can never reach the object of my lust, because no matter how many times I halve the distance, there will always be a fraction of the distance left to travel.”

The engineer chuckles. “Move over, kid; I’ll find a way!”

Move over, you theorizing pessimist you; technology will find a way. Never give up; never surrender. Where there is a will, there is a way.

Imagine my dismay—nay; outrage!—when in my first semester of physics, we were taught that the speed of light was an absolute limit. Do not pass 300 million meters per second; do not run the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs.

Maaaaan. Bummer! I joke, but this was a serious existential crisis for me. My first encounter with a hard truth I didn’t like. At that age I was drunk on technological progressivism. Anything was possible, and it was all good. I cannot tell you how betrayed I felt by my idol, Albert Einstein, for putting up the stop sign. I didn’t want to believe the math. They must be wrong.

Well, there is a preponderance of evidence that in fact, for all practical intents and purposes, that which starts out below c (the theoretical maximum speed of light in a vacuum; and yes, the actual [versus theoretical maximum] speed of light can vary, but never mind that now), stays below c. (I won’t hit you with some of the arcana of all this, but there are some cool intersections of Einstein’s theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, that make the behavior of matter and energy at those speeds veeery weird and interesting; start at the above link and then cruise at will, if you want to know more…)

Which means, no FTL, no racing across the universe in sleek silver ships at unimaginable speeds; no skipping across the spiral arm like a stone across water. Damn it. (Yeah, yeah, I know; we’re now supposed to call it “hyperdrive” and assume we are sliding into alternate dimensions. Wev. Ever since that time, FTL is only called SF because it’s in SF stories; not because there is any strong basis for it in science.)

Over the years I adjusted to this depressing reality, though, and consoled myself with following some of the interesting advances they have made in physics. (I sometimes think I am a frustrated physicist, though in truth, I am neither smart, obsessive, nor competitive enough to get to do the really cool stuff in physics, so never mind that.) But I recently learned from a friend of mine something so fabulously perfect about the speed of light and Einstein’s general theory of relativity that all is forgiven.

Since this post has gone on at great length already, I’ll give you the lowdown in my next post.