Since Einstein put forward the special theory of relativity in the early 20th century, people's enthusiasm for traveling at the speed of light has never cooled down. Science fiction writers talk about fabricating stories about traveling at the speed of light, while physicists are always arguing about the feasibility of traveling at the speed of light.

My tutor is a meticulous theoretical physicist and a staunch defender of the theory that the speed of light cannot be surpassed. It is natural that the speed of light cannot be surpassed, and the law of cause and effect has proved this. But I won't give up after all, and I'm still obsessed with the study of light speed travel. Of course, I kept it from my teacher, otherwise he would definitely expel me from my old school.

In the past 200 years, the hatred between non-transcendentalists and "superluminal" has been increasing day by day. Before the strong defense line was cast by the law of causality, the ftl school had tried any possible breakthrough, such as quantum mechanics, black holes, tortuous space theory and even dielectric optics. Some theories are quite similar. For example, in 2000, the incident that "the speed of light in a medium exceeded that in a vacuum" turned out to be a farce and became a laughing stock. Almost everything else can be realized, such as the tortuous space theory based on the black hole principle, but there are two small bottlenecks in technology: first, it takes several times the energy and mass of the sun to make a tortuous space; Second, as soon as an object enters a tortuous space, it will be squeezed and torn by huge gravity. If it is a person, there is no possibility of survival.

However, this is not my concern. What I yearn for is real light speed travel. In other words, I hope to use my body to draw a light-like trajectory in four-dimensional space-time-or, as the teacher said, a light-like world line. I can't forget Einstein's puzzle: what will humans see if they catch up with light and go hand in hand with it?

All my predecessors-many of them are superluminal predecessors-have repeatedly told me how ridiculous this idea is. Because time cannot be defined on the light-like world line, it is not suitable as an observation system at all. Technically, first of all, the speed of photons is absolute. Compared with any observation system, it will always maintain the unique speed of 299,792,460m/s, which means that no matter what speed I fly relative to the earth, as long as I don't reach the speed of light-even if it is only 1 mm/s, the speed difference between me and photons is still 299,792,460m/s. Unless I have a way to reach the speed of light directly from zero in an instant-this is of course a pipe dream, because even if I find a way, I can't find a material with strong molecular structure to resist such a strong acceleration, let alone flesh and blood. Based on this, it is impossible to travel at the speed of light throughout 2 1 century.

Until the antimatter engine was invented.

I was playing mahjong with three relatives and six friends on New Year's Eve. 16 four laps has no effect, just when you are sleepy. This idea somehow entered my mind and stimulated my nerves, just like eating a whole can of 250g Nestle coffee with Wang Zhihe stinky tofu.

We are no strangers to antimatter. The first antiparticle positron was discovered as early as 1932, and now we can even prepare molecular antimatter. Everyone knows what happens when a pair of positive and negative particles meet. They will annihilate, become a pair of photons and fly to the end of the universe. And this is exactly the instant acceleration process that I am striving for.

What a wonderful idea, not only proves that I am a genius, but also proves that inspiration is inherently radioactive, and the acquisition of inspiration does not require any inspiration and logic. Seeing the broken porcelain man and solving the broken corpse case is called Lenovo, which is a talent at best; Seeing the red and thinking about antimatter is a brainwave and a genius. The idea of microwave oscillation that led to the birth of laser came out when Thomas was in a daze in AD. Some people say that when Edison saw bamboo chopsticks in Chinatown, he thought of using bamboo charcoal as a filament. I don't believe this. I don't know that he didn't have a brainwave until he ate braised pork.

I remember someone saying that geniuses in the universe are all similar, and fools have their own stupid methods. But they are also geniuses. Some people are lucky to find something a few months earlier than others. I am undoubtedly the unfortunate person. On the second day of New Year's Day, I got the paper published in the latest issue of Science. Snoopy and Druby in the United States put forward the design principle of antimatter engine, and even got sponsorship (even Americans are stupid enough to invest in such a hopeless project, to be honest, if it were me, I wouldn't pay), and are preparing to enter the actual development stage.

I immediately wrote a book and applied to join the antimatter engine research group-in order to show sincerity, I specially used fax instead of email. Although I know there is basically no hope of being admitted-don't expect those guys to believe China people, even if you are a "Chinese-American" with a green card, what's more, I hold China nationality, live in China, work for the China government, and am an out-and-out local scientist in China. But when I was politely declined, I still jumped up and called them 18 generation ancestors.

But things soon turned around. Actually, I should have expected it. I was just busy getting angry.

The antimatter engine has been built, but only then did people realize that it was just a useless waste. It is absolutely impossible to apply it to manned spacecraft. If you can imagine the fate of the pilot of the antimatter spacecraft, you will know how happy a pig is to be made into minced meat or meat sauce. Although some guys like me are lucky enough to think that the acceleration of antimatter engine is not a nonlinear process, we should introduce the discrete state thought of quantum mechanics to consider it. But anyone is sober, no matter whether they can survive the acceleration or not, the people in the spaceship will surely embark on a road of no return. However, if there were no astronauts, no one would eat enough. Kick the engine invested heavily into the sky like a big ball and let it fly by itself. With so much money thrown into the Pacific Ocean, you can still hear plop plop plop.

According to statistics, there is nothing difficult in the world, nothing is impossible to a willing mind. Finding a guy who is not afraid of death to fly an antimatter spaceship is too low to be impossible. I can accurately calculate that the probability is one in 65.438+000 billion, because among the existing 65.438+000 billion people on earth, there really is a guy who voluntarily dies. That is me.

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Now I am far away from the stars, not just the sun, but all the stars. This is very important, because the space-time bending caused by the gravity of stars is very dangerous, especially at the moment of acceleration. Compared with the earth, my current speed is not very high, less than 0. 1 times the speed of light. It doesn't matter, for me, the result is the same at any speed.

I turned on the automatic control program to prevent me from dying. After this almost certain thing happened, the spacecraft fell short. In this way, even if I die, the spacecraft can continue to complete the task and record all the data in flight, perhaps including my cause of death. If it can still work at that time, it will have a chance to send these data back to earth.

Before I started killing myself, I thought about leaving. The teacher said to me, "Son, if you devote yourself to science, I will be proud of you." But even if you shoot yourself in the head, it's better than now. "

I have touched the start button of the antimatter engine. If I had a telescope to look at the earth now, I would see that everything on the earth was frozen at this moment, just like the castle of sleeping beauty.

That night, after being gentle, she asked me, "Don't go, will you?"

Well, you can imagine how much I love her. I know she loves me too. I know my leaving will break her heart. I also know that she only expects me to answer two words: "OK." However, I only answered two words: "No", and I knew she wouldn't forgive me, even if she could understand how many years I had waited for this trip. But I know she will still pray for me. Farewell, my only concern in this universe.

A beam of light passed by me. If I want to catch up with it, I know I must act at once. It's fleeting

For light, humans have a natural worship. The Goddess Chang'e flying to the moon, the goddess of Kuafu, day after day, in pursuit of light, he did not hesitate to sacrifice. When the first Mars was lit in the "Pigeon Pavilion" in Zhoukoudian, it was a joy for human beings to hold a kind of light in their hands for the first time. The second time, Edison's electric light made him a great man on the whole earth. All the gold, silver and jewels declare their preciousness with dazzling light. Even children who don't know the difference between high and low value regard crystal clear glass beads as their favorite toys.

I felt a slight vibration, which was a feeling of being on cloud nine. The feeling of falling into the void without being limited by any of the four interactions is absolutely different from the feeling of floating in the swimming pool. I am right, the acceleration process of antimatter engine is a discrete state transition rather than a continuous change in speed.

That beam of light floats in front of my eyes and flies not far away. It will never leave me, but I will never catch up with it, just out of reach. At the moment I pressed the start button, all the clocks in the spaceship stopped turning and froze; All the stars outside the spaceship stopped flashing and solidified at the moment I pressed the start button, like the castle of sleeping beauty.

Einstein's wish came true. I finally know that after reaching the speed of light, what I get is not absolute motion, but absolute stillness. I will always be young, and my life will stay at this point. I will not live forever, I will continue to fly, not for ten thousand years, but forever. Because I won't do it again. There is no time on the curve like light.

I can't help thinking, where is the first photon produced at the moment of the big bang? It must have been flying, and it will fly in the future, from that moment on, forever. For it, time has always stayed at the moment of the big bang, just like me, always staying in the present.

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Ps: The real problem of superluminal is much more complicated than what I wrote. The acceleration problem I wrote can only be regarded as one of the phenomena, not the essence. In fact, according to the results proved by existing theories, it is impossible for an object with a rest mass greater than 0 to move at the speed of light. (Static mass is a legend. Now, unless otherwise specified, we say that mass generally refers to static mass, but the word static mass is widely used in areas where the concept of relativity is not very strict, especially in the field of popular science. ) and an object with a rest mass of 0 must move at the speed of light. Asimov explained this clearly in Billiards. However, I deliberately avoided the important, otherwise I couldn't write it. Moreover, the theory of relativity itself is far from perfect, and I am not 100% sure about the proof process itself.

More importantly, apart from the standpoint of physics, I actually believe that human beings can realize their dream of traveling at the speed of light one day. No matter what method we use, we can understand it or not.