The Infinite Speed Paradox
Photo by Christian Englmeier on Unsplash
The Infinite Speed Paradox
With a speed of 44,72 km/h Usain Bolt is the fastest human on earth. Being almost 10 times faster, the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport is the fastest (production) car reaching a speed of 489,24 km/h. As a leader of machinery, the Falcon HTV-2 is the fastest airplane on earth and has reached a speed of 20 920 km/h. Throughout history, human kind has pushed itself in getting better, stronger and faster. Thus, it is very unlikely that the top speeds listed above will still be the fastest in the nearby future.
Theory of Relativity
To determine the fastest speed that an object could travel at, one needs to consult the field of theoretical physics. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, there is an ultimate cosmic speed limit which can only be attained by massless particles — the speed of light. Particles that do weigh more can approach this same cosmic speed, but would need an infinite amount of energy and momentum to actually reach it.
Also, there are even strong scientific reasons to believe that there are so-called ‘tachyons’. Such theoretically postulated particles travel faster than light and have ‘imaginary’ masses. However, no one has succeeded in proving the existence of such a particle (and doing so would be a very difficult task).
Moving beyond physics
We are not bounded by any speed limit when we leave the domain of physics and use a philosophical viewpoint instead. In the quest for a theoretical greatest speed, an obvious attempt would be to go for ‘infinitely fast’.
However, the implication of such an infinitely high speed contradicts the original search for it.
That is, to assume that there is an object that does in fact travel infinitely fast. This would imply that:
- it can move from point A to point B without passing any time (if time would have passed, no matter how little that amount of time would be, the speed would be finite)
- this means that this object would be both in point A and in point B at the same time (as well as in every point in between)
- if this is the case, the object does not move at all and has a speed of zero.
At the same time, this was the highest attainable speed a few steps ago..