Originally Answered: Can we ever travel faster than light?
However, that doesn't stop space itself from traveling faster than light. Indeed the way our universe is expanding, as measured by the red shift effect, means that distant galaxies are traveling away from us faster than nearby galaxies. Go far enough away and you find that galaxies there would be traveling away from us faster than light (we can't actually see those galaxies as their light can never reach us). We can actually spot distant galaxies which are within visible range only because we see them as they were billions of years ago. By now they should be traveling away from us faster than light meaning that light from them can never get here. These galaxies are now moving away from us faster than light.
So that's the motivation for the Star Trek "space warp" also the real world Alcubierre drive. The problem is this drive needs regions of negative energy, which we don't know how to create. It also may have other disadvantages such as that it might destroy everything at its destination when it slows down. It used to be thought that it needed more energy than there is in the universe, but improvements in the design have brought that down so that it now only needs equivalent mass energy to the mass of the voyager spacecraft. NASA discusses its warp drive research, prepares to create a warp bubble in the lab | ExtremeTech
It's still far beyond anything we could do, and the need for huge amounts of negative energy puts it well into the realms of science fantasy at present - but it doesn't seem totally prohibited by physics.
Another way it could be possible is through shortcuts through space, especially the famous wormholes of science fiction. These also have the same disadvantage that they heed negative energy to keep them open and exotic technology way beyond anything we have.
Then another way might be through tachyons, hypothetical particles that can only travel faster than light, and in science fiction stories tend to be used to send signals faster than light. They wouldn't let you go faster than light unless you can also get converted into tachyons, but if they interact with matter perhaps could permit signals to be sent faster than light - leading to causality paradoxes as you could send signals back in time also by relativity effects.
But there is no evidence that these particles exist,
So in short, we don't know. It might be that it can never be done. Or we might find a way to do it. Who knows, we might actually spot aliens traveling through our galaxy at speeds faster than light. If so then hopefully they have fixed the issue with the Alcubierre drive that it destroys everything at its destination when it slows down!
It seems a bit far fetched at present but the most you can say is we don't know.
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
4.8m answer views110.4k this month
Top Writer2017, 2016, and 2015
Published WriterHuffPost, Slate, and 4 moreHuffPost, Slate, Forbes, Newsweek, Business Insider, and Science 2.0