There is a physicist in Germany who claims to have transmitted a message faster than the speed of light which is impossible. Or is it?

Into one end of his equipment he feeds a signal, in this case one of Mozart's symphonies, and out of the other end comes the symphony but, and this is the important bit, it comes out sooner than one would expect.

Most people do not believe the experiment and it is clear that the scientist in question has a lot more work to do to convince his peers.

Scientists regard travelling faster than light as being impossible. It is, they say, one of the facts about the way the universe is made.

Double dollied?

But I wonder what is really impossible?

Research with Dolly the cloned sheep and the two cloned calves indicate that humans could be cloned, if we wanted to.

But our memories and experiences make us what we are just as much as our genes. Because of this it is impossible to produce another Elvis, or you and I for that matter.

As for immortality - that is not impossible I believe.

Just because our physical bodies have evolved to have a limited life span does not mean that some form of life somewhere else in the universe could not live indefinitely or that one day humans could be immortal.

Backwards to the future?

Backwards time travel, I have to say is impossible. But I would like to be proved wrong.

Einstein's special theory of relativity tells us that we can travel forward in time by travelling very fast, but we can never go backwards.

Some scientists have said that if backwards time travel was possible then our past would be full of time travellers from the future, unless of course we were 'out of bounds' to them.

And then there is faster than light travel which is actually linked to backwards time travel. If you can do one then you can do the other.

I hope this will be possible. If it is not then we short-lived creatures may be restricted to our own solar system or at best to crawl among the stars spending many generations in transit.

Nothing's impossible?

But there may be nothing that is impossible!

If there is a supreme being of the universe, a God, then it would not be bound by the laws of space and time.