You can't actually 'overtake' light as the closer you get to light speed, the more energy it takes to accelerate. Also, the time dilation would increase as you approach light speed so that if you ever reached it, 'your' time would slow down to the point where it would appear frozen to someone watching you fly past from the surface of a planet, but you would see the entire universe speeded up to the point where it ended instantaneously. It's known as mass-energy equivalence and it's what that E=mc^2 formula's for. The extra energy you put in to make the ship go faster also makes the ship heavier so it requires even more energy to accelerate it. The time dilation balances everything so that the speed of light always appears constant. Therefore you arrive at your destination faster than light could travel between the two points in normal space.Īny light travelling in the warp tunnel with you would appear to you to be travelling at it's normal speed regardless of whether it's moving towards or away from you.
You don't travel faster than light in a warp tunnel - you simply take a route that is shorter than the distance between the two points in normal space.
