...or studying to be one, at any rate. I think I can explain the modified Einstein equation thing going on here...

What we mean by E=mc^2 is simply: "the faster you go, the heavier you get". It's the main reason why we can't go faster than light: when reaching speeds near c, it takes an exponentially greater amount of force to simply accelerate your mass.

Remember: F=ma, and a=F/m.

As velocity--> c, m--> ∞, and so a--> 0m/s^2 for a constant force F.

Science fiction usually gets around this by either having a ship jump into hyperspace (Star Wars), create a pocket distortion that bends space-time around it (Star Trek), or decrease the ship's mass itself and therefore push the light-speed asymptote back (Mass Effect). It also conveniently eliminates the time dilation effect that is predicted by Einstein's special relativity (aka: the faster you move, the slower time passes by for you). To an outside observer, a ship at FTL velocities looks like this:


Notice the correct use of the Doppler effect: everything behind the ship is red-shifted and everything in front of it is blue-shifted.


...but that's enough about FTL, let's talk Time Vortex.

Now, I'm going to be completely honest and say that I have no idea what E=mc^3 will do the the light-speed-limit. It may very well be that it will dramatically affect the speed of light by increasing the slope of the original E-over-mc^2 curve. What will this do? Well, c has been redefined and suddenly everything has more potential energy. I have no idea how this will affect classical mechanics, let alone quantum theory. I think we can all agree on that it is a Very Bad Thing to be caught up in...



Upon reading the entire article on the Vortex, one thing that I found to be very clever is the fact that it takes less energy to go to the future than to travel to the past. Why?

It's because you're riding on entropy's coattails.


Anyhoo, thanks for the answer! I'll do some extra research on this...