This is unprecedented. This is a nightmare. Sometimes the blatant ignorance of people scares the hell out of me. Not only are they uneducated, but they seem to have absolutely no interest in learning or "expanding their horizons". It's not the stupidity that makes me angry, it's this serious lack of curiosity and complacency. This is why the world is going to go to hell.

They're 15, they're pretty much fixated on getting sex and being popular. Most of them will grow up somewhat in time. I'd call it the opposite of unprecedented, I'd call it normal kids, dumb as hell, think they know everything. There ya go.
Again, can't argue the math or physics behind this stuff, saying "impossible" without an infallible mathematical proof is jumping the gun, that's my only point. And of course, my original point is that we do get benefit from research, even if it seems abstract the layman.

I'm wary of saying something is impossible, since that would imply we knew everything about nature. Rather I would say that it would disprove some physics theories that have been around for a loooooong time. There are long-standing and well-tested theories that say that faster than light travel for physical bodies is physically impossible, as well as transmission of EM signals.

Theories get modified all the time of course, the Standard Model keeps being modified as new things get discovered. But modifying it to allow faster than light travel would be a paradigm shift.

All we know about FTL travel is it's impossible with current propulsion technology. There are books and books about the theories of possible ways to exceed lightspeed without actually breaking Einstein's laws, the only trouble is the methods and power requirements are beyond our capabilities at the moment. Neutrinos were once theoretical particles but we now know they exist and scientists believe we are close to discovering the Graviton so when it comes to physics never say never because all we have is theory and all too often theories are proven incorrect.
If scientists prove the tachyon exists and can learn how to manipulate them then there you go boom, FTL communication.

That could be the most significant discovery when the Large Hadron Gateway to Hell—er... Collider is fully operational because the result would also likely indicate extra dimensions.

None of those exceed lightspeed. The prevailing theories you're referring to aren't for propulsion. They're for a quirks of space or a restructuring of the fabric of space. And they're all still slower than light from their own perspectives. I'm not entirely sure you know what a theory is. Theories are just about never proven incorrect. That's a hypothesis. Most scientific theories are proven by rigorous testing. You don't simply introduce a new fact and have all those previous results be rendered invalid. Also, there you go boom, cause and effect cease to be relevant. Because faster than light communication invalidates causality.

They effectively exceed lightspeed by cheating whether using a form of extra-dimensional travel (Hyperspace) or by warping or folding space. The effect is still the same, the body in question has travelled faster than the speed of light while effectively not doing so.
I am well aware of the difference I am simply saying that just one discovery be it the graviton, the tachyon or extra dimesions like those discussed in string theory can blow everything we know about physics out of the water. Theoretical physicis is just that, it's something that happens to fit the facts we have now. When you change the facts you have to adapt the theory.
Causality is an invention of various theories. It goes back to the old argument about time travel being impossible because we have never met a time traveller and all those arguments about the Grandfather paradox. What we know for a fact is time is not set in stone it can be affected by outside forces such as gravity. While we have never succeeded in violating causality yet the very existance of something like the tachyon brings the whole issue of causality to a head. Technically tachyons and neutrinos are time travelling particles.

Here's an important thing to consider. Any future discovery or new science that relates to lightspeed and the ability to travel faster than it is, all things being equal, just as likely to make it harder.

Extra branes could very well have a maximum speed of half that. Don't get so attached to the idea.

Tachyons.

I'm not sure you know much about relativity - "breaking Einstein's laws" isn't a matter of power requirements (special relativity indicates that you need an infinite amount of energy to accelerate above the speed of light). If someone were to discover FLT, then you'd have to scrap relativity and come up with a new theory.

A theory in Physics is simply a construct that is used to describe nature. Sometimes your theory may tell you new things about nature that you haven't observed yet. If the observations don't back up that theory, then you scrap it and come up with a new one. The old theories are usually kept for approximations of nature.

This is true by definition :)

By the way, anyone interested in faster than light communications should check out my old lecturer, Joao Magueijo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joao_Magueijo) who is working on theories where the fundamental constants vary with the age of the universe. Such a theory would still allow GR, since nothing would travel faster than the speed of light at that epoch. Originally proposed to counter the Horizon problem in Cosmology, the discovery of dark energy in the late 1990s has lessened the requirement for it. But he still toys with the idea :)

Tachyons....ITS ABOUT TIME SCIENCE FFFFFF

I think you need to think out of the box more. I'm not saying we are close to any of these technologies and I personally think we are at least two generations away from any FTL breakthrough but you only have to look at how much our technology has evolved over the last 10 years let alone 100 to realize just what is possible.

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I wasn't talking about power as in rocket propulsion. Even if you could accelerate an object to near light speed the time dilation effect would render the whole exercise pointless. I was talking about physically warping space which would require not only a collossal amount of power but technologies that don't exist yet.

What you need is to realize there is a huge difference between improvements in making phones, and scientific discoveries that invalidate a theory that has withstood examination for a century.

As far as we know the theory of relativity is right. According to that same theory, FTL is impossible for any object made of atoms.
That means it is unlikely we'll ever get FTL at all, and even if someone did manage to come up with a theory that allows for it, we're still a very long way from it technology-wise.
I mean, you do realize that even our fastest spacecraft go at speeds way, way below that of light?

Of course. I was merely using the phone as an example of how technology has advanced very quickly in a very short period of time. History has taught us that it only takes one scientific breakthrough to change our very understanding of our existance. DNA, Nuclear Fission, Sub-Atomic particles, Rocketry, Microprosessors, GPS, these have all had a massive effect on us. Quantum theory is already in a shakey relationship with the theory of relativity so who knows where we will be in 10 years from now or even 20 years? Just the discovery of gravitons would completely shake up the theory of relativity because it never accounted for gravity being the effect of a particle.