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Asked by Nami to Connor, Jillian, Lidunka, Sarah, Steven on 18 Jun 2015.
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Steven Thomson answered on 18 Jun 2015:
As far as we know, nothing can travel faster than light, however it’s made or powered!
Most things that are solar powered take the light from the Sun and turn it into electricity, which is used to power normal electronic motors and so on, and none of those could get us faster than the speed of light. There’s also the new solar sail idea which uses sunlight like a ship uses wind and blows a satellite gently through space, but it only moves very slowly.
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Jillian Scudder answered on 19 Jun 2015:
The problem with trying to go faster than the speed of light is that it takes more and more energy to get a tiny amount closer to the speed of light. So while our solar car might be able to get away with not having fuel on board, you’d need an ever increasing amount of sunlight to power your car, which at some point will need to have a perfect conversion through the solar panel, and an almost infinite amount of light! So it’s very unlikely you’d wind up anywhere near the speed of light, even with a solar powered car.
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