It may just be that the author of the headline is math-challenged, but 4 orders of magnitude would mean 1000x the speed of light. It's still gonna take a while to get from one side of the galaxy to another. Hell, it still would take a long time to travel between stars, but it is more or less doable at that speed, at least for nearby stars, i.e., those within 50 or so light years.At 4Xs the speed of light it will still take 15k years to get from one side of the galaxy to the other.
Well, you almost got it; four orders of magnitude is 10,000 times (in round figures). OneWingedShark puts it as 12 hours from one side of the galaxy to the other. Assuming (counter to quantum theory which this experiment does not claim to disprove) that the actual “speed” isn’t infinite.
Yeah, should have read the entire thread. Several people pointed that out.
10kc is pretty freaking fast!
Given "the Milky Way is roughly 34 kpc (110,000 light-years) across", [Source] it would take 11 years* to traverse the Galagy edge-to-edge (w/ straight-line travel), so that's really not too bad.
* -- 110,000 Light-Years (10,000 Light) = 11 Years.
Could it be that traveling via some higher dimension(s) the distance is only 1/10,000 as far (or less)? In other words, the standard lower dimensions take a really roundabout path to get there.