Why isn't anything FASTER than Light ?

    

B18_Why can't we go faster than light?

          

Alright, Alright, Alright.

_________________________

While driving,there's a speed limit, you can't go faster than that, technically you can go faster , but you won't. 

    Well there's a universal speed limit which can never be broken. Absolutely nothing in this whole universe can go faster than that , The speed of light 299,792,458 m/s. Here's why...

PHOTONS ARE MASSLESS

    Photo Courtesy: The Great Courses Daily

    Photons(carriers of electromagnetism) and gluons(carriers of strong force) are the only two particles that have no mass , and therefore travel at the ultimate speed of light.

     All other particles have some mass , hence can't be accelerated anywhere near light.

Attaining lightspeed is like pushing a trolley

  Consider a situation_ you are pushing a trolley and wish to take it's speed to lightspeed , but there's a condition, for every 1m/s² of acceleration you will have to put some significant amount of weight into the trolley and continue this process. While doing this the mass of the trolley will increase continously and you'll have to put more effort to push it (accelerate it) at some point there will come a time where you will find it impossible to accelerate the trolley any further. This was just an example for better understanding of the reader , but the case is somewhat same when we try to reach lightspeed 

    Photo Courtesy: BBC

    Photo Courtesy: iStock

Attaining Lightspeed and Relativity

    The relation between Mass,Velocity and Kinetic Energy , is well known 

                           |  K.E.= ½mv² |

Here Energy is directly propotional to mass i.e. mass increases with velocity and so does the energy required to accelerate further . It is theoretically stated (Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity) and practically proven that nothing can surpass speed of light because at lightspeed the particle mass becomes infinite and no more energy can possibly be given to increase the Velocity.

How can you accelerate something that has infinite mass ? 

The energy thus required to accelerate more, reaches infinity and it's unachievable.

Hence, no other particle other than Photons and gluons can achieve the ultimate speed of the universe , because no other particle is massless. 

(The mass of objects doesn't actually change , they change only if we add or subtract some mass from the object , we say so because theoretically as velocity increases more energy is required to accelerate it further , thus mass must appear to increase proportionally)

A curious and clever question that arises is...

• Can light go any faster ?

If Photons are massless why can't they travel with more speed?

No it can't go any faster or even slower , because they are massless and don't experience acceleration or deacceleration,  hence, lightspeed is strictly a constant. 299,792,458 m/s

If you think that wormhole travel can allow us to travel faster than light , then you are mistaken read my blog post about : Wormholes 

    Photo Courtesy: Wikipedia 

____________________________________________

Goku's top speed is 22.321 trillion miles per hour (33,314 times the speed of light) Hehe.

      

                                                       

                                                              ~ 20736