Why have we ruled out the possibility of finding something faster when we’ve only scratched the surface of space exploration and understanding?
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So, it turns out that everything is moving at the same speed all the time. That’s because if you add how fast something is moving in *space* and how fast something is moving in *time*, you get the same result. For everything. For that to work, fast things in space have to move slower in time.
And it turns out, they do.
We don’t notice this in our daily life because, in the grand scheme of things, everything in our lives moves at about the same speed so the time difference doesn’t get noticed. People who work with satellites notice it, though, and they have to correct for it constantly. It’s a big deal at grand scales and unnoticeable at small scales.
But back to light. It turns out the light is going *so fast* in space-speed that the only way for that equation to balance is if the time-speed for light was 0. And we have confirmed experimentally that it is! That means that to go faster than light, one of two things has to happen:
– our equation, which has worked over and over again for everything, must be broken, or
– somehow you can move so slowly in time-speed that you go negative, moving backwards in time
The first one is pretty unlikely because it’s worked so well experimentally for so many different things. The second one… well, there’s no eli5 version, I’m afraid. It’s very complicated and probably not possible at macro scales but it’s an area of ongoing research.
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