Light is thought to be the universes speed limit because no matter how fast you're traveling, you will always measure a photon of light travelling at 186,000 miles per second (in a vacuum). In order for this to work, time has to slow down for the obsever the faster he travels, and light is the only thing that remains constant. Therefore, if one was able to travel as fast, or faster, than the speed of light, then time would stop altogether, or you would begin to travel back in time (if you travelled faster than light).

Not only that, but, the closer a particle travels to the speed of light, the more energy it will need to reach that velocity. Eventually, upon reaching the speed of light, equations have shown that the particle would need an infinite amount of energy to travel side-by-side with a photon of light. To go faster, you would need MORE than an infinite amount of energy.

To me this is pretty solid proof that if you were travelling parallel to a photon, you could not go faster than it.

The theories that I have seen that are to the exception of this rule are theories like wormholes, where you bend space and time and fundamentally reduce the distance of travel substantially, and then unbend space-time when you've reached the other side. Technically, this way, you are travelling faster than the speed of light, but not in the way most people think.

But I digress

btw Canister, please link me to the recent news about faster-than-speed-of-light travel. I am very interested