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Can anything go faster
than the speed of light?
Well, we always thought the answer to that was a definite NO.
However, scientists reported in 2000 that they had exceeded the cosmic speed limit. In a landmark experiment, they caused a light pulse to travel at many times the speed of light, so fast that the peak of the pulse exited a specially prepared test chamber before it even finished entering it. According to the scientists, the results are "not at odds with Einstein," though on the surface they appear to contradict his theory of relativity, which holds that the speed of light in a vacuum (about 186,000 miles per second) is the fastest anything can go.
Said Lijun Wang, one of the scientists at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, NJ, who conducted the experiment: "Our experiment does show that the generally held misconception that 'nothing can move faster than the speed of light' is wrong." Nothing with mass can exceed the light-speed limit. But physicists now believe that a pulse of light, which is a group of mass-less individual waves, can.
Homo sapiens shouldn't feel too high and mighty, even though they currently dominate the Earth. After all, they are covered with flesh that medical scientists have determined bears an important resemblance to Silly Putty. The specific gravity of your skin and the gooey stuff is close enough that doctors have actually used Silly Putty to align and test CAT scan machines.
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and
leave a trail."
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