Sailing through the smooth waters of vacuum, a photon of light moves at around 300 thousand kilometers (186 thousand miles) a second. This sets a firm limit on how quickly a whisper of information can travel anywhere in the Universe.

As an object approaches the speed of light, its mass rises precipitously. If an object tries to travel 186,000 miles per second, its mass becomes infinite, and so does the energy required to move it. For this reason, no normal object can travel as fast or faster than the speed of light.

The LHC is capable of accelerating particles upwards of 99.999999% the speed of light, or 299,792,455 m/s. The LHC accelerates particles to a velocity just 0.000199% faster than the next fastest accelerator, only accumulating just 600 m/s more.

Tachyons have never been found in experiments as real particles traveling through the vacuum, but we predict theoretically that tachyon-like objects exist as faster-than-light ‘quasiparticles’ moving through laser-like media. “We are beginning an experiment at Berkeley to detect tachyon-like quasiparticles.

What has happened at CERN? Scientists say they have clocked neutrinos – tiny particles smaller than atoms – travelling at 300,006 kilometres per second, slightly faster than the speed of light.

According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, published in 1905, nothing can exceed the speed of light. By the time an object reached the speed of light, Einstein calculated, its mass would be infinite, and so would the amount of energy required to increase its speed. To go beyond the infinite is impossible.

Darkness travels at the speed of light. More accurately, darkness does not exist by itself as a unique physical entity, but is simply the absence of light.

1904: Measuring Light From a Moving Train Einstein tried every solution he could think of, and nothing worked. Someone standing on the embankment would measure the light beam’s speed to be the standard number, 186,000 miles a second. But someone on the train would see it moving past at only 184,000 miles a second.

While no massive particle can ever attain the speed of light in a vacuum, it can easily attain or even exceed the speed of light in a medium. Imagine a ray of light that travels directly away from the Sun.

An Italian experiment has unveiled evidence that fundamental particles known as neutrinos can travel faster than light.

Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the international group of researchers, said that measurements taken over three years showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done. “We have high confidence in our results.

A total of 15,000 beams of neutrinos – tiny particles that pervade the cosmos – were fired over a period of three years from CERN towards Gran Sasso 730 (500 miles) km away, where they were picked up by giant detectors.

The totally unexpected finding emerged from research by a physicists working on an experiment dubbed OPERA run jointly by the CERN particle research centre near Geneva and the Gran Sasso Laboratory in central Italy.