I need your Science answers!
In two parts:
I'm hoping everyone's generally familiar with Einstein's old thought experiment about the train moving as it approaches the speed of light, how it will take on mass to slow it down as it speeds up and whatnot. How this applies to all things as they approach lightspeed. My question is this, what about photons? particles of light, that as such, go lightspeed. If everything else takes on mass just as it approaches the speed of light, what prevents photons from doing the same when they are moving at the speed of light? And if photons can do that, isn't there certainly the possibility that other particles could?
The only thing I can think of to compare this to, is thinking of things in relation to the speed of sound.
Secondly, everyone seems so dead-set on the speed of light being absolutely It! That's there's nothing that moves faster. Which makes sense to me. You need light to observe something. No light, you ain't gonna see it.
If there were particles that move faster than light how would we be able to find them? Is it even possible to know something like that?
The only thing I can come up with is black holes and using the absence of light to be made aware of something.
Looking for your thought, opinions, answers and, in particularly, where I'm "misremembering" the whole lightspeed/mass thing.
This shit has kept me up most of the night and I'm not even high. What a gyp!
The Photon is the smartest particle in the classroom so the grading curve is set by it's standard performance light speed.
Or, to speculate, could it be that the photon is the particle with the least possible amount of mass such that if it contained less mass it would not exist in the tangible universe? A sort of absolute zero--there is simply no going pass that limit?
1's and I's are easy to write with a scalpel.
I'm still trying to get my head around light as a wave when no one is paying attention to it and as a photon when it is being observed.
There are particles that can go from one place to another instantaneously (quirks and quarks?) so although they get to where they are going faster than the speed of light they don't technically "move" there.
I read somewhere once that the speed of light is absolute even in relation to another object travelling at a speed. Still can't get my head around that one. The explanation went something like this "If you are travelling in a car at the half the speed of light, beside a beam of light, the beam of light is not going 2x your speed but is still going the speed of light faster than you."
I really need to re-read "The Elegant Universe" by Graham Green again. (amazing book if you are looking for science answers in a way that is graspable) I once saw the author on a documentary explaining the big bang. In about 3 minutes he completely explained the big bang in a way that almost anyone could understand it.
This answer was not much help.
...just lurking.
(Pssst, BRIAN Green, not Graham!) 
Once upon a time I got one of them there masters degrees in physics and spent some time working with solutions to Einstein's general relativistic equations, though more and more of this knowledge flees me each year as I spend my time teaching science for non-science majors at community college, but here's what I have:
Firstly, bassplr19 is right--light always moves at that speed. In fact, for light(electromagnetic radiation) to exist, it must move at that speed. Also, because it does not have mass, even if it were to have to accelerate up to that speed somehow, how something's mass changes as it approaches the speed of light is by a multiplicitive factor of its rest mass--so for something massless, this would not affect it, though indeed, anything massless is actually cosntrained to move at the speed of light. Now, just to add, you may have heard that light will move a little slower in air and indeed we have managed to slow the speed of light drastically using bose-einstein condensates and whatnot, but what's really happeneing here is that when light passes trhough something other than a vaccuum, it gets constantly absorbed and re-emitted so that overall it appears to be moving slower. The actual photons themselves as they move from one atom to another still move at the speed of light.
Now, the fact that light is the same in all reference frames(what Jesrad was talking about) is something that was directly observed. The speed at which you measure light does not depend on the speed at which you are moving relative to the light source. This is not what we typically observe at things moving at everyday speeds. It was, however, measured to be the case with light and it was this result from which Einstein derived his theory of special relativity. Essentially everything gets scaled as it approaches the speed of light so that its mass increases, its time shrinks, and speeds add in such a way that they can never exceed the speed of light.
Essentially nothing can move faster than the speed of light as predicted by special relativity. To do so would require infinite energy. There are situations, however, in which spacetime itself can move at speeds faster than light(inflation period and near a rotating black hole, for example) but objects cannot move against the background of spacetime at a speed faster than the speed of light. In quantum mechanics, very small particles can undergo what is called quantum tunneling in which they seem to suddenly jump from one place to another, but this is not due to them travelling(as jesrad mentioned) but due to the statistical nature of quantum mechanics. Now, there are hypothetical particles called tachyons that can supposedly travel faster than light speed, but my knowledge of tachyons is essentially nil. The way in which they supposedly do this, though I don't believe violates special relativity--they end up with imainary components of their 4-momentum wich makes it allowable within the theory. Google tachyons for more info.
Bueno, bueno!
My bads.
My brain broke when I got to the part in the book about the higgs field and the frog in a hot skillet.
To be fair though I was working nightshifts and it was spooky.
...just lurking.
Firstly, bassplr19 is right--light always moves at that speed. In fact, for light(electromagnetic radiation) to exist, it must move at that speed. Also, because it does not have mass, even if it were to have to accelerate up to that speed somehow, how something's mass changes as it approaches the speed of light is by a multiplicitive factor of its rest mass--so for something massless, this would not affect it, though indeed, anything massless is actually cosntrained to move at the speed of light. Now, just to add, you may have heard that light will move a little slower in air and indeed we have managed to slow the speed of light drastically using bose-einstein condensates and whatnot, but what's really happeneing here is that when light passes trhough something other than a vaccuum, it gets constantly absorbed and re-emitted so that overall it appears to be moving slower. The actual photons themselves as they move from one atom to another still move at the speed of light.
Now, the fact that light is the same in all reference frames(what Jesrad was talking about) is something that was directly observed. The speed at which you measure light does not depend on the speed at which you are moving relative to the light source. This is not what we typically observe at things moving at everyday speeds. It was, however, measured to be the case with light and it was this result from which Einstein derived his theory of special relativity. Essentially everything gets scaled as it approaches the speed of light so that its mass increases, its time shrinks, and speeds add in such a way that they can never exceed the speed of light.
Essentially nothing can move faster than the speed of light as predicted by special relativity. To do so would require infinite energy. There are situations, however, in which spacetime itself can move at speeds faster than light(inflation period and near a rotating black hole, for example) but objects cannot move against the background of spacetime at a speed faster than the speed of light. In quantum mechanics, very small particles can undergo what is called quantum tunneling in which they seem to suddenly jump from one place to another, but this is not due to them travelling(as jesrad mentioned) but due to the statistical nature of quantum mechanics. Now, there are hypothetical particles called tachyons that can supposedly travel faster than light speed, but my knowledge of tachyons is essentially nil. The way in which they supposedly do this, though I don't believe violates special relativity--they end up with imainary components of their 4-momentum wich makes it allowable within the theory. Google tachyons for more info.
This blew me marbles.
You know in all the years I've been here I've never been sigged?
Photons always travel at the speed of light - they never need to approach it so they never need to gain mass. Maybe not an exact answer, but may help thought process.
E = mc^2 for a particle with mass
E = h*c*f for a massless particle
Think for yourself. Question Authority.