Is Light Speed Truly The Fastest?

Is the speed of light the fastest ? Now this question should be easy yes but if we truly dive deep into the mechanics of space we are left with some peculiar results. Light travels at a speed of 299,792 which makes it nearly impossible for anything to accelerate at the speed of light nonetheless faster. For decades scientists have tested many theories and the closest that we have come to find a particle that accelerates faster than light is in 2017 when we discovered the speed of Tachyons. However the problem with tachyons is that they only exist in the quantum vacuum and we have no way of proving it because we can not see them or their effects. So, is there anything that moves faster than light in space. No, except for space itself.

Approximately 14 billion years ago, the expansion of space started from an initial singularity. This phenomenon is known as the Big Bang. In the 1980’s, Edwin Hubble had made important discoveries related to the expansion of space. But debatably the most important discovery was the fact that he discovered that the farther he saw, the faster the objects were moving away and some were beyond vision. Scientists later named the visible sphere of space that was visible to the earth the Hubble Sphere. The Hubble sphere’s radius is the distance between earth and its respective point where the average recession velocity being the speed of light. Now common sense would tell us that any point beyond the Hubble Sphere would not be visible but that is not entirely the case. Visualize a point which is beyond the sphere and moving faster than the speed of light. The light that is sent by the object would actually be traveling backwards because it’s speed is lower than the speed of the object. But since space is expanding the Hubble Sphere is also expanding so in time we will be able to see the light from the distant object.
Now begs the question, When will the expansion of the universe stop? Experiments have occurred on the subject and the results are surprising. Scientists have found that the rate of expansion has been 10% faster than the predicted expansion rate after the Big Bang. Which shows that the universe is actually accelerating rather than slowing down. Scientists believe that an integral part of understanding the accelerated expansion lies in a characteristic of space called Dark Energy (To learn more about dark energy check out our other post called Is Space Really Empty? Part 2). Basically Dark Energy is a substance in space which acts like anti-gravity, which pulls galaxies further apart at a faster rate than gravity. This shows why the universe is expanding rather than contracting. However, the universe has not always been expanding. For many millions of years after the Big Bang the expansion of the universe has slowed down but only recently has the growth been exponential. This is because Dark Energy is a property of space itself, so when more space appears there is more dark energy which contributes to the rapid growth
How hearing this you may have one more question, If space is expanding, what is it expanding into? Now the answer to that is…Itself. Space is expanding into itself. Now this may be hard to understand because when we think of expansion we think more of blowing a balloon, which in turn increases its size. But expansion of space is more like zooming into an online grapher because space is not expanding but the space between objects is.