Peter said: The problem with C is that it's a hard limit.

I didn't intimate that I didn't understand this. I just meant to say it is a technology barrier more than anything. C maybe Hard Coded. But that doesn't mean M isn't which infact it isn't. Making M "non-existant" would nake thing easier to do.

Thane said: The difference between C and sound are quite a bit - C is literally the fastest any object can travel, whereas sound was just an engineering limitation.

Now, whether or not we can find shortcuts AROUND C, that's another thing entirely.

Exactly. C sound are/were technology based barriers. Really the only thing we are missing is the technology... and just ignoring C as a limit is what will prolly happen. Or some type of shortcut as you point out.

Ross said: They are fundamentally different "barriers". Sound barrier is just a misnomer for the development of a shock front (Mach cone) by an object going faster than sound. Light "barrier" is an intrinsic property of spacetime. In fact the essence of relativity is that there *is* no "light shock front" in vacuo. (There is a phenomenon called Cerenkov radiation that can be qualitatively understood as a light shock front in a material medium in which the effective SOL is less than C.)

You missed my point about them being technology based. The issue at hand was something that was able to be handled mainly because the technology was there at the right place, and the Will to do it (or Hubris as others have said) was there in specific quantity. And in all reality, there could be a shock-wave front for light just as there was for the Sound barrier.

Ross continued: In vacuo, a Mach cone for light is in principle impossible. Can't overstate this - nothing in our physical world will ever go faster than C. These facts are not open to any doubt, and are constantly verified in particle accelerators and cosmic ray studies.

Thinking, without the "physical bounds", could you surmise, that quantum mechanics maybe different than either you or I understand it? What about finding that things smaller than atoms (the stuff atoms are bound from) actually have no mass. Whereas being able to excite them... maybe perhaps we become "ethereal or non-massive"... I want you to understand, throwning theory at this discussion will do nothing but make it flounder. I am talking about technology, that right now, humans as a race, have neither the ability nor the understanding needed to do this. Either some type of Enlightenmnet is needed, or research producing this knowledge is needed.

Ben said: The Everett Interpretation explains all of the known phenomena of QM without concluding that there is any non-local "instantaneous interaction" going on with quantum entanglement.

Since the differences between interpretations are (as far as we know) fundamentally untestable, no other interpretation can manage to realize any usable information transfer at speeds above C.

Yes, I understand this point. Well taken. No other interpretation can manage to realize any usable information transfer at speeds above C, *YET*. Maybe never.