system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Can you explain in simple terms, why can nothing travel faster than light?
gpt
For me, the simplest way to explain it is that experimentally, we have measured the speed of light to be always the same value - 3 x 10^8 m/s, otherwise known as c. What does that mean?

It means that if you shoot a beam of light, it will always be traveling away from you at c. Even if you have a rocket ship, and manage to reach 1/2 the speed of light compared to where you started, the beam of light will still be traveling away from you at the exact same speed. Other weird stuff happens (time dilation, etc), but all of special relativity can be derived from the *experimental result* that the speed of light in a vacuum is always the same.

The short answer is, no matter how fast you go to try to catch up with it, light will always travel away from you at the same speed, and therefore you cannot ever catch up to a beam of light. That is why you, and also everything else, cannot travel faster than the speed of light.