Or, more accurately, we can never reach the speed of light in a vacuum. That is, the ultimate cosmic speed limit, of 299,792,458 m/s is unattainable for massive particles, and simultaneously is the speed that all massless particles must travel at.
There’s Only One Way To Beat The Speed Of Light
But what happens, then, if we travel not through a vacuum, but through a medium instead? As it turns out, when light travels through a medium, its electric and magnetic fields feel the effects of the matter that they pass through. This has the effect, when light enters a medium, of immediately changing the speed at which light travels.
In the semi-supercentenarians and some supercentenarians, the researchers discovered five unusual genetic changes that were often present in two genes, COA1 and STK17A, data that was consistent with the previous research.
Most intriguing, the genetic variations appear to be linked to increased activity of the STK17A gene in some tissues, a gene involved in three critical cell repair activities: managing cells' response to DNA damage, prompting badly damaged cells to die off, and controlling the amount of dangerous reactive oxygen species in a cell. Cells unable to perform these types of repair activities are more likely to become cancerous.
