I’ve always understood that nothing travels faster than the speed of light because it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object to light speed. I’m not saying that’s correct, mind you, I’m only saying that’s what I’ve been given as an explanation for why the speed of light is an absolute.

I’ve also understood that, as an object approaches the speed of light, its mass increases and keeps on increasing until, at the point where it would reach the speed of light, its mass would become infinite. This has been presented as another reason that nothing in the universe can move faster than light.

These understandings, and the foofraw that erupted as a result of some neutrinos apparently exceeding the speed of light just recently, came bubbling up through my more or less random thoughts as I was taking a shower this morning, and merged into one, big musing bubble thusly: If the neutrinos were moving faster than light, then the particle accelerator they came from must have used an infinite amount of energy to accelerate them to that speed, and they should have acquired an infinite mass. If their mass was infinite, the whole universe must have been swallowed up in its gravitational pull, and we are now part of an infinitely massive black hole.

But life in a black hole apparently isn’t all that bad. At least they have hot showers there.