According to our current understanding of physics, specifically the theory of special relativity proposed by Albert Einstein, it is not possible for objects with mass, including humans, to travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
There are several lines of evidence and theoretical reasoning that support this conclusion:
Relativity Theory: Special relativity, formulated by Einstein in 1905, describes the behavior of objects moving at high speeds. It shows that as an object with mass approaches the speed of light, its relativistic mass increases, requiring an infinite amount of energy to accelerate it to the speed of light. This implies that it would take an infinite amount of energy to surpass the speed of light, which is considered impossible.
Time Dilation and Length Contraction: Special relativity also predicts time dilation and length contraction effects at relativistic speeds. As an object accelerates close to the speed of light, time slows down for the moving object relative to a stationary observer, and the length of the object in the direction of motion appears to contract. These effects have been experimentally verified and are consistent with the theory's predictions.
Experimental Evidence: Numerous experiments have been conducted to verify the predictions of special relativity. Particle accelerators, for example, accelerate subatomic particles to extremely high speeds, approaching but never exceeding the speed of light. These experiments consistently confirm the validity of special relativity's predictions.
Conservation of Causality: If an object were to exceed the speed of light, it would violate the principle of causality, which states that cause and effect must occur in a definite order. If something could travel faster than light, it could potentially be observed before the cause of its motion occurred, leading to paradoxes and inconsistencies.
It's important to note that while our current understanding of physics prohibits objects with mass from traveling faster than light, there are theoretical concepts like wormholes and hypothetical particles called tachyons that have been proposed in speculative physics. However, their existence and practicality are still highly debated and not supported by experimental evidence at this time.
Overall, based on our current scientific knowledge, it is widely accepted that humans, or any other objects with mass, cannot travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.