How did scientists discover the speed of light? is it technically possible to surpass the speed of light?

Question

How did scientists discover the speed of light? is it technically possible to surpass the speed of light?

Answer 1

Originally it was thought that light travelled instantly.

Then (I think it was Galileo) they noticed that a moon of jupiter seemed to appear round the side of Jupiter a bit 'late', when Jupiter was further away, so it was theorised that light had a speed. Light took longer to reach the earth when Jupiter was far away, so the moon seemed to appear 'later'.

Early experiments involved trying to shine a light from one hill to the next, but light was much too fast to be measured this way.

According to Relativity, it is not possible to go faster than light. You see as you get close to light speed, your mass increases hugely. This makes it veyr difficult to go faster, and impossible to go faster than light.

There may be ways of getting round this speed limit though, such as 'Wormholes' which might allow us to basically teleport from one place to another, however, this technology is a long way off.

Answer 2

All you have to do is shine light at a mirror and measure how long it takes to get back to you.

Technically? Did you mean theoretically? Nothing real can go faster than the speed of light.