Alex McColgan

We have taken a shortcut into the future.

This is what we observe in the real world.

Objects that move at great speeds seem to suddenly experience reduced time.

They believe only a few seconds have passed.

but far more time can occur to an external observer.

And suddenly, it really throws off our maths.

Because how does an external observer record our speed?

If we started at an origin point of zero, but ended at an origin point that's 10 seconds into the future, they have to say that we have travelled 400 million metres in 10 seconds for a speed of 40 million metres per second, far below the speed of light, no matter what we thought we were doing.

which is kind of like what light seems to be experiencing.

And the faster you push yourself in the X direction, the more you encounter the warping effects of hyperbolic geometry, and the more it keeps pulling you back towards the speed limit cap of the universe, it will never let you exceed it.

This explains why there is a cap to the universe, not even light, which as far as it is concerned does travel infinitely quickly, would be able to overcome it, provided the base we were resting on was ever so slightly curved.

As soon as the photon slid onto the plane that was space, it would get swept up in the curvature of this hyperbolic 4D space.

It would trace the limit of it, true, but it would get caught in it.

And then, from our perspective,

it would start to look as if we were simply moving uniformly at the speed of C. After all, we would see it leave, and then we would time how long it would take to arrive at its destination.

It doesn't matter for us that it believed it had arrived there instantaneously by taking a shortcut through time, we would just record it as having arrived after some time had passed.

So there you have it.

Why is there a speed limit for our universe?

Perhaps because space is curved, and our 4D space is hyperbolic.

At least, so claims this theory.