Then why does light travel at the speed of light?
Alright The best man to answewr that would be the most famous theoretical physicist in the world Albert Einstein. Let me explain this in a nutshell a beam of light travels at the speed of light agree? Now light has no mass so The theory of relativity for light is undefined because mass is part of the theory of relativity . now if you know the famous theory (e=mc^2) you know mass is multiplyed by the speed of light squared this means the object that would be trying to reach the speed of light would have a mass so large that it can only bedescribed as infinity there for with a mass so large you cannot possibly have energy so the formula is undefined there for light travel is mathematicaly and scientificaly impossible.(sorry no star trek travels for you)
The statement is not quite complete. It is, Nothing with mass can travel at the speed of light. Since light has no mass but is pure energy it does travel at the speed of light. That's why the call it the speed of light.
Only light can travel at the speed of light
Actually, the deal is that nothing with any mass can travel at the speed of light. There are lots of things that travel at the speed of light like radio waves, which are actually just a specific electromagnetic/magnetic (em) wave. In fact, as an interesting note, sound traveling through an object (not air) like a table travels at the speed of light, and through air it only travels at the speed of sound. So if you were to knock on a really really long piece of wood, and someone were at the other end, they would hear the knock twice, once as it vibrates through the table, and then they would hear it again as it traveled through the air. PS. The reason only things without mass can travel at the speed of light is that it would require an infinite amount of energy to accelerate anything else to that speed. (Or so modern physics thinks) PPS. It is clear that some of the people answering this question should take a modern physics class as E=mc^2 frankly is unrelated to the issue at hand. E is the energy that would be yielded if an object with mass m were to be destroyed i.e. if it were to be converted into pure energy. (You can use it in the reverse way too, E is the energy required to make something with mass m.) But c is in fact the speed of light.
Nothing WITH REST MASS can travel at the speed of light. Stuff with no rest mass MUST travel at the speed of light. Besides light (photons), it appears that gravitons (gravity's force-carrier) are massless, so they travel at light speed. Until recently, we thought that neutrinos were massless, so they traveled at light speed. Turns out, they're just very light, so they travel at almost light speed.
