Your resident scientist at the rescue! 🙂
(Raises flag! It’s International Physics Years, it’s 100 years ago that Einstein published his first articles on relativity and other goodies).
When we observe the Universe, we see things blasting away at different velocities. But INSIDE the Universe itself the thing that moves the fastest has mass=0. Those are the light-particles, photons among friends. And the speed are over a BILLION kilometres and hour!
Now, we’ve never seen or observed anything moving FASTER than the speed of light. If something COULD it should have negative mass (odd concept), and we should be able to observe it.
We never have. So the Universe comes with a kind of speed limit if you like. And to move at that speed you need to have mass=0.
Stuff, that is the Earth, you me, the stars, plants etc. all have mass greater than zero. If you try to accelerate the Universe starts to act like a kind of membrane if you like, the faster you move, the incredibly more energy you’ll need, until you’ll need an infinite amount. So – no. It’s not a question of us figuring out HOW to reach light-speed. We have to warp space instead (as in Dune, Contact or Star Trek). 🙂
You won’t stop aging aboard a space-ship going close to the speed of light. Your clock will tick away happily as always. But RELATIVE to us back here on Earth, your clock will tick slower. When you return, you’ll have travelled into the future.