What's likely to happen to air or space if you do actually achieve the speed of light?

[Rohan56]

Would you actually "break" it and possibly open a wormhole?

[Clanad]

Uhh... the speed of light c is achieved continously, no?... both in the near vacuum of space as well as here on earth... so far no wormholes have been reported...

[LazyGun]

So long as E = mc2 holds true, nothing with mass can reach or exceed the speed of light.The most recent challenge to the speed of light being an absolute barrier happened late 2011 when researchers at CERN thought they had measured neutrino's moving faster than light. Repeat experimentation has shown the original study flawed, and the lead scientist has since resigned.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/...-environment-17560379

The idea of a "wormhole" is a hypothetical. theoretical construct,with no observational evidence to support such a thing ( that I am aware of). The idea of a traversible wormhole is even more of a reach, although hypothetically possible.Various science fiction narratives, recognising the constraints imposed on their space opera storylines, have employed traversible wormhole as a means of bypassing the constraints imposed by the speed of light (Deep Space Nine made extensive use of traversible wormholes, as I recall), but again no observational evidence to support their existence.

[jake-the-peg]

If you ask the impossible you can have any answer you like it's a bit like asking

"If I had magical powers could I make a rock so heavy I couldn't move it"

However - note that the light barrier can be broken

Light travels slower in water or glass than in a vacuum and subatomic particles can travel faster underwater than light does.

No wormholes are created but you do get the distinctive blue glow called "Cherenkov radiation" - it's analagous to the sonic boom from planes breaking the sound barrier

[vascop]

I would like to recommend an excellent book written in plain English with no mathematical equations in it and which answers lots and lots of the sort of questions which keep cropping up on AnswerBank about time, space, black holes, wormholes etc and it is:

Black Holes, Wormholes, and Time Machines (second edition) by Jim Al-KHalili

[jomifl]

Jake, It appears that the speed of light was exceeded in my left eye when I had proton therapy. Quite pretty really!