Unless I am continually (this has been an issue with me since a while) ignorant and have misunderstood something about special relativity, I have a big problem with the 'nothing can travel faster than the speed of light' claim. It creates problems where none should be.
First off, one thing 'limiting' a particle (or bigger object)'s velocity is the 'enormous mass it accumulates through acceleration': this 'barrier' idea is almost Newtonian, as it is taking an object's accelleration energy and making it its mass, but in reality, this 'added mass' (energy) shouldn't affect that object in the least until it encounters (or is compared to) another. Although every particle relative to another is almost always moving, a particle relative to itself might as well be dead still. As long as it encounters no other particle or particle field, its 'velocity' should not affect its function in the least, either, and this has been partly demonstrated: electron orbits (energy levels, or anything else) don't change because of velocity. The collision of two particles travelling at even multiple super-light speeds in an almost parallel path in the same directions would be like... almost nil, french parking causes more 'damage' every day.
And this 'time distortion at high velocity' hypothesis is a direct result of the above. Sure, 'higher mass = higher gravity', but not if a particle's velocity (calculated from its point of origin as a frame of reference) doesn't even enter the picture.
It is absolutely certain that time slows as gravity increases, and this fits neatly into my hypothesis that we are, in fact, 'stuck' on 'one side of nothing', and that time and gravity are, in fact, inseparable: gravity is matter trying to get back to its 'zero' state (or, in other words, trying to annihilate itself), and time is just how 'fast' that matter is going to maintain its stable state, and that, too, is relative to its point of origin. Two particles of exactly the same mass have exactly the same 'time' behaviour when away from any other masses' gravitational field.
