The Universe exists by virtue of mutual observation. This year's Nobel prizes were awarded for experiments which conclusively prove this fact - nothing is locally real - nothing exists other than observables. Observation maintains the world, and the world has no existence beyond its observation.
How does this occur? The Universe observes itself into existence via the propagation of light, through the activity of its radiation and absorption. Photons are the fingers of observation - the tacticle component of the observer. Radiation and absorption act to propagate this information.
Observation transforms the native indeterminate state of reality into a determined observational product - turning potential into specificity while simultaneously increasing entropy in the system being observed.
This process creates and maintains the world we observe. Observation is an inherently localizing phenomena - by radiating entropy through observation, a zone of low entropy is concentrated to a point spontaneously. Observers are entropic pumps.
You can't break the speed limit of the observed world. You can't overcome the entropy you're subject to because that would require you to overcome every other observer and thats inherently impossible.
Observation is what fixes the speed of Light - and that's why the speed of light is the same for all points an observer peers from. It is the speed of observation.
If you want to go faster than the speed limit of the observed world you need to become unavailable to its observation. You can do this by making yourself invisible and non-interactive with the electromagnetic spectrum. When you do this you effectively hide from the observed world, and are thus no longer bound by its rules.
Several potential approaches already exist to accomplish this. One is via the utilization of metamaterials which possess a controllable refractive index. Such a material could theoretically enable precise control over how any portion of space was observed by all others, controlling the qualities of that locality.
Another potential approach lies in using magnetic fields to modify how a region of space interacts with the rest.
Histtorical accounts of the Philadelphia Experiment seem to indicate this is possible - the aim of the original experiment was simply to make the ship invisible to mines through the application of degaussers on the ship's hull. The actual result of the experiment, according to the eyewitnesses, was the materialization of the ship to a spot hundreds of miles away, then it's return back to where it had been.
There are potentially several other workable solutions. As we learn more about the mechanics of observation, it is likely that we will encounter a number of such hacks. The observational, interface-driven nature of the Universe suggests that they exist. We just need to find them.
