It can look dumb, but I always had this question as a kid, what physical principles would prevent this?
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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Think of it like this. If our universe is a simulation, then the speed of light is the maximum speed at which information can propagate through reality. We know that for anything to move through space, it must move from one adjoining position to another, then another, then another, incrementally. Each one of those increments takes, at minimum, one 'tick' of the universe. That's one tick to increment each bit of information, that is, the position of something moving at light speed from position x,y,z to x+1,y,z. Light moves as fast as the universe allows; if there was a faster speed, light would be doing it, but it turns out that our universe's clock speed only supports speeds of up to 299,792,458 meters per second.
What you have here is sound. Motion propagates through material at the speed of sound in that material. That's part of the reason why moving large scale objects quickly gets weird.
Edit: to be clear, I am not making the case that we're in a simulation. I'm only trying to use computers to make it relatable.