I always wonder how time is related to traveling at the speed of light and what actually happens when we travel at the speed of light. Why does time slow down and what can be the physical explanation of that? Can anyone please help me to understand this?
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1"travel at the speed of light" is not defined in special relativity, there does not exist a frame travelling at the speed of light. If you're wondering what happens when you get close to the speed of light there are a lot of popular-physics articles/videos that explain this. – Charlie Oct 02 '20 at 22:49
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Do we know why there is a speed limit in our universe? – mmesser314 Oct 03 '20 at 01:21
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It is theoretically impossible for people or any other mass to travel at c (the speed of light in a vacuum). Only electromagnetic waves and gravitational effects travel at c. If you are traveling inertially at just under c, relative to an outside observer, time would seem to pass normally to you, but the observer will see your clock as moving much slower than his. He would observe you in a dilated (slowed) time frame compared to his. However in your frame of reference, you could consider yourself to be at rest and the observer and all of the universe moving past you at near c. His clock would appear to you to run slower and, to you, he would be in the dilated time frame. This is part of relativity, motion and stillness are relative to frames of reference, there is no absolute frame of reference that we can all say is at rest. There is a lot of information and videos about relativity online, for beginners on up.
Adrian Howard
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what actually happens when we travel at the speed of light ?
Only photons can travel at the speed of light. And for a photon no time passes at all - for a photon all events along its world line are simultaneous. You could therefore either say nothing happens when we travel at the speed of light, or everything happens at once.
gandalf61
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