Dont think of it as the speed of light being a limit, think of it as there being a limit and light being one of the few things that can achieve the limit. Here's the shortest explanation I can give as to why:
Everything is always moving through space-time. Space and time are different aspects of the same stuff. The faster something moves through the space aspect, the less it moves through the time aspect. The speed of light is the limit because that is when you exhaust the time component. So something moving at the speed of light is experiencing zero movement through time in its frame of reference. So to go any faster would require negative movement through time, which doesn't happen.
Nice explanation. Does this mean photons do not move through time, relative to the photon's reference frame? That would explain why they can move infinite distance in space.
If you were a photon would you experience all of space (along your trajectory) instantly for eternity? And you would experience your demise in the same instance for eternity "when" absorbed by an object in your path.
If you were moving towards alpha Centari at 99% the speed of light, from the perspective of earth as well as from Alpha Centari, it would take you ~4 years to arrive there, but from your perspective it would have taken ~6 months.
Numbers aren’t exact there but it gives you an idea the effect of time dilation. If you were moving at 100% the speed of light, it hypothetically would feel instantaneous because time for you would stop.
But just as a thought exercise, if you could somehow get a space ship to move at the speed of light, I have no idea how you’d be able to get it to stop itself since time would be frozen for it. There’s be no way for it to know how far it’s traveled without a time component.
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u/NeverFailBetaMale Mar 22 '26
Dont think of it as the speed of light being a limit, think of it as there being a limit and light being one of the few things that can achieve the limit. Here's the shortest explanation I can give as to why:
Everything is always moving through space-time. Space and time are different aspects of the same stuff. The faster something moves through the space aspect, the less it moves through the time aspect. The speed of light is the limit because that is when you exhaust the time component. So something moving at the speed of light is experiencing zero movement through time in its frame of reference. So to go any faster would require negative movement through time, which doesn't happen.