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The question states an incorrect premise. As an object approaches the speed of light, neither the object nor light "goes slower". At relativistic speeds (speeds of about 1/100 of the speed of light or faster), the faster a body travels, the slower time passes for that body compared to a "non-moving" frame of reference.

Light is measured to travel at the same speed for all observers, no matter what the observer's speed is. For example, suppose you were in a space ship traveling at 1/2 the speed of light, and that space ship was racing toward a star. You would measure the light coming from that star at c, the constant speed of light. Now suppose your friend was in another space ship which was "stopped". Your friend would measure the same light coming from the same star at the same speed of c. The difference between you and your friend is your friend would age more quickly than you would, because time passes more slowly for you while you are traveling at relativistic speeds.

It is also true that, as a body approaches the speed of light, it develops something called relativistic mass. So you, your space ship, and everything in it gets heavier when you travel at 1/2 c. Because the space ship gets heavier, it becomes harder to push (it has greater inertia), and therefore it is more difficult to accelerate the space ship further to make it go even faster. So it is true that, as you approach the speed of light, the harder it is to approach the speed of light. The mathematics predicts that, at the speed of light itself, your relativistic mass is infinite1, and so is your inertia, therefore you can never "push" something to make it actually go as fast as the speed of light.

Light itself is a bit of an enigma. A photon - a light particle - has zero mass, but it does have momentum. Zero mass also means zero relativistic mass, allowing the photon to travel at c. In fact, not only can a photon travel at the speed of light, it must travel at the speed of light - a photon exists only while travelling at the speed of light - it ceases to exist if it stops or slows down.

1 Relativistic Mass = Rest Mass / SQRT ( 1 - v2/c2), v is the velocity and c is the speed of light.

Answer:

I think I know where this question is coming from, but you made a bit of a confusion perhaps? Basically, the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time goes? Is that what you meant to say? Relativity is very hard to get your head around, because you need to drop the concept of velocity altogether, and only think of relative velocity, and time, and even length in the direction you travel in (I did say it would be weird!). Light will ALWAYS overtake you at 300000000m/s. It doesn't matter how fast you go, or how slow you go relative to the source of that light, it will always, if travelling through a vacuum, travel at the speed of light given, and this value is a constant value called C. Its the space speed limit that is policed by the laws of physics. But, if you did travel very fast (close to C), there would be a time dilation relative to people here on earth. And this was first discovererd when they realized that particles that came down to earth from the upper atmosphere had a half life such that they should have decayed before they made it to the ground, however, because their velocity relative to the earth approaches C, they actually lasted longer! This same principal would apply to humans, so it would be possible to sit in a space craft, go close to C, come out 1 year later, and for all your friends and family and everyone you know to have grown old, whilst you'd only be 1 year older, because more time would have passed on earth than would have passed in your space craft, and this is called the time dilation effect.



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Q: According to the Theory of Relativity the closer an object gets to the speed of light the slower it goes so why does light which travels at the speed of light travel at all?
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