{"id":157650,"date":"2023-02-11T12:31:25","date_gmt":"2023-02-11T18:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/a-mind-blowing-explanation-of-the-speed-of-light-michelle-thaller-big-think"},"modified":"2023-02-11T12:31:25","modified_gmt":"2023-02-11T18:31:25","slug":"a-mind-blowing-explanation-of-the-speed-of-light-michelle-thaller-big-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/a-mind-blowing-explanation-of-the-speed-of-light-michelle-thaller-big-think","title":{"rendered":"A mind-blowing explanation of the speed of light | Michelle Thaller | Big Think"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DO7J2YIz8tY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>New videos DAILY: <a href=\"https:\/\/bigth.ink\">https:\/\/bigth.ink<\/a>.<br \/> Join Big Think Edge for exclusive video lessons from top thinkers and doers: <a href=\"https:\/\/bigth.ink\/Edge\">https:\/\/bigth.ink\/Edge<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The only things that travel at the speed of light are photons. Nothing with any mass at all can travel at the speed of light because as it gets closer and closer to the speed of light, its mass increases. And if it were actually traveling at the speed of light, it would have an infinite mass. Light does not experience space or time. It\u2019s not just a speed going through something. All of the universe shifts around this constant, the speed of light. Time and space itself stop when you go that speed.<\/p>\n<p>MICHELLE THALLER: Dr. Michelle Thaller is an astronomer who studies binary stars and the life cycles of stars. She is Assistant Director of Science Communication at NASA. She went to college at Harvard University, completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif. then started working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory\u2019s (JPL) Spitzer Space Telescope. After a hugely successful mission, she moved on to NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), in the Washington D.C. area. In her off-hours often puts on about 30lbs of Elizabethan garb and performs intricate Renaissance dances. For more information, visit.<br \/> NASA.<\/p>\n<p>TRANSCRIPT: MICHELLE THALLER: So, Tom, you asked the question, \u201cHow does mass increase as you go faster?\u201d And this is really a wonderful part of Einstein\u2019s theories. It actually is also relatively slippery and kind of complicated because to even answer this question at all, we have to ask the rather strange question: \u201cWhat do you mean by mass? What is your definition of mass?\u201d You may have heard that nothing with mass can possibly go at the speed of light. The only things that travel at the speed of light are photons pure energy, light, the speed of light. Nothing with any mass at all can travel at the speed of light because as it gets closer and closer to the speed of light, its mass increases. And if it were actually traveling at the speed of light, it would have an infinite mass. So think about that. Even if you had a tiny little particle that was, say, billions of times less massive than an electron just a tiny, tiny little piece of mass if for some reason, that tiny thing accelerated to the speed of light, it would have an infinite mass. And that\u2019s a bit of a problem. So let\u2019s talk about this. One of the things that you really have to realize is the speed of light is very, very special. It\u2019s not just simply a speed of something moving through space. As you go faster and faster and closer to the speed of light, time itself begins to slow down. And space begins to contract. As you go close to the speed of light, the entire universe becomes smaller and smaller until it basically just becomes a single point when you\u2019re going at the speed of light. And time, as you go closer to the speed of light, gets slower and slower until basically time is a single point at the speed of light. Light does not experience space or time. It\u2019s not just a speed going through something. All of the universe shifts around this constant, the speed of light. Time and space itself stop when you go that speed. So the reason you can\u2019t accelerate to the speed of light, and the reason we say you have an infinite mass is a little complicated because the idea that mass actually is a measurement of energy. You may remember Einstein\u2019s famous equation, E equals MC squared. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Energy and mass are equivalent. Mass is basically a measurement of how much energy there is in an object. When you\u2019re moving, you have the energy of your motion, too. That\u2019s called kinetic energy, energy of motion. So E equals MC squared, now your mass has not just the stuff that\u2019s in you but also the energy of your motion. And that\u2019s why mass seems to increase as you go faster, and faster, and closer to the speed of light. It\u2019s not that you are actually getting any heavier. The increase in mass is something that\u2019s only observed by people that are watching you go by. If you were on a spaceship going very fast at the speed of light, you don\u2019t notice anything getting heavier. You are on your spaceship. You could jump up and down. You can skip rope. You can do whatever you want. You don\u2019t notice any change at all. But if people try to measure your mass as you go by, they not only are measuring your rest mass \u2014 your mass when you were still \u2014 but this added energy of this h\u2026For the full transcript, check out <a href=\"https:\/\/bigthink.com\/videos\/speed-of-light\">https:\/\/bigthink.com\/videos\/speed-of-light<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New videos DAILY: https:\/\/bigth.ink. Join Big Think Edge for exclusive video lessons from top thinkers and doers: https:\/\/bigth.ink\/Edge. The only things that travel at the speed of light are photons. Nothing with any mass at all can travel at the speed of light because as it gets closer and closer to the speed of light, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-science","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}