Our universe is the biggest thing, and it contains everything we know or we can imagine. However, this does not mean that it doesn’t have its own limits. These limits are called physics laws and probably the strangest rules are about the light and the light speed. It breaks our limits about reality and leads us to have deep thoughts. So, what are these laws, why are they strange, why is it impossible to be faster than light and what happens when we are faster but most importantly, why is light speed that much critical for us?
What Is Light Speed?
First of all, if we want to fully understand and answer these questions, we need to know what light speed is. Light speed is the limit of the highest speed of a matter with a mass can reach and the reason of this is Einstein’s most popular formula: E = mc². (E stands for energy, m stands for mass and c stands for light speed.) This formula states that if a matter’s energy increases, its mass must increase as well and if a matter tries to reach the speed of light, because its energy is increasing, its mass will become infinite, and it will be impossible to carry that mass. But there is one exception to that, the universe itself. Our universe expands continuously and there was a time in the past where our universe expanded faster than light.
One of the strange features of the light speed is that its speed does not change according to a reference point. It is hard to understand this so let me give an example. Imagine you can fly at any speed you want. If you chase a bullet with half of the bullet’s speed, the bullet will be slower by half for you than the other people. However, if you try to chase the light at half of the light speed, it will go with the same speed for you as it was going before.
What Happens When We Pass the Light Speed?
As I mentioned it is impossible to pass the light speed theoretically, but theories are just boring. So, let’s imagine that we are living in a universe where we have the technology to pass the light speed and there are no physics laws about it. The first thing that is going to happen is the broken time. To understand this better, let’s have a group of people who are observing us throughout this whole journey. When we reach the light speed, these observers will see that the time is stopped for you while you feel that time is passing normally and as we pass the light speed, we will be able to time travel.
The second thing is the broken reason-result relationship. If you were able to pass the light speed and somehow decided to throw a rock to a window faster than light, you will experience something very strange. Unlike the normal world, the result will happen earlier than the reason. So, you will see that the window broke into pieces first, then you will throw the rock.
To sum up, light speed is the limit of the universe. It is impossible to pass it and very strange things will happen if you manage to pass it.
Bibliography
https://evrimagaci.org/isik-hizi-ile-ilgili-temel-bilgiler-isik-hizini-neden-gecemeyiz-402 (Turkish)