Exploring the Universe: How Does the Speed of Light Impact Our Understanding of the Cosmos?

Light, the fastest thing in our universe, sparks up a curious question in your heads ; The possibility of reaching its speed. Well, light travels at a incredible speed of 186,293 miles per second. So, Is it really possible to reach its speed. Sorry to disappoint you, but according to Einstein's theory: nothing can travel faster than light. That is because; when an object accelerates forward with light speed its mass increases due to the energy added by its motion. For instance, if a 10,000 kg rocket travels 10% the speed of light its mass increases to approximately 10,005 kg. When it accelerates closer to light speed, its mass approaches infinity, which needs an impossible amount of energy to keep accelerating. Because we can't generate infinite energy, reaching the speed of light is impossible according to our current understanding of physics. Nevertheless, let us set aside these limitations and explore what would happen if we accelerated to light speed. As we travel at the speed of light, our first worry will be collisions at high velocity as even the tiniest of dust would emit massive damage. So to proceed our exploration further, let us imagine that our ship had been constructed with a very rigid material that repels dangerous objects. As our shuttle increases speed, the stars that pass will fade and shift to red while those approaching us will turn blue due to the Doppler Effect. This occurs because our high speed compresses that wavelengths coming at the front and stretches the ones at the back of the rocket. Another phenomenon that occurs is Time Dilation, a phase that slows down time for us relative to those on Earth. Say we traveled to a far of star, it will feel instantaneous for us but thousands of years would pass on Earth. One of the other phenomenon's is Length Contraction. When we travel at light speed, the distance actually seems shorter; in other words if feels the universe is shrinking in the direction that we are going in. However, length contraction is hard to see. If we pass a planet, it seems squished but as light from the back of the planet takes longer to reach us it seems rotated. This is called the Terrell - Penrose- rotation. Lastly as we travel the speed of light, it will leave a bright spot at front and darkness behind. But no matter how much we accelerate, we will never achieve light speed, light will always move away from us at that constant speed.