Question: why does time slow down as you get to the speed of light

Ciarán O'Brien answered on 14 Nov 2014:

That’s one of the hardest questions out there 🙂

Nobody fully knows why time changes as you speed up It depends on where you’re standing; Nodoy would FEEL time moving any differently, but from the point of view of the traveller time would appear to speed by faster, while from the point of view of someone watching them, time seems to slow down only for the traveller. The fact that they’re both right at the same time can be very, very confusing.

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity managed to put the effect into numbers, so we know how much time will change when something moves very fast, but the reasons why are still a bit of a mystery.

Einstein figured out that time was just another dimension, like up/down, backwards/forwards and left/right, and he also found out that it was distorted by travelling fast and by gravity. He also figured out that as something travelled faster, its mass would increase, which just doesn’t make sense to anyone without a degree in advanced physics. It’s very hard to picture anything beyond the three dimensions we’re all used to, and trying to do maths that has to account for that extra dimension is a nightmare.