The speed limit on most freeways is from 90 to 110 kilometers. Although there are no road signs in the vacuum of outer space, there is also a speed limit there - it is 10.8 billion kilometers per hour.

The highest speed in nature

This is the highest speed of light in nature. Scientists usually give the speed of light in kilometers per second - 300,000 kilometers per second. Light is made up of photons. It is they who can fly at such a crazy speed.

Particular particles - photons

Scientists call photons particles. But these are very peculiar particles. They have no rest mass, that is, in the usual sense, they have no weight. It is hard to imagine something so real that it would be pure energy and not contain a grain of matter. Photons are such a reality. It is interesting to compare the limiting speed of photons with those speeds that we used to consider large.

A spacecraft flying at the speed of light would not have linear dimensions for an outside observer. Take, for example, the Pioneer rocket, built for flights outside the solar system. So, leaving the limits of the Solar system, the “Pioneer” had a speed of 60 kilometers per second. Not bad! He could cover the distance from New York to San Francisco in a minute and a half. But compared to the photon speed of 300,000 kilometers per second, the speed of the "Pioneer" looks just like a turtle. Or let's see how fast the Sun moves in space.

But the time that you read this sentence, the Sun, the Earth and the other eight planets of our solar system rush around the Milky Way, like carousel horses, at a speed of 230 kilometers per second (at the same time we don’t notice at all that we are flying with such an incredible speed). But this huge speed is very small compared to the speed of light and is about one percent of it.

The speed of light and objects

If you accelerate an ordinary object to near light speed, unusual adventures will begin to occur with it. When the body reaches such speeds, the observer will notice a change in the linear dimensions and mass of the object. Even time will begin to change. A spacecraft flying at a speed of 90 percent of the speed of light will decrease in size by about half. With increasing speed, it will decrease more and more, until upon reaching the speed of light it completely loses its linear dimensions.

Astronauts on board the ship will perceive themselves to be completely unchanged, the ship for them will remain - the same as it was before launch. However, looking out the window, they will see a flattened space. At a speed equal to 90 percent of the speed of light, the spacecraft itself and everything on board will triple in mass. Again, on board, none of the passengers will notice this.

With increasing speed, the mass will increase, while at the speed of light, the mass will not become infinitely large. Scientists know that this is real, because when particles are accelerated in accelerators to near light speeds, their mass rapidly increases.

Speed ​​of light and time

No less strange phenomena occur in this case and with time.If outside observers could look at the onboard clock, they would be surprised to find that time has slowed down. For passengers, no changes will occur over time. When the speed of light is reached, the ship’s watch for an outside observer will simply stop.