Relativity 2
Classical Mechanics
Level
1
Why can't a massive object travel at the speed of light?
It would have to travel through time
It would require infinite energy
It would become infinite in length.
It can't have enough rest mass.
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1 solution
Particles that have mass require energy to accelerate them. The closer to the speed of light you get a particle, the more energy is required to go faster. This is because the particles themselves get more massive in proportion to the increased velocity. In short, the faster you go, the heavier you get.
Thanks to this inconvenient truth, if you wanted to accelerate a single electron to ‘light speed’, you would need an infinite amount energy due to the electron becoming infinitely heavy. There isn’t enough energy in the entire universe to propel just a single electron to the speed of light.