A mind-blowing explanation of the speed of light | Michelle Thaller

Light exists outside of time.

- The only things that travel at the speed of light are photons.

- Nothing with any mass at all can travel at the speed of light because as it gets closer and closer to the speed of light, its mass increases.
And if it were actually traveling at the speed of light, it would have an infinite mass.

- Light does not experience space or time. It's not just a speed going through something. All of the universe shifts around this constant, the speed of light. Time and space itself stop when you go that speed.

Dr. Michelle Thaller is an astronomer who studies binary stars and the life cycles of stars. She is Assistant Director of Science Communication at NASA. She went to college at Harvard University, completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif. then started working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Spitzer Space Telescope. After a hugely successful mission, she moved on to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), in the Washington D.C. area. In her off-hours often puts on about 30lbs of Elizabethan garb and performs intricate Renaissance dances. For more information, visit NASA.

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