I have only a layman's comprehension of physics. Despite that I'm boldly plunging into a new piece of writing about physics and have started to read around the subject as background. Naturally I'm stumped by the material, but there's one thing that really bugs me in my ignorance and I'd be very grateful if anyone could unravel my confusion for me. But only with recourse to words please! Any mathematical proofs will be completely over my head. Besides, equations and novels don't often make comfortable bedfellows.
Einstein's thought experiments that led to his two theories of relativity, were posited around the speed of light. The 'fixed', unvarying vantage of an observer was shown to be false at speeds approaching the speed of light. If an observer was actually travelling along a beam at light at its speed of 186,000 mps, then all sorts of strange things happen to space and time within his/her observations at that speed.
But my question is, if the observer is travelling at the speed of light, so that everything becomes the present, with no discernible past, then what happens to the light itself? If there is only the present, then is the light actually moving? Would the light not just be present everywhere simultaneously? And yet we know that light is an energy source, it originates from some star burning fuel somewhere and that the energy moves through space and time. If the observer is travelling on the light beam, then relative to him/her the light isn't moving at all?
If anyone can help sort out this muddle in my mind I'd be terribly grateful and you'd get an acknowledgement in the novel too!
Thanks in anticipation
