Considering general relativity and the rule that NOTHING can travel faster than light due to time stopping, is “time stopping” relative as well?

Question

Light travels incredibly fast, and it’s the fastest. If I shot an electron near that speed, it gets progressively heavier the closer to the speed of light it gets. Time also slows in response to that 1 electron, as proven by many experiments. It slows because what if you shot the “near light speed” electron out of a gun while also going “near light speed”? This makes it so, no matter what, you will never exceed LS. If this is proven, and this electron was instead a house or a marble, it would still get heavier and time slow for it. What if, some how, you were able to see and comprehend that FAST moving marble/house? If the marble was to get closer and closer to LS, and heavier and heavier until it froze in time (because it was thus at max speed), why does only the marble freeze? What decides the edges of that marble or the edges of the particle? Or the edges of the electron? Why doesn’t the air around it also freeze? Or the dust or even other particles near it. Why ONLY what we believe to be the particle freezes in time?

For example, the electron that reaches LS and attempts to go faster would get heavy and it would freeze in time (as per the results of the prior experiments). What if a particle was beside it also going the exact same speed? They’d both obviously achieve the same result. What if, at the time they reached and were to exceed LS, they ran into another particle the exact moment they were to freeze? Would they all freeze or become heavy? Or would only the two electrons.

I know this is confusing, so I’ll condense all this to a single question: If something approaches LS and attempts to exceed it, what force decides what exactly freezes/becomes heavy?

Perhaps when they approach the speed of light, an invisible tunnel that facilitates their travel appears and only allows them to exist in it to freeze / become heavy.

Answer 1

As an object approaches the speed of light, it takes more energy to keep it moving so it will either slow down or stop when the energy runs out or it will burn up since objects with mass are not able to reach or withstand those speeds.

Theory of general relativity is a framework to understand physics. It was ground breaking because it states that speed you observe an object going is relative to the speed that YOU are going.... but you AND the object observe the speed of light as the same no matter what.

For example, if you're driving in a car going 80 mph, a car going 81 mph appears to be driving super slow... it appears to be only going 1 mph relative to you.

But relative to someone standing still, the same car is going super fast... 81 mph. But all 3 of you (you, the car going 81 mph, and the person standing still) will see light as always 299 792 458 m / s going no matter how fast (or slow) y'all are going, which makes speed of light a constant. Of course, this is assuming you're in a vaccum and going at a constant speed (non-accelerating bodies)

With that said ONLY photons can travel the speed of light, and they have no mass.

As an object travels faster, it does get "heavier" because it takes more energy to increase the object's velocity. E= 1/2 m*v². And it would take an INFINITE amount of energy for an object with mass to reach the speed of light. As a particle with mass approaches the speed of light, its energy increases and becomes infinite at the speed of light, which is the reason why it can never be accelerated to reach that speed. E = Mc² shows the relation between mass and energy. c² = E/m, therefore, for a particle to reach the speed of light, m --> 0 (mass approaches 0). If m --> 0, then E --> ∞.

I don't think time dilation comes into play. Time dilation is a framework showing that as we approach the speed of light, we experience time different relative to another. If you shot a marble at near speed of light and was going near the speed of light, you can calculate time relative to each other with time dilation formulas. But, it wouldn't freeze in time, it would slow down (bc who has infinite energy lying around) or blow up because a marble or a house can only physically withstand so much energy without breaking down to its core components .

Basically, as an object approaches the speed of light, it takes more energy to keep it moving so it will either slow down or stop when the energy runs out or it will burn up since objects with mass are not able to reach or withstand those speeds.