Special relativity states that time slows down for matter objects as they move faster to keep the speed of light constant. Einstein didn’t give a reason but in this model, it is because moving faster increases the load on the quantum network, so our life slows down at high speed for the same reason that a game screen slows down in a big battle (2.3.1).
His example of an astronaut who returns after years of high-speed space travel to find that his twin on earth is an old man then could happen. Experiments confirm that a muon traveling at 99.5% of the speed of light, which should travel 300 meters in its millionth of a second life, actually travels 3,000m, so speed extended its life tenfold. Relativity lets a rocket accelerating at one g go to our nearest galaxy and back in 60 years, but it would return to an earth that is four million years older (Harrison, 1986, p157). For the rocket crew, time would pass as usual, but one of their years is thousands of years on earth, so they are actually in slow motion.
Relativity implies that time stops at the speed of light, so a matter clock sitting on a photon wouldn’t tick at all. Light from the Andromeda galaxy takes 2.5 million of our years to arrive on earth but according to relativity, no time at all passes for the light itself. It also starts and ends its journey at the same location by length contraction! Needless to say, this makes no sense, as how can light move at all if its time stops? It can’t, so matter time can’t apply to light.
Time passes for matter when life events occur, but light can travel for millions of years without a physical event, so its time doesn’t pass that way. For light, time ticks by as the network passes it on, but for matter, time only passes as physical events occur. The definitions are different, so time for light is based on absolute quantum cycles, but time for matter is based on life events which, as will be seen, don’t occur when it moves. Light then is the ultimate messenger because it never stops for itself but constantly moves on, in absolute time, as fast as our universe allows.