text: if time slows when nearing the speed of light would light "think" it took less than a year to go 1 light year? i'm puzzled by the time paradox of near-light-speed travel. if time would seem to pass more slowly to a high-speed traveller, why wouldn't it also seem to pass more slowly from the perspective of light, itself? in other words, why do we say that it takes light a year to travel a light year? to us, perhaps, it does, but from the light's perspective, wouldn't it take much less time to go that distance, or even no time at all? and, if not, why not? if you were traveling at the speed of light, which would basically make you light itself, time would never pass and you would be unaware of the concept of time.   when you talk about the light year, that's a measurement of distance- the distance that something traveling at 180,000 miles per second goes in a year.  i know that it's confusing, because then you get into the concepts of proper and coordinate time, and proper and coordinate distance. basically, if you are traveling at exactly the speed of light, which you cannot do, from your perspective it would take no time to travel anywhere, and therefore you would travel no distance.  it's pretty freaky stuff. we look at it a different way because we have a different perspective and travel at a different speed. gosh i love relativity.