B Why Do Events Freeze For Me at the Speed of Light?

[RobbyQ]

TL;DR

Why Events Freeze For Me

Is my thinking correct ?
Assuming I can see you throughout my journey... If I accelerate away from Earth towards the speed of light and you are waving to me, I start to see your waving slow down and eventually at speed to light your waving stops like a photographic image. Almost like the last image I took of your photons relative to my speed. There is now no new information reaching me. i.e that last image is stuck with me forever ?

 

[jbriggs444]

TL;DR Summary: Why Events Freeze For Me

Is my thinking correct ?
Assuming I can see you throughout my journey... If I accelerate away from Earth towards the speed of light and you are waving to me, I start to see your waving slow down and eventually at speed to light your waving stops like a photographic image. Almost like the last image I took of your photons relative to my speed. There is now no new information reaching me. i.e that last image is stuck with me forever ?

Yes, there is a last instant of your home world's future that you will ever see.

However, this last instant is not seen when you reach the speed of light. It can't be. Because you never reach the speed of light. Instead, there is an instant (on Earth) when it passes beyond your Rindler horizon. Ideally, the light speed information from Earth never stops arriving. Though as a practical matter you'll see the Earth fade into red-shifted darkness long before that.

 

[PeroK]

What you see in a scenario like this depends on the travel time of light from an event on Earth to your spaceship. This sort of effect is not in itself relevant to the theory of relativity.

Indeed, in classical mechanics, you could in principle exceed the speed of light and you would see all sorts of weird effects in such a scenario.

Although the special theory of relativity can describe accelerating reference frames, it's more usual to present the basic theory in terms of inertial frames of reference.