Einstein's Theory of Relativity- Perception of my world changed once I understood!!

Actually it's not, this is one of the fundamental discoveries of Albert Einstein.

No they don't, because they are matter. Protons, neutrons, and electrons all have mass, and anything with mass cannot attain the speed of light, for a very simple reason: As acceleration increases, so does mass. As acceleration reaches the speed of light, mass becomes infinite. You would need infinite energy to mobilize something that weighs infinity. Matter can never reach the speed of energy.

Maybe you are thinking of photons. Yes but they didn't reach the speed of light, as in, at some point they were slower than the speed of light, and then sped up and reached the speed of light. Photons, gravitons, and other pure-energy quantum particles are never not at the speed of light, they have the opposite problem as it were, you cannot slow down a photon to walking speed and walk along side it, it will always travel at the full speed of light (as permissible through medium).

One of Einstein's most powerful contributions to our understanding of the universe is that space and time are utterly inseperable entities, and we should only always speak of spacetime. Planets are moving through time as well, both in the sense that their acceleration alters time relative to outside observers, and in the sense that their own gravity alters time relative to outside observers. Double whammy of altering time. This hints at another great symmetry from Einstein: Acceleration = Mass = Acceleration

It is shown to you in a 2 dimensional model for simplicity. A three dimensional rendition of what spacetime curvature looks like is simply incredibly complicated to create in a computer program, it's easier to just warp a flat plane and explain that the warping happens to all 3 spatial dimensions and to time as well.

As you can see many planets have highly elliptical orbits, and are not on the same plane. For a more dramatic demonstration of possible orbits, here's a picture of the known orbits of some comets around our sun.

 

Thanks Mr. Writer. Well I don't recall as to ever having seen anyone explain that it was only a two-dimensional representation for simplicity's sake. I still wonder what the actual process looks like. Being able to imagine things is so important, I don't think it's fair of them to pollute my mind with this 2D garbage!