"The strangest explanation was put forth by an Irish physicist, George Francis Fitzgerald. Perhaps, he said, the ether wind puts pressure on a moving object, causing it to shrink a bit in the direction of motion. To determine the length of a moving object, its length at rest must be multiplied by the following simple formula, in which \scriptstyle v^2 is the velocity of the object multiplied by itself, \scriptstyle c^2 is the velocity of light multiplied by itself: \scriptstyle \sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}. ...The speed of light in an unobtainable limit; when this is reached the formula becomes \scriptstyle \sqrt{1-\frac{c^2}{c^2}} which reduces to 0. ...In other words, if an object could obtain the speed of light, it would have no length at all in the direction of its motion!"