[breuleux]

> The reason time dilates as you approach the speed of light is because the faster a particle moves, the more the main loop must access that particle, and the more the particle's state may be in a "being processed" lock where it can't be mutated by anything else.

There's a simpler reason, I think. Any mechanism or "clock" must have moving parts of sorts (atoms, exchange particles like photons, etc.) which means that when functioning or "ticking", some parts move faster than some other parts. But if the mechanism is moving at the maximum speed, it can only be the case that some parts move at c, and others move slower, but these slower parts can never catch up, so the clock disintegrates. It can only remain whole if all parts move at maximum speed, which means it is static: it is frozen in time.

I imagine that given a speed distribution for all components of the mechanism, there would be a smooth time dilation effect as the speed of the whole mechanism increases. I'd have to calculate. In any case, I think time dilation is basically necessary in a system with a maximum speed. I'd expect to see something similar in cellular automata, regarding complex objects that can move at various speeds.