Special relativity is beyond weird. Among its many statements are that moving clocks run slow and that moving rulers shrink. But how are we supposed to make sense of this? To understand the physics of relativity, we have to dip back in time a bit.
In 1865, James Clerk Maxwell discovered that what we call "light" is really waves of electricity and magnetism. But like all waves, these waves needed to wave through something. Sound waves move through air. Ocean waves move through oceans. So Maxwell believed light waves traveled through a substance known today as the appropriately old-timey "luminiferous aether."
