traveling at light speed

[route46]

anyone else lost im looking for the michelle keegan thread

 

[a.woollam]

is this statement correct thet if we travel at the speed of light we would return to earth to find our childrens children have died of old age but yet we are well within our life span, so if correct my question is age as we know it relates only to earth eg a week old then a month old then a year old and so on, in space we can not relate to age as on earth as the cycle of time is not present however the body ages the same if you were on earth or on the other side of the universe so if you travel'd for ten years at the speed of light away from earth and then for 10 years back to earth and your age was 20 on departure you would be 40 on return but have outlived your childrens children
am i missing somthing here like the earth ages faster?

<a class="postlink" href="http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_does_time_slow_down_at_the_speed_of_light" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_does_time ... d_of_light</a>

As you move faster, the rate at which time passes for you is slower in comparison to the rate at which time passes on earth.

As long as you know how fast you are going you can work out the relation between the passing of time on earth and the passing of time where you are

Also the Earth's orbit or rotation are not used to define time, the second is defined using atomic clocks, which can be taken on your flight and don't relate to our planet

 

[metalblue]

If that is the case in your example of running around the room for 1 hour at light speed you would not live long enough to do it as your body is still relative to me, just because we conceive time differently it just means you life expectancy would go from say 75 years to say 30 minutes (or whatever the calculation turned out to be).

You are getting confused old man. ;-)

The faster you go then the slower times go (for you) relative to someone travelling slower. So no, you don't age at the same rate.

Well if you nippers were to stop tearing around the place at the speed of light I might keep up ;-)

I guess it's not something I can just skim read, pfft looks like I'll have to read some more...it's truely fascinating but my brain is telling me it's bonkers (sadly it appears my brain is wrong)

 

[Skashion]

Will everyone please stop talking about everyday objects moving at the speed of light. Anything with rest mass cannot move at the speed of light. You are merely showing your own lack of knowledge when you say it because the outcomes you give are not possible.

 

[roaminblue]

The faster an object moves, the greater its mass. As mass increases so does the objects gravitational field. Time moves slower in these circumstances, hence if an object was moving at the speed of light it will experience slower passage of time; while those back on earth would carry on

 

[SWP's back]

Will everyone please stop talking about everyday objects moving at the speed of light. Anything with rest mass cannot move at the speed of light. You are merely showing your own lack of knowledge when you say it because the outcomes you give are not possible.

We know nothing with mass can travel at the speed of light but we are talking hypotheticals and it is easier than writing "90% of the speed of light" every time.

Einstein also used the same terminology for his thought experiments (despite knowing that travelling at that speed is impossible), so if it's good for him I shall continue.

 

[mcfcphil]

Time is relative to what? It's surely a human concept, our bodies deteriorate our organs fail and we die...it doesn't matter if that is measured in years, months and days or by the number of grains of sand I can count until I die...speed of travel surely has no bearing on that.

You're looking at it in the wrong way. You can't think of time as being linear. If you really want to know put time dilation into google and you'll have all the answers.
But it is actually true that, very simply speaking, if you travel at the speed of light other people will age quicker than you. Although saying "quicker" is misleading because obviously their bodies don't go into some rapid decomposition - it's all relative.
For example if i sprinted round the room at the speed of light for about an hour and then sat back down in my seat, everyone who was in the room when i started my run would have died.

google time dilation

I had a google and that is some fascinating stuff way beyond my brain but the bit I struggle to grasp is this concept of relativity of simultaneity. I understand if I observe two stars exploding at the same time on earth it may have occured at very different times relative to me (and ergo relative to each other) but I don't understand how two events can occur relative to each other but independently relative to either of the observers...the train-and-platform experiment suggests that if the light was "fired" as someone on the platform and someone on the train passed each other we would see the light "hit" the back of the train at different times, however surely the light would travel slower for the person on the platform (as the source providing light moved away) thus it would hit the back of the train relative to both of us...consider if the train was moving at the speed of light as it passed the observer on the platform surely the light beam fired would appear stationary to me. If that is the case in your example of running around the room for 1 hour at light speed you would not live long enough to do it as your body is still relative to me, just because we conceive time differently it just means you life expectancy would go from say 75 years to say 30 minutes (or whatever the calculation turned out to be).

Yes much of it is beyond me as well – i’m just interested in it and read up as much as i can. I wish i had the mental capacity to fully understand it but sadly i don’t.
There was a documentary on a while ago that looked at black holes and how Einstein and hawking’s theories have big problems with them now that people are discovering more about quantum physics. Basically people disproved Einstein and hawking (but in the end it was accepted that everyone was correct but in a different way as different rules apply to different “realms”) Incredible stuff but no way i can tell you exactly what it was.
But one of the things in it was as you say – how can an event look different from two people observing it. One example was if you saw someone falling into a black hole, the person falling would appear stationary to the person watching. But to the person falling everything would look like they’re falling rapidly into a black hole.
It really is astonishing stuff

 

[Skashion]

Will everyone please stop talking about everyday objects moving at the speed of light. Anything with rest mass cannot move at the speed of light. You are merely showing your own lack of knowledge when you say it because the outcomes you give are not possible.

We know nothing with mass can travel at the speed of light but we are talking hypotheticals and it is easier than writing "90% of the speed of light" every time.

Einstein also used the same terminology for his thought experiments (despite knowing that travelling at that speed is impossible), so if it's good for him I shall continue.

You could easily use the term relativistic speeds.

 

[SWP's back]

Will everyone please stop talking about everyday objects moving at the speed of light. Anything with rest mass cannot move at the speed of light. You are merely showing your own lack of knowledge when you say it because the outcomes you give are not possible.

We know nothing with mass can travel at the speed of light but we are talking hypotheticals and it is easier than writing "90% of the speed of light" every time.

Einstein also used the same terminology for his thought experiments (despite knowing that travelling at that speed is impossible), so if it's good for him I shall continue.

You could easily use the term relativistic speeds.

Tell that to Einstein.

 

[metalblue]

Will everyone please stop talking about everyday objects moving at the speed of light. Anything with rest mass cannot move at the speed of light. You are merely showing your own lack of knowledge when you say it because the outcomes you give are not possible.

We know nothing with mass can travel at the speed of light but we are talking hypotheticals and it is easier than writing "90% of the speed of light" every time.

Einstein also used the same terminology for his thought experiments (despite knowing that travelling at that speed is impossible), so if it's good for him I shall continue.

You could easily use the term relativistic speeds.

Personally I don't think I got enough credit for using "independently relative"...