I dont remember all the equations and such, but I waas under the impression that time doesnt stop, it just moves much slower for you as you go faster. Say you leave on a ship traveling at the speed of light and explore the universe. A year later, or so it seems to you, you would come back only to find out, say, 1 milion years had passed on earth. Something to that affect. I have this channel at school that is basically just a NASA channel. For the most part it is very dry and borign, but sometimes it has cool "specials" on about the future of the space station and the future of telescopes, etc. They have all sorts of cool things "planned" to specifically study the orgins of the univers, black holes, that sort of thing. Looking at their computer generated telescopes makes NASA seem really really cool.
Yeah thats what I mean. I know time doesnt stop completely, it just slows down alot. I mean how can you tell time in space? When you are traveling in empty space you are not going to be going by earth time. That is why I want to know if anyone knows any good books on space time.
It would seem to me that getting to the speed of light would kind of be like going to infinity so as you get very close to it you might get that 1000000:1 ratio but if you ever hit light speed that would give an infinity:1 ratio which would be the equivalent of time stopping. I'm not saying I read that anywhere but I would just assume that the speed of light wouldn't give a finite value like 1000000 years to 1 but would just be infinity. On another note, where does the exact number for the speed of light come from. Is it some limit for some equation as mass goes to zero or something else goes to zero or is it derived some other way like just observations.
I would think that traveling at the speed of light would cause time to stop. I think the gradual slowdown you're talking about is as you approach the speed of light. If you were to graph the relationship of time to the speed of light, it would be an inverse relationship (duh) in which you have a vertical asymptote at v=c if v were graphed along the x-axis (where c = speed of light and v = your velocity). Correct? ... err... I iz a basketball fan, I iz sthoopid
francis, Here's a couple of ways it was done throughout history (and one of the most accurate originally put forth by Albert Michelson) : http://doversherborn-regional.k12.ma.us/~zachary_scott/relativity/light.html There are several ways to do it actually.
Sure you can tell time in space. The whole frame of reference thing comes into play. Your ship and you are the frame of reference for you to tell time. Nothing on the outside really matters. This is why someone travelling at the speed of light in a spaceship ages so slowly - his frame of reference has been slowed down while everyone on the outside's frame of reference remains the same. In other words, it doesn't matter if you're in space. If you're doing research, look into topics such as the Einstein-Lorentz transformations... it's really neat stuff. I used to love physics and astronomy as a kid but decided to do something else because I doubted that would pay the rent. I've probably forgotten a ton of the stuff that I knew as a kid, so a lot of this stuff is "as I remember"...
Never say never! I absolutely think we'll come up with ways to things as farfetched as travel across the solar system in days (if that long). I mean to put this in perspective, the first mass-produced car didn't get going till about 100 years ago. Computers? What the hell was that 100 years ago? Now we're talking about supersonic flights in planes. And that's just after 100 years. Some of the far-fetched stuff we're talking about now will be reality within the next 200-300 years. Here's something for you to ponder... think about those teleportation devices on Star Trek. Pretty radical, right? A few years ago, scientists took a sub-atomic particle, destroyed it, and created a duplicate of it a few feet away. If I recall correctly, the particle was basically faxed a few feet, then the original destroyed. Freaky! Of course this doesn't mean we'll be teleporting to work anytime soon, but the basis for the science is already there.
http://www.time-travel.com/welcome.htm And http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/database/Physics/Lists/relativity.html
If you are traveling neer the speed of light and you fire a idontknow I guess a baseball at neer the speed of light from the front of the vehicle would it go a faster than the speed of light
A guy named, Michio Kaku has written several books that are really easy to follow, and keep math to a minimum. The main one that comes to mind is called "Hyperspace". You can get a taste from his website, with this intresting overview on time travel.
This is a very fascinating read. I'm actually quite a fan of time-space theories. I'm sure some of you have seen Star Trek. As you know, the trekers travel faster than light with something called "warp drive". The idea behind this is that the warp drive stretches and "warps" space, therefore changing the laws of physics, and allowing a ship to travel faster than light. The idea is that space moves around the ship, and the ship moves within that area. So, while you're moving forward, space moves backward, allowing you to cover great distances quickly. Well, apparently this is a real theory, and someone has come up with mathematical equations that support the theory. I can't verify this, but if someone wants to conduct a search, it would provide more food for thought.
Thanks for the links guys. I'll check them out in a few minutes. I did get check out some books from the library, Black Holes Wormholes and Time Machines by Jim Al-Khalil. I have just started but the author who is a scientist claims that time does slow down alot near the speed of light. I will report anything else that might interest some of you. Also I checked out The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene which I havent started on yet.
Many of the technologies in Star Trek are plausible at least in theory. There is actually book written that covers the technologies used in the show here. I thought it was an interesting book, even though I'm not a Trekkie... ... no, really, I'm not.
Dr of Dunk, Here is a more recent experiment involving the same technology (I think). It involves trillions of atoms rather than just photons. Atom Experiment Brings Teleportation a Step Closer
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I have that issue somewhere. It had a dude in a train showing theories of time travel or something like that. Also touched on the String Theory and other proposed methods of time travel.
