Is the speed of time the same as the speed of light?

Answer 1

"speed of time" implies a derivative with respect to time. a derivative of something with respect to itself is always constant. so the speed of time is a circularly defined concept.

Answer 2

The only reason behind the existence of the Special Theory of Relativity is the experimental fact that the speed of light is independent of any motion of the source or receiver. This is because the usual concept of speed is inconsistent with the invariance of c unless one redefines length and time units accordingly.
In his paper 'On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies' (published in 1905), Einstein derives his theory by considering the propagation of a light signal in two different reference frames, essentially in the following way:
he first examines the propagation the light signal needs to travel a given distance x in the system of the source, which is given by
(1) x(t) = ct ,

where t is the time and c is the speed of light. Here the speed of light is
(2) dx(t)/dt = c ,

as required.
Then he considers the propagation in a system moving with speed v relative to the source, i.e.
(3) x'(t) = ct-vt =(c-v)t .

Here the speed is obviously
(4) dx'(t)/dt = c-v ,

which contradicts the requirement that it should have the same value c in all reference frames.
In order to remedy the situation, Einstein therefore concludes that the space and time coordinates have to be re-scaled (dependent on the velocity), which leads to the well known formulae identical to the Lorentz Transformation. This re-definition of the original length and time units in order to be able apply the usual addition of velocities (Eq.(3)) is clearly invalid (believing that it is correct is like believing that one could fit a car into a 1 meter wide parking space just by measuring the car with a correspondingly expanded ruler unit).
In addition to this argument regarding the consistency of the physical definitions (which is further illustrated by the thought experiment in the box below), it can anyway be shown that Einstein's derivation of the Lorentz Transformation is mathematically inconsistent (see here for more).

Obviously, the propagation of light signals has to be described by a completely different concept of 'speed' than the usual one applied by Einstein:
the invariance of c can only mean that the time T for a light signal to travel from the source to the observer does not depend on the velocity of either of them but only on their distance x(t=0) at the time of the emission , i.e.
(5) T = x(t=0)/c .

The mental picture of light as an entity travelling independently through space is therefore wrong; if one wants c to be truly invariant, there can only be a moment of emission and a moment of detection, and the 'speed' of light is simply given by the difference between the two and the distance at the instant of emission. One might ask how the light signal 'knows' what this distance is, but this would be a metaphysical question like the one how the earth knows how to react to the gravitational pull of the sun. It is just a law of nature.
This circumstance could for instance be of relevance for the apparent anomalous acceleration (slowdown) of the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecrafts, as the traditional way of calculating the travel time of the communication signal underestimates the corresponding distance approximately by the observed mismatch (it is obvious that for the speeds involved (10s of km/sec) this problem will only become apparent for large distances, as observed).

Answer 3

No...the speed of light is 670 million miles per hour no matter what, but by "the speed of time" do you mean how fast time goes? Like, by seconds? Or the smallest measurable amount of time, maybe, the time it takes everything to age by the smallest increment? Time pretty much goes the same speed everywhere in the universe..

Answer 4

Time is a factor in the measure of the speed of light. Speed is determined by how far something goes in a certain increment of time. Therefore they can't be the same. How fast does time go? One second per second I guess.

Answer 5

There is no speed of time. There is no one general reference point for time. Depending on how fast you are moving determines your "local speed of time" to someone moving at a different velocity, you will look like you are moving faster or slower than they are.

Time is just another dimension we move in. The 3 we see everyday is the world we live in. Up/Down, Back/forth and side to side. We move though those 3 dimensions everyday. Since our velocity is for all intents and purposes constant, we don't experience a change in the time dimension.

Answer 6

From the below table one can understand the speed of light is different for different references. This also shows that time is something artificial that man introduced strictly based on the revolution Earth makes around the Sun. The fundamental measure of speed of light is the number of times of earth revolutions that light makes while earth makes one revolution around the sun and that is 9.4608*10^12 km/938,900,000km (Earth's orbit distance)=10,076.5. This means light can make more than just 10,000 revolutions around the sun in one Earth year or 365 Eart days.This is a comparison between two events from which we derived our TIME. Thus there is no such thing as speed of time. (The table is prepared assuming 24 hours/day, 60 minutes per hour and 60 seconds/minute. X is an arbitrary planet.)

Planet..........Days............c (km/s)
Earth...........365.............. 300,000
Mercury.......88................ 1,244,318
Venus..........58................ 1,887,931
X...................2..................... 54,750,000
Pluto............90410.5........ 1,211

Answer 7

NO. In a very basic four dimension universe, time is one of those, and remember the mind experiments proposed by Einstein. In order to have ONE constant that binds together the laws of physics (c, the speed of light), even time bends and is relative to the observer.

Answer 8

The speed of sound is 34 metres\sec, and the speed of light is a lot faster.Is'nt that the reason why u see an aeroplane before u hear it?

Answer 9

I assume your question is facetious. Look up speed of light - as I recall it's vicinity of 186,000 miles per second.

A more interesting question would be: is this the absolute speed of any matter as postulated by Einsteinian physics? Or will we every have a warp drive?

Regarding time: consider that we only agree that it is linear. Suppose it isn't. The fun begins.

Answer 10

No, the speed of time is a man-made concept, whereas the speed of light is a scientific concept overlayed on the speed of time.

Answer 11

No, wrong time concept.
There is no such thing as " A passage of time" ,or "a stream of time".

Time is used to label a sequence of events, and there is nothing more about it. In fact, the time interval is not absolute and depends on situations. Time in a system can be dilated if the system is travelling at high speed.