2006-07-23 11:35:41 · 28 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
it is not possible to travel faster than light.
2006-07-24 08:15:44 · answer #1 · answered by rinjam 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Lots of theories. Here's mine. If you travelled faster than light, for all purposes you would reach the future. BUT to reach the future, it should exist. If it exists, it is the present. If it is the present, you are already in the past and would only reach the present. confused? reread it bit by bit.
TO explain why you would be able to reach the future, all perceptions of time are according to your sense of the external world. If you travelled faster than light, you will travel faster than the fastest sense you have, vision. So when you stop after travelling faster than light, you would have left behind the light which gave you the vision of the present. You will now be seeing light that has already originated before you started observing. Which is the future.
You will in no circumstance go to the past.
Now the practicallity of faster than light travel. Whenever a body speeds up, its mass increases, check the momentum formula. At slow speeds, like that of sound you do not really notice it. When you start approaching the speed of light, the mass increase will be noticable. The trend is exponential. the faster you go, the greater the propotional increase in mass. At the speed of light, you should theoretically have infinite mass. Sounds impossible? Not really, the total universe has infinite mass :-) maybe you will become a universe of your own and have time of your own. interesting?
2006-07-25 09:33:23 · answer #2 · answered by si11y13yte 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Look at it this way. If you could travel faster then the speed of light then if you shined a flash light forward the speed of the flashlight the light that is leaving the light is slower than your speed so you wouldn't see any light at all unless you made a very sharp turn then the light would not have time to bend around and you would see the arc of light which you couldn't see before you made the turn. If you went in a circle then you wouldn't see anything at all.
2006-07-23 18:44:23 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
If you subscribe to the thoery that time travels purely in a linear state, than no, the time travel would be just an illusion. Say you looked at an inhabited planet 20 light years away through a telescope. What you see is images 20 years old. If you transport intantaneously to that location you would have the impression that you've jumped forward, bu the passing of time would not have been affected, you'd just have out of date data for reference.
2006-07-23 18:45:21 · answer #4 · answered by xtowgrunt 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No, most physicist believe that you can't travel faster than light, however some physicist think that if you ever were able to break the light barrier, you travel backward in time. Traveling FORWARD in time is much easier. All you have to do is approach the speed of light.
2006-07-23 18:38:20 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
No you'd just have a nasty bump on your head when you run into something, only joking, i would say no because that would mean that light could travel forward in time too and it doesn't other wise we'd see light at night from the past when the sun is at the other side other planet.
2006-07-23 21:31:11 · answer #6 · answered by Dom 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I don't want to answer the question, as it has already been answered. I just want to correct Paul by saying that the light would still appear infront of the spacecraft, travelling at the speed of light, even if the spacecraft is moving that fast. But the light would also appear to move at the speed of light from a stationary point as the spacecraft passed it. Simple application of special relativity.
2006-07-23 18:56:09 · answer #7 · answered by Jacob G 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If you went 2 lightyears out into space and back again at light speed it would take you 4 years to do but you'd arrive back on earth a lot more than 4 years into the future of all on earth.
If you went there and came back at faster than light speed you would go bachwards in time.
In theory that is
2006-07-23 18:42:45 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
As far as we know, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. It is a sort of cosmic speed limit. You could, theoretically , approach the speed of light. Now as far as going forward in time, I will try to explain. As you sit in front of your monitor reading this text, you are moving forward through time. Time and space are relative The faster you move through space the faster you move through time. We are all traveling through space at the same speed because we are all on the same object (the Earth) traveling through space. If you were to get in a space vehicle and travel faster than the earth is moving through space, time would slow down, in relation to the time on Earth, because you're traveling through space faster than the Earth is traveling through space. So after you finished your journey through space and returned to Earth, everybody would be older than you. How much older would depend on how much faster you traveled through space and the duration of your journey.
2006-07-23 20:48:24 · answer #9 · answered by Tim C 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Traveling faster than the speed of light would make you infinitely massive, not cause you to go back in time.
2006-07-23 18:44:58 · answer #10 · answered by Suit of Flames 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The answer is no.
Consider this. It takes 8 minutes for sunlight to reach earth. So when you view the sun (not directtly of course), you are seeing it as it was 8 minutes before. You haven't travelled forward in time, because that event happened 8 minutes before. It just took that amount of time for it to reach your eyes.
Just the same as an echo. You shout, and it returns to you later as a sound and not an action.
2006-07-23 18:43:52 · answer #11 · answered by JeffE 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋