But doesn't that work for only one direction?, I mean here on earth if look at the Andromeda galaxy we are seeing the galaxy what it looked like 2.3 million years ago, because it takes the light time to travel to our eyes. If we were to move away from the galaxy at the speed of light then time would seem to stop because we would be moving with the light and thus we would always see it at 2.3 millions light years away, right?, but if we begin to travel toward the galaxy instead well now are we not seeing the galaxy at a younger age, because we started at 2.3 m light years away but now were only 2 million light years away, now 1 million, etc. so are we not in effect going back in time not stopping it?
2006-08-11 19:34:40 · 9 answers · asked by Sentinel 3 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
Relativity says you cannot accelerate mass from a velocity less than light's to a velocity equal to or greater than light's. Basically, you can never reach the speed of light, so it's silly to ask what would happen if you did.
Nonetheless, according to your thinking, traveling toward the galaxy would make you see its time pass MORE quickly, not in reverse. But I think you should look up blueshift.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueshift
However, you might be thinking about time dilation...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation
2006-08-11 19:50:09 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Really, there is no such thing as time. There is only movement.
Time was created by man out of desperation in order to survive and is only relative to the passing of the sun and the moon here on earth. If you travel 2.3 million earth years in any direction, you will be 2.3 million earth years older when you arrive. If you leave New York at 12PM and travel for six hours to San Francisco. It will be 3PM in San Francisco when you arrive but you will have aged 6 earth hours. The passage of time as man created it is not relative to the speed of light.
Movement in the universe was created by the vacuum. Universal movement is a remnant of the original movement which was faster than the speed of light. As matter overwhelmed the vacuum, gravity and friction reduced universal speed enough that complex matter and the resulting universe could exist.
But since the vacuum was infinite, movement has no reference except to other matter which is moving which means that universal time has no reference. If Andromeda was moving at Mach 3 and our galaxy was moving at Mach 2 in the same direction, the speed of light as a measurement has no meaning and time has no meaniing and we have no idea how far Adromeda is away from us because unbeknownst to us it's been moving away from us at Mach 1 for 2.3 million light years which would make it over 120 million light years away. It may not even exist now.
There was only then and there is only now and you really don't know if you're coming or going.
2006-08-11 20:29:06 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
You asked two questions. It doesn't matter which direction you are going... time is relative. Which means: You are the person which is tracking time. If you are going the speed of light, you still experience time in the same manner as if you were not going so fast. However, to people literally standing still in space, they would seem to you (relatively speaking) to be falling behind you in time. If you had a clock with you, time would be the same. If the people standing still had a clock, they would not notice anything but compared to your clock, theirs would be far behind. Einstein described this in his Special Theory of Relativity. The second part of your question concerns the "red shift" which means that light rays coming towards you shift to the blue part of the specturm, and light rays moving away from you shift to the red part. Andromeda is actually moving towards us....so moving towards it would "cut the time".
2006-08-11 20:18:20 · answer #3 · answered by Scotty 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If you are travelling near the speed of light (or any speed fot that matter) you will not experience any difference in time. That is the principle of relativity: travelling at a uniform speed in a straight line is not detectable by physical experiment without reference to an external object. However, someone who is stationary with respect to your motion would observe that your time will stop if you travel at the speed of light.
2006-08-11 19:52:37 · answer #4 · answered by gp4rts 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The time you are inquiring about is not the time referred to in special relativity. What that is about is this: Suppose that a spacecraft is passing you at nearly the speed of light, and there is a large clock on it which you can read with a telescope. It will appear that that clock is running slow with respect to your wristwatch. Meanwhile, the passengers on the spacecraft notice nothing different about anything going on there, but if one of them looks at your wristwatch through a telescope, he will conclude that YOUR clock is running slow. And, yes, if in fact you are traveling at the speed of light, time stops. But only photons can do that.
2006-08-11 19:56:38 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Hello I am 13 and in 8th grade honors and I like this subject.
Yes you will be seeing the Andromeda galaxy at a younger age
or how it looks like in the present because it
takes a shorter time for light to reach you as you
move toward it.
2006-08-11 19:52:20 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
T' = T/ Square root (1-v^2/c^2) at the speed of light...time becomes undefined, you can't do that.
As you approach the speed of light, the amount of time it takes for you to do things, is less than the time it takes for others.
2006-08-11 20:20:05 · answer #7 · answered by adklsjfklsdj 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There is some theory that If you go fast enough youl go faster than time and b the same age when u stop but others will b older
2006-08-11 19:38:28 · answer #8 · answered by puddingizcool 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
i don't think so.
2006-08-11 20:00:39 · answer #9 · answered by dpala 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋