About relativity and the speed of light?

Question

Imagine I am 100 light years away from earth. Suppose I have a telescope powerful enough to observe a baby being born. I now travel at .99999% (the limit of 1-) of the speed of light back to Earth. I keep watching the baby. Suppose babies always die in exactly 100 years. At what point in my travel will I see that baby die?

It should be less than 100 years right? Because when I return home (in 100.000...1 years) the baby should be just a pinch over 200 years old. That implies that I observe the baby's life in fast forward?

If nothing travels faster than the speed of light, how am I intersecting photons of light/waves/whatever at a closing speed of higher than the speed of light? Explain.

Thanks folks. It's time to fish out the Modern Physics book. It's no wonder I dropped Intro to Quantum Mechanics and went into Statistics. This is wacky stuff. I like my mathematics and theories to be more tangible.

Now that I have found this place, I promise to ask more dumb questions to make Mr. Quantum's head hurt more.

Answer 1

This hurts just thinking about it. So, photon A carrying informatin about the birth of the baby goes off towards you. Next photon we label is called photon B [betcha knew that, huh]. Photon B is information from baby birth plus one minute. Both photons move a precislely the speed of light. To an observer stationary relative to the baby's frame of refence, the photons are 1 minute apart. To you, moving at those photons, you would receieve them in less than a minute apart. They, according to the baby's space and time, would be slices of the baby's frame of reference one minute apart which have an interval of baby time of one minute between them. To you, they would be slices containing information one minute apart that would have an interval of YOUR time of less than a minute between them. They would still approach you at c. So, just what effect would this cause? This is where the ache in headache really gets going. The baby's time and your time are different. In 100 of the baby's time years it would die. I don't even want to pretend to do the math, so for sake of argument in 10 years of YOUR time the baby would die. How long did you travel at .99999c in whose time, your time or the baby's time? You can get two different answers for the distance you travelled and both answers are absolutely correct. It's all relative to the observer.

Addendum I just couldn't resist: jimbo wiz whatever, light waves only ever travel at c. They NEVER go faster than c. That is how Einstein proved space and time are not absolute. A light ray or photon no matter the motion of the source or the observer will always be observed as moving at precisely c. You cannot add your speed to the speed of light. You must dilate time and warp space to make c equal c.

Answer 2

interesting

- you're 100 light years away. People on earth live 100 years. So by the time you see the baby being born, 100 years will have passed since its birth, so the person is dying.
- you'd have had to wait another 100 years to see the person dying
- but you decide to travel back to Earth, at nearly the speed of light (call it the speed of light if you want), so your trip will take 100 years. This means you are moving to intercept "sooner" the light with the information that the person has died. You will intercept it after 50 years of travel. So yes, you'll see the baby's life in "fast forward" (2x faster exactly).
- if you go on until you've reached Earth, you'll reach it 100 years after the person (baby) has died.

- the photons you will intercept will be going at the speed of light, irrespective of your own speed. that's the only speed photons travel at

Answer 3

There are flaws in the question, one is:
"At what point in my travel will I see that baby die? It should be less than 100 years right?". The problem is that you give a duration (100 years) without giving the referential : yours, or the baby's ?

In the baby's referential, you see him die in 100 years + the time for light to go to you (to be calculated, quite small since your travel last 100 years + epsilon).

In your referential, since you are traveling at (1 - epsilon) x light speed, it will be almost at the same time that you go, because your travel time is almost null.

For the baby, you travel will be (100 + epsilon) years long.
For you, it will be almost instantaneous (excepted for acceleration/deceleration times).

So another flaw is to say that the baby will be 200 years old. He will be 100 hundred years old. You say 200 maybe because you think that for you the travel lasts 100 years too, but as said before, this is the mistake of mixing the referentials.

However, yes, you observe the baby's life in (very) fast forward. Which is perfectly normal, since you are going in the opposite direction of photons. And there is nothing about going faster than light here.

Answer 4

If you are at the planet 100 ly from earth, u will actually see the birht of the baby 100 years later than he was actually born. Acc to earth time he would have already died when u saw him being born. Now even if u travel back to earth with the speed of light, u would still take almost 100 years, so u would see him die near about 100 later then the baby actually die.

Answer 5

Piece of cake: the baby will be dead almost at the instant you see it being born, as the light that your telescope is 'magnifying' still had to travel to the lens to be magnified. If you travel to earth, as you suggest, you'd get there just about 100 years (earth time) after the baby's death. Of course, on your magical space ship that allows you to achieve .99 LS, only a few seconds will have passed.

Answer 6

It's all relative. You are in a rocket travellin nearly the
speed of light. Yet, if you shine a flashlight off of it
the light travels at your speed + the speed of light,
which would actually be 2X speed of light to an
observer standing on a planet as you were travelling
by. Since the baby died exactly when you first saw
it, it would not matter.
You were 100 LY away and observed it in a telescope.
The light took 100 years to reach you.

Answer 7

You're 100 light-years away, and babies live to be 100.

The baby will die about a minute before you arrive, because you're traveling at sublight.

Answer 8

O.K. this is easy. (I like it too)
Since you are traveling to the baby at near c,
and the light waves refracted off the baby that get to your eyes
are coming to you at c,
then you will see the baby as it is born after 50 years.
you will see it's life at twice as fast

It will take you 100 years to get to it.
So, you will see the baby develop at a rate twice as fast as an observer on earth would perceive.
By the time you get to earth, you and the baby will be just over 100 years old, and that baby will just have taken it's last breath.

Answer 9

The answer is simple.
You'll see the "baby" dieing after it has actually died.
You'll be observing events after they have actually occured.

Btw you are travelling near the speed of light and not at speed of light.So you will still be able to recieve the light signals.

So to the amount of time separating the instnace actualling occuring and when you'll observe then.

It requires "higher" mathematics which probably STEPEHN W HAWKING can work out, not me surely.

Answer 10

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