it seams so DUMB to me! I mean all that would happen is you wouldnt be able to see anything is the opposite dirrection than your going!
2007-03-03 20:38:03 · 7 answers · asked by James 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
It won't. Nobody ever said it would. Time slows down for someone traveling close to the speed of light. Look at it this way. If you are traveling at 90% of the speed of light, and a beam of light is passing you going the same direction, you would expect it to appear to be moving at only 10% of the speed of light. But that doesn't happen. No matter how fast you go, light still appears to go at the speed of light. So, something has to give and that's time. For the light to appear to still be going the speed of light, time must have slowed down.
On second thought, as you approach the speed of light, time slows down. If you reach the speed of light time stops altogether. Therefore, it stands to reason that if you travel faster than light (which is impossible) time should go backward. So there, I said it.
2007-03-03 20:48:28 · answer #1 · answered by rsduhamel 1 · 0⤊ 1⤋
It's not that traveling faster makes you go back in time. It's that traveling at or near the speed of light makes time go by slower. Think about it this way. There is a light flashing on earth every second. The farther you get away from the earth the longer gap that will appear between each light.
The other idea that you're referring to is being able to look back in time by traveling away from the earth. This is true to an extent. Light is bouncing off the earth and moving away at a constant rate. Therefore, if one were able to travel one light year away. You would theoretically be able to capture the light that left the earth a year ago and reconstruct it so that you would basically be looking back in time.
2007-03-04 04:46:36 · answer #2 · answered by nodetrel 2 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Since it is not possible to travel faster than the speed of light, the entire question is a mind game. However, the argument is as follows:
The speed of light is constant in space-time. The greater the rate of motion through one, the less the rate of motion through the other, with the barrier being the speed of light. The notion is that if the rate of motion through space, in other words the spatial component of this equation, were to exceed the barrier, then the temporal component of the equation, the rate of motion through time, would have to go into negative numbers in order to compensate, and negative time translates to going back in time.
It is interesting to note that in order to discuss this concept at all, it is necessary to recognize an important and typically ignored concept, that while the speed of light is the fastest that anything can go, it is also the slowest that anything can go. Nothing can travel at any speed other than the speed of light. The topic of contention should not be such as "if we were to travel at, or faster than, the speed of light", but rather what portion of our speed is speed through space and what portion is speed through time.
2007-03-04 10:01:27 · answer #3 · answered by Fred 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
you cant go faster than the speed of light.. at least that is the consensus at the moment
but what people used to believe was that if you were able to go faster than the speed of light, since light is what determines time in our universe, you could theoretically find yourself at a place in time before where you just were, because you would be surrounded by light waves that were from an earlier period
i think that's how it works, but im not a theoretical physicist and have and could not read einsteins theory of relativity
think of it as not going back in time, but rather escaping time
2007-03-04 04:44:21 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
Well, it seems dumb because it is dumb. There is no such thing as time travel.
2007-03-04 04:45:57 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
The idea is that you travel so fast that you arrive before you leave
yes i know, its implausible.
2007-03-04 04:40:46 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
SOMETHING seems dumb. What is it?
2007-03-04 04:40:29 · answer #7 · answered by Iconoclast 2 · 0⤊ 2⤋