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So if Einstiens theory holds true, and I had a vessel capable of traveling near the speed of light, could I live long enough to reach a location that is hundreds of light years away? Would all my biological functions slow down as my speed increased?

2007-03-18 15:50:18 · 12 answers · asked by Mike B 2 in Science & Mathematics Physics

12 answers

I'm glad that you qualified your statement from "travelling at the speed of light" (at which speed you would live, unaging, for eternity, as far as we onloookers were concerned) to "traveling near the speed of light," which is a trifle more tractable!

Your biological functions would proceed at EXACTLY the same rate, FOR YOU. What IS different is that your own TIME would proceed much slower for US WATCHING YOU! And therefore, your rate of biological development aging would be significantly slowed down, as far as WE, the stay-at-home observers were concerned.

So that means that YES, you could live long enough to reach locations hundreds, thousands, millions or even SAGANS (= "beeellions")### of light years away, provided that you could travel close enough to the speed of light.

The snag is, of course, that you would ultimately need a fair fraction of all the energy on the universe to accelerate both you and your space vessel to a speed fast enough for these significant reductional effects on your aging to occur.

Live long and prosper.

### Don't worry, no harm intended, this was said in affectionate remembrance. I knew Carl Sagan, and mourned his untimely death.

2007-03-18 15:56:16 · answer #1 · answered by Dr Spock 6 · 0 1

This is an easy question. Traveling at the speed of light is out of the question. If you were to travel at near the speed of light, possible only hypothetically, then how far could you travel during a lifetime of 100 years? Less than 100 light years.

2007-03-18 19:20:23 · answer #2 · answered by Fred 7 · 0 0

You wouldn't live at all. Approaching the speed of light causes mass to increase exponentially. The more mass you have the harder it would be to speed up. You would have to be infinitely heavy to reach the speed of light. In theory anything with mass cant reach the speed of light at all. And if you got even close you would compress under the force of your own gravity and turn into a ball

2007-03-18 17:08:55 · answer #3 · answered by beano007 2 · 1 0

nicely, if we've been traveling on the fee of sunshine our mass may be infinite, so i might somewhat no longer try it. Plus, it may be impossible to return and forth on the fee of sunshine, because of the time-theory changing. think of you're on a prepare traveling at ninety 9.99999999% the fee of sunshine. Now think of you run down the prepare, in the comparable course as this is return and forth. have you ever now broken the fee of sunshine barrier? No, nature won't enable it. So your theory of time slows down relative to the the remainder of the universe, so which you're traveling the comparable distance over an prolonged volume of time. and speed=distance/time so the greater suitable the gap, the decrease the fee. So out of your attitude, you are able to desire to no longer return and forth on the fee of sunshine. i think of i've got been given somewhat misplaced there...

2016-10-19 01:10:06 · answer #4 · answered by ? 4 · 0 0

Yes and no...

You would live the same length of time in "durational time." If your biological clock was due to stop 89 years, 57 days, 15 minutes, and some odd seconds from your birth, it still would. The fact that you would "seem" to live longer in "actual time" is a trick of temporal distortion.

No, your biological functions won't slow down - rather, it won't seem to to you, although an "outside observer" would seem to be able to detect them slowing.

2007-03-18 16:04:28 · answer #5 · answered by jcurrieii 7 · 0 0

To you, your life would be the same length. If you were 45 when you got onto the spacecraft and lived on it for the rest of your life, lets say to 75, then it would feel like you were on there for 30 years. However, if you landed on earth right before you died, it would be much farther in the future than just 30 years after you left.

2007-03-18 15:59:43 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

Surely you would live longer, relative to the time you left behind. But biological functions, hmmm, don't have a clue. That's a pretty broad thought.

2007-03-18 15:58:05 · answer #7 · answered by Frederick 1 · 0 0

You're sense of time remains the same. However, everyone around you would seem to age must faster than normal. You wouldn't live older in your reference frame, so don't think that traveling that fast is the "fountain of youth."

Yay, this is the 100th question I've answered.

2007-03-18 16:27:53 · answer #8 · answered by Boozer 4 · 0 0

Your body would not live any longer but since you could in theory go back in time - check this out-- Go by O.J. ex wife's house and watch who really killed her and the restaurant employee.

2007-03-18 16:03:58 · answer #9 · answered by Brick 5 · 0 0

Exactly. As your frame of reference accelerated to some relativistic velocity, your time frame would slow (with respect to the rest of the universe) and you would age more 'slowly'.

It's been used in dozens of Sci-Fi novels.

Doug

2007-03-18 15:55:49 · answer #10 · answered by doug_donaghue 7 · 1 0

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