I have heard that if you could travel the speed of light time would pass slower for you. Is this true?

Question

Could you actually regress in age? What if you went faster than the speed of light?

Answer 1

You will always age at the same rate no matter what speed you are travelling. If you observe someone moving near the speed of light they will appear to be aging more slowly but they do not feel that time is passing more slowly. It is impossible for any mass to reach the speed of light because as you approach the speed of light your mass approaches infinity so it would require an infinite force to make you go faster.

Answer 2

According to the equations that Einstein derived in generating his theories, the closer you get to the speed of light, the greater the "Time Dilation" factor becomes. See the discussion here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

It all ties back to relativity, and the difference between what you in a moving frame of reference experience, versus what an external observer in a different frame of reference experiences.

At speed near light speed, you would still experience time as you normally would -- one minute would seem like one minute, your watch on your wrist would register the same sixty seconds. But to the observer outside that moving frame of reference, time is different -- he would see your watch ticking away more slowly!

Time dilation means that, in effect, time travel into the FUTURE is possible -- just take a fast moving spaceship (speed approaching that of light) and go somewhere, anywhere "out there", and return. While you will have aged what seems to be normally for you, millions of years might have passed on Earth.

However, nothing can move faster than light speed, so you can never go BACKWARDS in time.

Answer 3

The problem with passing the speed of light (being a bit fesetious here, so don't jump me, folks) is being able to hit the brakes.... Since time would stop completely, you are in essence, at all points along your trajectory simultaneously, so no matter how fast you hit the brakes, you'd be an infinite distance from your origin.... Now, if only you could somehow leapfrog the speed of light, then time theoretically does go backwards.

Someone mentioned Vs * Vt = c That doesn't seem right to me some how - if Vs = c, then Vt is supposed to be 0, but it would be 1... did you mean Vs + Vt = c ? I've thought about that before, but never really knew the answer to it...

Answer 4

You cant go faster than the speed of light. light is constantly travelling at light speed regardless of the speed of the observer. (if you were going 100,000,000 miles an hour, you would still measure light as passing you at 670,000,000 miles an hour)
however, if you were traveling at near light speed, you would, in a way, pass through time slower than another person who is traveling more slowly. But only from each other's perspective is time passing "differently." You could still only accomplish in YOUR hour what you can do in an hour (read the paper or cook dinner) but to the OBSERVER this has taken (for example) an hour and 45 minutes because their perception of time is different than yours.

of course, if you're shooting past at near light speed, there wont be a whole lot of time for observation.

so realistically, you could slow your passage through time to infinitely close to zero (to a stationary observer) as you reached higher speeds, but i cant account for any way to regress.

its a lot to think about. check out the term "special relativity" to read a bit more. theres a great chapter at the beginning of Brian Greene's book "the elegant universe" which uses some nice examples to simplify some initially very confusing ideas.

Answer 5

well the einsteins theory of relativity provides the answer to ur question . yes thats true according to the theory and even i believe that . theres a paradox called twin paradox: it says lets say there are two twins of the same age, one of them goes out from the earth to the space travelling near to the speed of light and whem he returnc back to earth lets say if 1 year has passed for him, may be a century would pass on earth . the reason i said near to the speed o f light because the same theory states that nothing can travel at the speed of light or beyond that because when u approach near the speed of light the mass gets heavier and heavier and u can no longer accelerate the particle up to the speed of light .

but personally i believe we can travel and that will be the main factor for the time travel

hope that helps!

Answer 6

IF you could travel at the speed of light, time would cease altogether for you. The closer you get to lightspeed, the slower time goes for you. But you would also be INFINITELY massive, with infinite gravity, and the entire universe would come crashing down on you. So don't do it, okay? Cuz that would totally suck!

Answer 7

Trvelling at th espeed of light will completely stop the time for you. Travelling faster than it would take you back in time.
But you cant travel at the speed of light or faster as the einsteins theory suggests. I cant explain these but these are theories.

Answer 8

Yes and no. Why both? Cause it's all relative. You will always measure a second as a second for the frame of reference you are in. If however, you were to travel at 99.9% c [c being spped of light in a vacuum], and you were in a constant state of motion, meaning you did not accelerate or decelerate, and you zipped by earth you would not perceive yourself as being in motion, you would think you were sitting still and the earth was zipping by you. You never feel motion you only feel changes in that motion. [If you're going down the road in a car with perfect suspension and the vehicle keeps perfect rate of speed and does not change direction, you feel like you're not moving. Only if you speed up or brake or turn would you then feel that change in your state of motion.]
Now, if somone on earth saw you zipping by them and could observe your watch, your watch would appear to be running very slowly from their frame of reference of the "stationary" earth. Vice versa, if you were able to observe a clock tower on earth while zipping by, you would perceive the clock tower as running very slowly from your frame of reference. The strange thing about relativity is that if both you and the person on the earth observed an event in another frame of reference and measured how long that event took to happen, you would both come up with different answers and both be completely correct--in a relative way.
Now, this only applies to you cause you're made of matter and can never move at c. Only energy can move at c. So, for energy, yes, technically, there is no passage of time. Why not? Cause any object's motion through space multiplied by its motion through time will equal c. So, the faster you move through space, the less you move through time. You as matter could never completely move through space and not time. To increase your speed you need energy. While accelerating to 99.9% c you would increase the mass of the matter making up you. With more mass, you would need even more energy to keep increasing the speed. Eventually, to achieve that last decimal place and get to 100% c you would need infinite energy. And, there just isn't infinite energy in the universe. So, no matter or even particle of matter can achieve 100% c. But, 99.99999999999999999etc % is perfectly okay.

Answer 9

The theory states that if you travel at the speed of light, the flow of time will completely STOP for you. If you go faster than the speed of light, it is believed that time will flow in the opposite direction. How the hell that works, I have NO idea, but that's just the theory. :P

Answer 10

Einstein 's theory was that time was relative.

the Earth is constantly spinning real fast, but when you watch it from a satelitte it looks like it doesnt move.

but it is moving real fast.