i was reading up on light speed and the possibility of man someday maybe coming close to light speed travel and a scientist stated that if a astronaut was able to travel at those speeds and goes away for a week he may find when he returns that a month or year or ten years have gone by, i don't see the link between light speed and time.
2007-08-01 15:24:46 · 6 answers · asked by eric j 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
This is the theory of RELETIVITY.
Reletivity means that your enviroment depends on you. Two people in the same place can have different enviroments depending on their speed, mass, ect.
When you are moving light speed, you are faster than everything else. Therefore, time "slows down".
If your on a train that was traveling 100,000miles/second, and you threw a ball that represented a light photon from the back of the train to the front it would have to (if it was light) travel away from you at C (186,000ish miles/sec) and if I was on earth at 0 miles/second watching you drive by me at 100,000miles/second, the ball would have travel how fast light is. And so obviously you can work it out that, the only way for the light to have these two different speeds relative to you and me is for the time in ones observation point to change.
~~~~~~~~~~More~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Time is very tricky. The point is that light ALWAYS travels 186, 000. That means that no matter how fast you are traveling, it is ALWAYS 186, 000 mi/hr faster than YOU.
Here is something simpler:
Speed of light is 5+. That means that light is always 5 faster than you. Say you are 0. That means that light is 5. Simple.
Now you are 3. Then light is 8. Again, easy.
You are still going three, but this time there is another person going 2. To that person, light is 7. But to you, it is 8!
IF LIGHT IS FASTER FOR YOU, EVERYTHING IS FASTER FOR YOU. If everything is fast for you, than everything is slow for him. When a week passes for you, a month passes for him.
Hope that explained it.
2007-08-01 15:29:33 · answer #1 · answered by Jimbomonkey1234 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Its part of Einstein's theory of Special Relativity.
Basically, the closer you get to the speed of light the slower time moves for you. This is sometimes called "time dilation".
Hard to picture, because we don't have any experience travelling anywhere near that kind of speed.
But due to this phenomenon, if you travel close to the speed of light out say 10 light years, then come back again the same distance, time on Earth would have moved at the speed we're used to and 20 years on Earth would have elapsed. But you, as the traveller, might have only experienced maybe a year (your perspective).
The difference between the 2 would depend on how close to the speed of light you were actually travelling.
2007-08-01 15:38:23 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
You have asked a question that is the fundamental of relativity.
In order to explain the Michealson/Morley experiment results Fitzgerald and Lorentz came up with the dilation theory.
Einstein cleaned it up with his 1905 paper on special relativity.
This marks the distinction between classical physics and modern physics.
2007-08-01 15:32:51 · answer #3 · answered by J C 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
it's hard to imagine the link between the two. that's why einstein, and not some joe shmoe had to come up with the idea. read up on general relativity. but what you've heard is theoretically correct. just not proven cause we haven't even come close to those speeds yet
2007-08-01 15:29:29 · answer #4 · answered by brandon 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
what your saying is true, read up on einsteins theroy of realtivity. If your really interested in the topic I suggest taking a general physics course, you wont regret it Physics can explain well basically everything.
2007-08-01 15:34:00 · answer #5 · answered by Violet 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Thats false that we dont have that technology. Chuck Norris has it!
2007-08-01 15:59:56 · answer #6 · answered by Jake 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋