Get your mind blown

Discussion in 'Science and Nature' started by johncain1, Jan 9, 2010.

  1. Would I age if I were in a machine that traveled at 186,000 miles per second? How would I appear to anyone who were looking in at me through a window of the machine that I traveled in?

    How is it that if I were to travel at speed above C that time would go backwards?
     
  2. you would age at your normal rate, but everything traveling at its normal speed would age much faster relative to your aging. thats all i got.
     

  3. you would age, but it would be sort of meaningless. if you think about it, the only reason we care about "how old we are" is because we divide time up into days. if we were out in deep space, there would be no day or night, and time is just continuous.

    there are some good videos on youtube explaining "special relativity". can't find any right now, but usually youtube vids can do a good job of explaining hard topics in easier terms. i sure as hell can't explain it.

    nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. the speed of light is like a "universal speed limit". we can't even consider what would happen if you were to travel at a speed above c because it just isn't a possibility of our universe.
     
  4. theoretiaclly exactly what blazedandconfused said. But, remember if somehow you could achieve this, you will basically be leaving everything and everyone you know behind.
     
  5. well technically yes and no, theoretically there are Taceon's (i know that's spelled wrong, yes it's the same word they used in Star Trek ;p) that travel faster than light. But they haven't been detected yet and no one is really looking for them because it's so far outside of our reach in science as of yet.

    also with wormhole's you can travel faster than light but that is because you are separating yourself from "time-space" so the effective "distance" is much much shorter.

    Also you do age at the same rate you are now if you were traveling that fast (from your perspective), like they said it's just that compared to the people not moving that fast you would live much, much longer.
     
  6. Since age is dependent on time, and the passage of time is relative to where you are and how fast you're moving with respect to whatever's age is to be measured, then you would observe your own age to progress normally. However, to somebody outside the ship, you would appear to be frozen in time.

    That other question is beyond my ken because it delves into general relativity, which I haven't the chops to comprehend just yet. Under special relativity what happens once velocity v > c or v = c is that the answers leave the real number plane (they become complex) and thus lose any physical meaning. Special relativity can't handle it.

    There's the hypothesized tachyon but that's never been observed.
     

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