Why does travelling at the speed of light slow down time?
I know this isn't easy to answer, but I've never had it satisfactorily explained. I also know that it is impossible for something with mass to travel at the speed of light, but humour me, please.
Why is it believed that if I were to travel through space at the speed of light for 5 years (for instance), when I return to Earth, time would have travelled faster on the Earth than it had for me? Can you explain this in a very simple manner, using analogies?
I also don't get Einstein's theory about a clock on a train appearing to move more slowly to a stationary observer (may have got this the wrong way round). There's no way of proving this, so why is it just accepted as the proof?
Answers:
everything that we see, we see it because of light that is reflected from it. light travels at 186,000 miles per second. so when we travel faster than the light can reflect, things will slow down and eventually stop when we reach the speed of light.
Because light is faster than time. Easy!
It is not called the twins paradox for nothing. We will only really be able a prove or disprove this theory when we are able to travel to a distant star and back again.
It has been proven using atomic clocks, one on the ground and one flown at high speed in an aircraft.
I can't explain it either, though.
Here's a clever interactive demonstration of the twin paradox at PBS.org affiliated with the "Einstein's Big Idea" program:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/ho.
Time at the speed of light does not vary. Time is a concept invented by us to make records of the past. It is the apparent experience of time which seems to slow down. Hence the postulation that a clock traveling at light speed would record less time is absurd.
Light is simply a form of radiation which we can perceive with our eyes.
I think Mr. Einstein's theory was reaching for an explanation of aging and not some great metaphysical revelation!
Because numbers say so. This theory comes from the religion of Mathematics. A fundamental believe is that math, if done accurately, produces answers that can be trusted. The numbers for Einstein and many others indicates that space, time, and mass are "flexible" At the speed of light the train would appear, "would really be", two dimensional. It would be flat, and time would go really slow on the train.But, the folks on the train would not be aware of being "flat" or aging slowly. That is if have faith in the religion of numbers.
Apparently, the slowing or changing the speed of time was "proved" using atomic clocks. See article below.
As with religions, there are many scientific views and a lot of it seems hard to believe as there is no "proof". You either believe it or not based on your personal experience.
I never liked this theory. Its just time relative to other things.
Light travels at, well, the speed of light. So this year (2006) when I look at a star 100 light years away, I'm actually seeing the light (and hence the star) as it was 100 years ago (in 1906). So if I could travel at 100 times the speed of light away from the Earth for a year, and then look back at the Earth with a big telescope, I would be receiving light that was 100 years old, and thus would see the Earth of 100 years ago. But this doesn't mean i've travelled back in time. I'm still a year older than I was when I started the trip and everyone on Earth is a year older as well. It just means i'm watching an "old movie" of the Earth. If I got back in the ship and went back to Earth at 100 times the speed of light for a year, I would be 2 years older, and everyone on earth would be 2 years older as well. Its just perception. Quantum physics really is a load of old kak sometimes . . . . but then again what do I know.
Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity predicted that time does not flow at a fixed rate: moving clocks appear to tick more slowly relative to their stationary counterparts. But this effect only becomes really significant at very high velocities that app roach the speed of light.
When "generalized" to include gravitation, the equations of relativity predict that gravity, or the curvature of spacetime by matter, not only stretches or shrinks distances (depending on their direction with respect to the gravitational field) but also w ill appear to slow down or "dilate" the flow of time.
In most circumstances in the universe, such time dilation is miniscule, but it can become very significant when spacetime is curved by a massive object such as a black hole. For example, an observer far from a black hole would observe time passing extremely slowly for an astronaut falling through the hole's boundary. In fact, the distant observer would never see the hapless victim actually fall in. His or her time, as measured by the observer, would appear to stand still. The slowing of time near a very simple black hole has been simulated on supercomputers at NCSA and visualized in a computer-generated animation.
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Why is it believed that if I were to travel through space at the speed of light for 5 years (for instance), when I return to Earth, time would have travelled faster on the Earth than it had for me? Can you explain this in a very simple manner, using analogies?
I also don't get Einstein's theory about a clock on a train appearing to move more slowly to a stationary observer (may have got this the wrong way round). There's no way of proving this, so why is it just accepted as the proof?
Answers:
everything that we see, we see it because of light that is reflected from it. light travels at 186,000 miles per second. so when we travel faster than the light can reflect, things will slow down and eventually stop when we reach the speed of light.
Because light is faster than time. Easy!
It is not called the twins paradox for nothing. We will only really be able a prove or disprove this theory when we are able to travel to a distant star and back again.
It has been proven using atomic clocks, one on the ground and one flown at high speed in an aircraft.
I can't explain it either, though.
Here's a clever interactive demonstration of the twin paradox at PBS.org affiliated with the "Einstein's Big Idea" program:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/ho.
Time at the speed of light does not vary. Time is a concept invented by us to make records of the past. It is the apparent experience of time which seems to slow down. Hence the postulation that a clock traveling at light speed would record less time is absurd.
Light is simply a form of radiation which we can perceive with our eyes.
I think Mr. Einstein's theory was reaching for an explanation of aging and not some great metaphysical revelation!
Because numbers say so. This theory comes from the religion of Mathematics. A fundamental believe is that math, if done accurately, produces answers that can be trusted. The numbers for Einstein and many others indicates that space, time, and mass are "flexible" At the speed of light the train would appear, "would really be", two dimensional. It would be flat, and time would go really slow on the train.But, the folks on the train would not be aware of being "flat" or aging slowly. That is if have faith in the religion of numbers.
Apparently, the slowing or changing the speed of time was "proved" using atomic clocks. See article below.
As with religions, there are many scientific views and a lot of it seems hard to believe as there is no "proof". You either believe it or not based on your personal experience.
I never liked this theory. Its just time relative to other things.
Light travels at, well, the speed of light. So this year (2006) when I look at a star 100 light years away, I'm actually seeing the light (and hence the star) as it was 100 years ago (in 1906). So if I could travel at 100 times the speed of light away from the Earth for a year, and then look back at the Earth with a big telescope, I would be receiving light that was 100 years old, and thus would see the Earth of 100 years ago. But this doesn't mean i've travelled back in time. I'm still a year older than I was when I started the trip and everyone on Earth is a year older as well. It just means i'm watching an "old movie" of the Earth. If I got back in the ship and went back to Earth at 100 times the speed of light for a year, I would be 2 years older, and everyone on earth would be 2 years older as well. Its just perception. Quantum physics really is a load of old kak sometimes . . . . but then again what do I know.
Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity predicted that time does not flow at a fixed rate: moving clocks appear to tick more slowly relative to their stationary counterparts. But this effect only becomes really significant at very high velocities that app roach the speed of light.
When "generalized" to include gravitation, the equations of relativity predict that gravity, or the curvature of spacetime by matter, not only stretches or shrinks distances (depending on their direction with respect to the gravitational field) but also w ill appear to slow down or "dilate" the flow of time.
In most circumstances in the universe, such time dilation is miniscule, but it can become very significant when spacetime is curved by a massive object such as a black hole. For example, an observer far from a black hole would observe time passing extremely slowly for an astronaut falling through the hole's boundary. In fact, the distant observer would never see the hapless victim actually fall in. His or her time, as measured by the observer, would appear to stand still. The slowing of time near a very simple black hole has been simulated on supercomputers at NCSA and visualized in a computer-generated animation.
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