...wow

The way I think about it has to do with the fact that the speed of light is constant irrespective of the reference frame of the observer. So, if you traveled at the speed of light, it wouldn't make sense that light beat you from point A to point B. However, if you dissolve the notion of time, then you dissolve the meaning of being beaten to point B. In other words, the only way for light to travel at the speed of light with respect to a reference frame traveling at the speed of light requires time to not exist.

This behavior suits the shape and end behavior of the function. As velocity approachs c, t(v) approaches infinity.

This post was edited by Derkaderk on Feb 4 2012 03:56pm

Implying we can go faster then light.

Thats wrong, I'll elaborate in a second



so use your brain and type Hafele–Keating into google





thats only true to an extent. Youre changing what you said though. Before you just said "speed does not affect time", which by itself is fradulent

The extent comes at the speed of light.

Ill try and explain this so you can understand. In the first scenario, one person is traveling close to c, and another person is the observer at relative rest. Lets also pretend the observer is immortal and will never die, but still ages (pretend the aging levels off once theyre old looking).

So traveling close to c, the person will age much slower compared to the observer. Relative to themselves, the person traveling near c will age like what feels like a normal life, in that part your correct.

Eventually, as time approaches infinity, the immortal observer will see the slowly aging person die. If at any point the person is decelerated to rest, they will look the same as they did right before the deceleration happened


For the second scenario, the person is traveling at light speed. After infinity years, we decelerated the person, and they would look at exactly the same to observer and themselves, because they didnt age at all, not even a nanosecond, because time stops at the speed of light. Does that make sense?


Time stops at the speed of light, and time stops at the center of a black hole. Because both speed and gravity affect time.

another way to look at it, is lets pretend you were right, and the speed of light only affects the observer

So we put you in a hypothetical nasa centrifuge, and accelerate you to light speed. According to your theory, since time doesnt stop, you would age normally with respect to youself. So you were 15 when they put you in the centrifuge, and after 40 years of trolling jsp (40 years with resepct to yourself) you hit the big red stop button. The centrifuge stops and you step out. How would appear to an immortal observer who you shouldnt have aged at all with respect to?


Case and point: time stops at the speed of light

You cannot travel faster than light, end of discussion, at least with the current state of theory & experiments.

Teleportation? Teleportation transfers properties of particles, not the particles themselves.

This is a very neat explanation of how time and space interact: http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fjwkh/why_exactly_can_nothing_go_faster_than_the_speed/c1gh4x7

It would do most of you well to read it, since it's very insightful.

oh good bye freedom.

I thought we did this at CERN? Well i mean with the particle accelerator.

not yet. there were some experimental errors to be accounted for

This post was edited by Derkaderk on Feb 5 2012 11:04am

Pardon me, I went away for the weekend. You shouldn't have PMed me as a call-out.

There are many experiments where time dilation has been shown to have happened. One common experiment is observing particles with short half-lives. Statistically speaking, if you detect that 1,000,000 muons are entering Earth's atmosphere, you can guess within a range and high levels of certainty approximately how many will arrive at a detector on Earth's surface. The half-life of a slow-moving muon (i.e. a muon in a lab setting) is 1.56 microseconds, so they knew exactly how many to expect on the Earth's surface. However, they were detecting far more muons than they expected -- well outside of that expected range. However, when you take time dilation into effect and use the speed that the muons are known to be traveling, you find that the expected number of muons detected perfectly matches what you would predict with the time dilated half life.

Or you could just use something simple like atomic clocks -- which stay accurate through use of half lives -- and show that atomic clocks which are synchronized go predictably out of synch when they move at different speeds. Like so:

http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v3/n12/full/nphys778.html

Just because you don't know that theories have been experimentally verified doesn't mean that no verification exists. Guess I'll PM you back and await YOUR dodge.

This post was edited by bentherdonethat on Feb 5 2012 01:20pm