Be Young Forever

Ok this theory may be a bit far fetched but tell me what you think....

The faster you travel, time slows down. When you reach the point of travelling at the speed of light time stops all together. Surely if there were a pair of twins on earth, one stayed on earth and the other travelled to space for ten years. If the one who travelled to space for ten years travelled at the speed of light, wouldn't he have not aged? Therefore wouldn't he now be younger than the other twin since time hasn't advanced for him over the last ten years?

I think I see what you are getting at and while the concept is intruiging the logic is a little flawed. What you have are two different frames of reference - the traveler and the one on earth.

If 10 years pass for the traveler, yes on his return to earth he will be younger than the twin he left behind. Just as an example lets say that 15 years passed for the earthbound twin, so in essence the traveler is now 5 years younger. However the traveler has not efectively extended his life in any way... he has experienced 10 years of life during his travels and is now 10 years older. He does not really gain 5 years, he simply returns to the earthbound frame of reference to find that he has missed everything that occured during those 5 years.

The traveler will still live out his normal allotment of years, he will just live them out a little later in the earths frame of reference than his twin will.

There is quite alot of info out there on this if you'd care to look, just google 'Twin Paradox'.

Isn't this the theory that has always been about time travel and age?

[edit on 3/6/2005 by LadyV]

Yeah I think so LadyV, still find it quite interesting and I've never thought of the whole 'younger age' thing.