i heard

im just wonderin if at the speed of light time stops then how does light have a set speed. and why cant u see stars how they are now instead of like normal u see it a certain amount of years ago (however far it is in lightyears) if time is stopped at light speed. then light should be able to reach anywhere in the universe at the same time it is projected....which it doesnt. tell me how im wrong because ive been wonder what is proving me wrong for this.

Originally posted by grimreaper797
light should be able to reach anywhere in the universe at the same time it is projected....which it doesnt.

It does... in it's own time frame. If you use the time dilation formulas, no time elapses for a photon. Our time elapses just fine, but the time perceived by the photon doesn't move at all.

so to go lets say 2 light years....it would feel as if it was that exact same moment?

EDIT: thanks lol u just helped me understand the movie primer. that understanding made my day lol

[edit on 14-7-2005 by grimreaper797]

No, because it is 2 years. I think they are trying to say that for everyone else it would seem like 4 years.

obviously u arent as fast a learner as me. in everyone elses perspective it would take two years. for the person traveling it it would be a flash.

so basically if i were on a planet a light year awhile, and came at the speed of light....it would feel like a flash.everyone saw it as a year of traveling but i wouldnt have aged at all

now this is a question for the smart guy who answered my previous question. if we were to arrive here faster then the speed of light. would people be able to see us. if so then of coarse we would be matter, would the other duplicate of me just be a light refraction or everything that happened?.....i mean we cant create matter moving faster then the speed of light right? so either
a. they cant see us....which is a no for good obvious reasons
b. they can see us, and thats just a light reflection of it.
c. matter has been created.


[edit on 14-7-2005 by grimreaper797]

But seeming is not being, it would still be 2 years. And how would anyone know that would 'seem' like a flash?

ever heard of the phrase u age with time. everything ages with time. but at the speed of time time is froze, so all aging processes would be frozen. with ur body moving at the speed of light ur brain wouldnt be deprived of a year of oxygen. everything was frozen. anything moving at that speed is as it was when it started moving at that speed. preserved.

No, because I believe Einstein stated that nothing would freeze, that you would not be able to see the electromagnetic fields of the universe frozen.

u dont. no1 sees it frozen, ur not gettin the point.

when ur standing on earth and look through a telescope it would be a year before he/she got here. but in their perspective it would be like blink and they would be here. they would close their eyes. and as soon as they hit the speed of light. to them they would arrive.

[edit on 14-7-2005 by grimreaper797]

Originally posted by Kitsunegari
hmm, i would've thought it the other way around. a person travelling at light speed would experience much less time than the people not travelling.

per example, three men board a ship, which will travel at light speed from point a to point b. they arrive, for them the trip has only been 3 months, but for the people at points a&b it has been 20 years.

please, clarify this for me, i am very confused.

In answer to you: you are correct! The people who did the traveling experience time differently than those not.

The thoery of relativity is just that: it is all relative to your point of reference. Traveling at the speed of light, you would experience normal movement of time, but from the perspective of someone say on earth you would be frozen in time. So when you're going at the speed of light traveling for say 1 year according to your reference point then time on earth would have gone by, not sure exactly how long but somewhere around 100 years. The lightyear thing is not saying that it takes a light particle a year of its time to travel here, it is taking a year from our point of reference. In its time almost no time has passed. Hope that that clears things up for you!

So there are no time machines, just aging process reduction machines?

no traveling closer to the speed of light for u would seem like a year or so maybe when for everyone else it would be like 100000 or sumthing. to move AT the speed of light u would experience no travel at all. u would go from just before traveling the speed of light to being at ur destination before u could even think 'what just happened'. now at a percent of light is different. u may experience a couple days but for people watching it would be years.

So where in does the threshold lay?

well see after u exceed light speed suposively u go back in time. now see there is an easier way to explain moving faster then light in a book i read.

say for instance wormholes do exist and we could travel through them. to travel through them u would be moving fast then the speed of light, by a long shot. so once u arrive uve just outbeat light by a good amount. now travel back through. uve just traveled faster then light again. u could then watch urself entering the wormhole u just went through suposively.

thing is i didnt fully understand this because when u go through ur not tech. traveling faster then light. though ur outbeating light....ur not traveling faster then it.

but if we could harness such abilities i would use them to get as far out as i could from earth and then look back on earth. thats a whole different topic tho.

so to me traveling to the past is very difficult

the threshold? are u asking when is the difference from like slowest to stop?

think of it like this if ur standing 10 feet away from a door. u decided every step ur goin to cut the distance between u and the door in half every time. when would u reach the door? never. ud always be cutting the distance in half never reaching it. u have to take a step which either bends or breaks the rule that u made. much like speed. u can travel faster and faster but never reach that speed of light, u have to break a rule or bend a rule to reach it.

So if there is no zero, why say that speed of light is the limit?

Einstein stated that two observers in motion at the speed of light heading toward each other will only see each other as going the speed of light and not twice the speed of light. So where is the threshold, again?

I think you're running into a logisitcs problem, frosty, like you're having trouble expressing yourself. I know I totally don't understand your questions (threshold?) and then the answers can't seem to help.

What reaper referred to right above is Zeno's Paradox and is easily solvable through calculus. (and infinite sum can approach a finite sum)

Frosty - Time is weird. Something can feel like a year for another person, and feel like ten years for another person, and that's fine. You just have to go fast enough. Something travelling at the speed of light experiences no time at all. It never ages, it never dies, and it takes no time whatsoever to get somewhere. From the photons perspective, it reaches Earth from a star the instant it escapes.

It's weird. But you'll never deal with those problems because nobody will ever go the sped of light.

So you are telling me the threshold lies at the speed of light. So then what happens once someone is at twice the speed of light?

we still dont understand quite what u mean by threshold

but basically to me, traveling fast then the speed of light is not possible, because then ud be going into what does not exist. what has yet to come u cannot go to. hitting the speed of light would allow u to go to whatever point in time of future u want, because it is creating it at the time u are going through it. with traveling faster then light ud be going past what ha yet to be created. time is a tricky thing. its all theories. all are equally true till one can be scientificly proved.

The fastest you can go is an infinitesimal amount slower than the speed of light. (approx. 3x10^8m/s) End of story.

I'm sorry to say I've missed it, but what does this have to do with the topic?