can anyone please explain the speed of light - time travel connection?

i mean what does the speed of light has to do with a time travel? so i don't know much but why did people pick a light speed as point? like if we only count beat the speed of light we would travel in time

and most of the people are talking about traveling to the future but what about traveling back in the past? is it harder? easier?

Howstuffworks to the rescue.

Special Relativity:
www.howstuffworks.com...

Time Travel Possibilities:
www.howstuffworks.com...

Handy site that. Keeps it fairly simply also.

I went digging through my bookmarks and found this one, a few different tangents on the subject. Slightly deeper questions on this one.

www.physlink.com...

it's something like an object's velocity through space divided by the speed of light is equal to the speed which time passes, thus when an objects velocity increases the speed at which time is experienced, slows down. thus the object would not be experiencing the same amount of time as ppl moving slower do in the same period

If you know how to build a device capable of hiding from time's effects, which does so by shrinking in space, you can maneuver at near light speed. Electrons will be less effected by the space, moving fluidly through it. To build a device capable of 'dematerializing' such as what happened in the PHiladelphiaExperiment, you need a specially build ion transformer, which gets rid of free space between atoms by folding space. It is a vortexing monopole transforming the kinetic force of various larger particles into that of electrons, and then emits electrons through a small hole(s) in the event horizon of superlarge 'boson' particles which hold h2o in suspension for making the lines of force in this monopole. I could show details, but I'm waiting to receive copyright back on this info before I will release any of the crucial parts of it.

we have come a long way since the good old 88mph theory

[Edited on 2-12-2003 by DipSchnit]

Time doesn't exist. It is an artificial measure that mankind had developed to make sense of the world around him.

Time exists to the individual because he is taught to believe in time, has his faith in it's existence reinforced by objects (clocks, watches, TV's, calendars) and practice (time to go to work, time to go to class, time to feed the dog).

Faith in Time makes sense because nearly everyone else has the same faith.

Try living without time for awhile. It's harder than you might think.

With all that said.

To a world without time, the past, present, and future are one. So to travel through time is just a matter of "being" in the right place. Or so they say.

It has been noted that many "holy men" or "yogis" or "shaman" (pick your divinties term) have had the ability to suspend their personal time rather their existence within existential space.

(think of time/space/reality being a stream if you hold your position in that stream you are actually somewhere else in the time/space/reality continuem)

Tesseracting is another suggested non technology way of time travel. Similar to the existential suspension method above. Tesseracting theorist suggest that time/space/reality continuem is like an series of bisecting blankets and if you fold the blanket(s) beneath you, you end up in a different place.

Others suggest that the key lines in our mind. Western empirically trained minds (i.e. probably everyone on this list, including me) are too linear in thought. If you can expand your reality within your mind's eye you can travel to where ever you choose.

Just a couple of different logs for your fire.

hrxll

without a transcapacitor, or a flux capacitor - the time travel thing and the speed of light may just be boiled down to the point of reference philosophy. Since time is expressed (for those mathematician folks) as just a different orthogonal vector, as is the standard space coordinates (xyz for those who dont like the cold weather like polar or varying methods). So if thats the case there may be just the simple point of reference of being able to experience an event while being a distance away from it, just not spatial but time. Same for interaction - we can affect events that occur a spatial distance away by various meanings (yelling at the dog to stop crapping on the lawn), so just figure out a new way to do the same on that different eigen vector direction.

BTW - If we keep time as a differently treated direction than space, then if i move in that direction what would that do to the summation of energy and mass at that specific point

Here's an example: Mostly just for fun.

Imagine a digital clock starting at 00:00. With an observer(you) 1 light year away.

---------
|00:00| (you)
---------

After 1 Light year of travel (without interference) the first registered click reaches you. However the difference between the Time the Clock Experiences and what you read is a Time/Distance of 1 Lt. Year

---------
|12:34|
---------
12:34 is just used to reference 1 lt. yr. ie:Not Accurate

So what does this mean?
1.)Time is a measurement of "Distance" light travels.
The clock reads |00:01| 1 yr. after it actually registered |00:01|, then traveled that distance so you could see it.

2.)The measurement of Time is Relative to the observer.
If you waited until the clock read (for example) |00:33|, then traveled away from it at light speed, it would continue to read |00:33| Time would Stop according to your measurment.
If you traveled away from it FASTER than light speed, it would begin to count Down |00:33|--|00:32|--|00:31|--etc. You would be going Back in time according to your measurement(observation).

There are many other ideas to explore from this but I'm tired of typing for now so I'll let you take it from here.

Fun? Informative? Waste of time? yes/no /

time is a measure of the distance for light to travel, or distance is the measure time travels - two sides of the same bucket. The real point isnt the transfer or the light or distance but the transfer of information - thats why the observed measurement is affected by it. But from any 1 reference frame something doesnt happen until we observe it, so if we look really really far away, lets say to the end of my hallway, the cat doesnt actually walk into the door until it happens - therefore if i run really fast away from the door (lets say at the speed of light) it should never happen. But since einstein said tha tthe speed of light is the same for any reference frame then me moving and somebody sitting stationary (in the recliner, feet up, not sure if the foot thing matters) could get the info at the same time, therefore we both experience the same event, or observe the same event at a different distance away, therefore the its as if the info went from him to me in an instant or at t=zero (could be t=zero*2, hard to say).