"One way" travel to the distant future, using time dilation

According to widely accepted Physics theories, it is possible to do an "one way" travel to the distant future, using time dilation.

A spaceship traveling at ultra high speeds (a considerable fraction of the speed of light), could keep circling around the Moon for many centuries (from our perspective here in Earth). But for those inside the spaceship, instead of many centuries, it was just a few decades.

So, if the "time travelers" were 30 years old when the "travel" began, they could be just 50 years old at the end of the journey, but for everyone here in Earth, it would have be centuries.

Everyone that the "time travelers" knew at the beginning of the travel would be dead a long time ago. They would meet their great-great-great-great-grandsons...

That would be a "one way travel", with no possibility of return to "the past".

Does anyone here knows at what fraction of the speed of light a spaceship would have to travel, in order to 100 years here in Earth to be equivalent to 10 years inside the spaceship?

Who is to say that once outside of the earth's atmosphere time stops altogether? We are hurling through space at an unknown rate to begin with, are we not?

reply to post by GLontra


this might help

Relativity Calculator

This was theorised in Albert Einstein's Special relativity. Its called the Twin paradox.

Very interesting theory

Originally posted by iforget
reply to post by GLontra

 

this might help

Relativity Calculator

Thank you very much.

We would need to travel at 99.5% of the speed of light to reach a Relativistic Change Factor of 10 (meaning that 1 year to we would seem to be 10 years for someone back on Earth)...

reply to post by GLontra


Yeah they've covered this topic in quite a few episodes of The Universe. If you could somehow be on a bicycle traveling near the speed of light, circling a track, when you would slow down and come to a halt, an observer would have aged dozens of years and you've barely aged a week. The same concept applies to space travel near light speed, enormous amounts of time would pass on Earth in the time of a few months from the perspective of the traveler.

Originally posted by chadderson
Who is to say that once outside of the earth's atmosphere time stops altogether? We are hurling through space at an unknown rate to begin with, are we not?

I think its around 500,000 miles per hour if you add it all up.
Dosnt that makes us travel through time/space ? Arent we already time travelers in a sense ?

Originally posted by GLontra
Everyone that the "time travelers" knew at the beginning of the travel would be dead a long time ago. They would meet their great-great-great-great-grandsons...

My guess is that they wouldn't meet anyone if they decide to return to Earth. In as little as a few thousand years, there will be no one left here to report their wonderful observations and data to. Everyone will be gone and no one will care. So in that regard, their "home" will be gone, and they might as well just keep traveling outward forever.

Wow!! If we could travel at 99.999992% of the speed of light, 1 year to us would be equivalent to 2500 years to someone in Earth!!

Imagine how cool that would be, returning to Earth 5 thousand years in the future (only 2 years to me)...

Originally posted by chadderson
Who is to say that once outside of the earth's atmosphere time stops altogether? We are hurling through space at an unknown rate to begin with, are we not?

According to NASA the Earth is rotating around the Sun at about 67,000 miles per hour.
and Sol travels at 220 km/s through the milky way.

Since orbital velocities are balanced against gravitational force, how is anyone going to orbit the moon at 0.995C? I suppose the proposal has a non-zero probability, but that's about it. Wouldn't it be better to say go have a look at something else, Alpha Centauri or Proximi, Barnard's Star, etc.?

Cheers - Dave

Originally posted by bobs_uruncle
Since orbital velocities are balanced against gravitational force, how is anyone going to orbit the moon at 0.995C? I suppose the proposal has a non-zero probability, but that's about it. Wouldn't it be better to say go have a look at something else, Alpha Centauri or Proximi, Barnard's Star, etc.?

Cheers - Dave

Maybe it would be a better option... Going to Kepler-22-b to see how it looks like, and then return to future Earth.

Originally posted by GLontra
So, if the "time travelers" were 30 years old when the "travel" began, they could be just 50 years old at the end of the journey, but for everyone here in Earth, it would have be centuries.

And then they could sing a song about it...


In the year of thirty-nine
Came a ship in from the blue
The volunteers came home that day
And they bring good news
Of a world so newly born
Though their hearts so heavily weigh
For the earth is old and grey

This would have some interesting effects on space-travel.

If you could accelerate to something near the speed of light, as mentioned in a previous post, you could travel, for instance, over 25,000 light-years in a single year, from your perspective.

It would royally suck to have someone accelerate to near the speed of light thinking it would take them 50 years to get to their destination..... then come out of cryostasis to find themselves in the middle of the galactic void.

Originally posted by GLontra
Wow!! If we could travel at 99.999992% of the speed of light, 1 year to us would be equivalent to 2500 years to someone in Earth!!

Imagine how cool that would be, returning to Earth 5 thousand years in the future (only 2 years to me)...

edit on 7-12-2011 by GLontra because: (no reason given)

Quite cool... or possibly, quite hot.
Suppose the earth died halfway through your journey.
Maybe, just mankind was gone, and a new "top of the food chain" was in charge.
Maybe nothing remained but, some flesh eating fungus or bacterium.

or maybe a utopian society, without need, disease or hate........

Willing to roll the dice?

It is a fun thought though.

Originally posted by R3KR

Originally posted by chadderson
Who is to say that once outside of the earth's atmosphere time stops altogether? We are hurling through space at an unknown rate to begin with, are we not?

I think its around 500,000 miles per hour if you add it all up.
Dosnt that makes us travel through time/space ? Arent we already time travelers in a sense ?

That's pretty far off.

The rate isn't unknown, this should be a reasonably decent estimate as it's on a university website:

www.phy.duke.edu...

By measuring the amount of the dipole anisotropy (the bluest part of the sky is .0033 K hotter than average), we can determine the magnitude of the earth's motion with respect to the CMB: the earth is moving at a speed of 370 km/s in the direction of the constellation Virgo.

I think the Milky way is moving even faster than that but apparently our location in the milky way has us moving backwards to partially offset the Milky way velocity. When the Milky way does half a rotation at our location, then we apparently will be moving faster than the center of the Milky way, instead of slower like we are now.

I'm watching an episode of The Universe about time travel, and they're discussing time dilation. If you traveled at 99.9% the speed of light for 7 years, when you returned to earth, it would have aged 500 years! That's just crazy.

Their has to be a better way for traveling large distances.

This might be better way of cry-o-freezing people with unsolved illnesses.