Speed of Light = Speed of Time...?

A friend of mine (Big Will) and i have had this discussion several times, and i'd like to know what everyone else thinks.

Keep in mind that travel faster than the speed of light is not the issue, and that we're speaking in regards to the Earth

My friend brought up this point, if you were to travel 3 light years away from Earth in one year, then you could view Earth from you current position, you would see exactly what had happened 2 years ago. I agreed. I went on to make this point.

Traveling away from Earth faster than the speed of light is then the best we can do in terms of time travel. He said that time travel would mean interacting with the time that you travel to. I made the argument that you can't travel into the future, since it is undetermined, and if you interact with your past, its fairly provable with chaos theory that you will somehow undo your doings.

So, my point is this, since we can't travel into another time and do anything there, wouldn't traveling faster than light away from Earth and being able to view it the closest to time travel that is possible. And if that's true, doesn't it mean that the speed of light is also the speed of time.

 

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You can't travel faster than light.

Time travel into "the future" is as simple as flying around a bit in a rocket and coming back to Earth. You'll age less than everyone who stayed home.

Time does not have a "speed."

- Warren

 

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i hate doing this, but

please read before replying, and also...

Just because you are younger than everyone else doesn't mean that you have traveled into the future, it just means you've taken yourself out of the cycle of life for a few years.

If you would like to disprove my point such that i will accept that i was wrong, please back it up.

 

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Time..speed?

Dude, listen-

<quote>
Just because you are younger than everyone else doesn't mean that you have traveled into the future, it just means you've taken yourself out of the cycle of life for a few years.
</quote>

If that's true, than what the hell does qualify for traveling in the future?

<quote>
Time does not have a "speed."
</quote>
Remember when they went up in the airplane with an atomic clock and went really fast...when they came down the clock on the ground and the clock in the airplane were different...the one in the airplane was behind. So if we're traveling at 3x the speed of light, the clocks will be very very different...thus there is no real 'speed' of time...time is just a measurment based on the distance you cover or elapsing revolutions of something...it's as much a measurment as three centemeters and a dime is.

Seems you can't go that fast anyway I wonder what effect it would have on a clock...theoretically, on these posts people have said the clock would almost stop...I guess you would too. Frozen in time or something...or would you? And if you went faster would it go in reverse? If it did wouldn't you kinda dimsensions because you'd have to devide and go backwards as well as forwards.... such that it is weird. ha!

 

fair enough, but like i said, you can't travel into the future, just like you can't go into a building that hasn't been built yet. While it may seem that you made a jump to the future, just because you are younger than you should be doesn't qualify for time travel. you have still been present for a full second every second, so you haven't actually skipped any time, but the fact that you were moving fast slowed your clock down some.

2nd point. if your trying to justify that time doesn't have a speed, by saying certian conditions will make it different, then light doesn't have a speed either. in chicago at a particle accelerator of some sort, scientists slow down light photons to about 38 miles per hour.

seems to me thats distance, and i don't think elapsing is a word...

 

Light doesn't actually slow down in these experiments anymore than it slows down while passing through glass. Only the "apparent speed" is changed.

I works like this: the light enters the medium and is absorbed and re-emited by the atoms in a "bucket bridgade" fashion with a slight delay between absorbtion and emission.

An analogy: You are driving a car at 40mph. you come to a series of stop lights. You stop at each light for a short time and immediately accelerate back up to 40mph between lights. If someone where to measure how long it took you to travel this distance, they would come up with a value for your speed of less than 40mph, becuase of all of the stops you made.(Even though the actual speed you were traveling while moving was always 40mph) This would be your "apparent speed". If you added more stop lights, this would decrease.

Another way to decrease this apparent speed would be to increase the amount of time that each light was red. This is basically what the above experiment does. By cooling the proper substance down to near absolute zero temps, the time between absorbtion and emission can be increased greatly, leading to an "apparent" slowing of light to 38mph. (while in reality the light still travels at c between the atoms)

 

Not to be difficult, but I thought you said this wasn't about traveling faster than light...

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The point here is that the building WILL have been built. Time for the people on earth will move normally, and they will see your time as being slowed. You, on the other hand, will see your time as normal and theirs as sped up. Therefore, when you stop going so fast, it will be the future to you.

There is no way to "skip" time. If that's the sort of time travel you are picturing, it just doesn't happen. There is no known way to travel back in time, and the only way to travel forward is at normal speed or through travel near C.

The thing is, time is affected by traveling close to C. The speed of light isn't. Picture 2 trains on parallel tracks. One is going forward at some fraction of C, the other is going backward at some fraction of C. Now, when they pass each other, imagine that they both turn on their headlight. Oddly enough, the light will reach a stationary observer at the exact same time. As for slowing light down, Janus explained it well.

Actually, you would not freeze at all when traveling at relativistic speeds. You would experience time just like normal. A stationary observer would see your time slow down, you would see theirs speed up, but each of you would see your own time as normal. And, as has been said countless times in countless threads, you can't go at or faster than C, so trying to decide how time would work at those speeds is really pretty pointless.

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Well there you have it DJ, perhaps your spelling is up to par but your logic is not. That's what you get for talking about things you don't understand! Your turkey has been basted!

 

Actually, both observers would see the other's time rate slow down. Remember, Relativity says that there is no "prefered" frame of reference, so either observer can be considered as "stationary" while the other is moving. This is true as long as they maintain a constant velocity with respect to each other.

 

Will's a jackass

i don't believe that you understood the points you were making enought to back them up, and if i only posted on what i understood what would be the point? Trust me, next time i see you i'll pepper your porridge!

to the rest of you, thanks, i had be pondering this one for a while, thanks for clearing things up, although i don't much like accepting that im wrong.

 

Perhaps...

I don't pretend to know everything about this light and time matter, but at least I can put a scentence together without contradicting myself. You watch out DJ! I'll package your rolls!

I told you you were wrong all along...

 

It seems to me this thread has been going around in circles with a lot of wasted ink for quite a while.

DJ Rock asked "if I travel 3 light years away from earth in 1 year..."
This cannot be done, because he would be going 3 times the lightspeed.
End of story. It's an invalid question

Of course the word IF is a great word. I remember my old dad telling me
if and if my grandma was hollow and had a hole in her back, we could
use her for a bird house.

Regards apolo

 

Janus: Thanks, I knew something wasn't quite right as I typed...

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your spirit is light!

think about it........

your spirit has the ability to travel into many different multidimensional realities

well......peace out brains

 

You appear to be lost, allow me to direct you to the Pseudoscience Forum.

 

Well DJ Erock I think you got some very unfair flak here so, risking life and limb, I'll attempt a rearguard action.

The speed of light is a fundamental constant. Speed is a function of time. There is therefore, as you say, quite obviously a fundamental connection between c and time. Your example was rather misconceived but you were on the right track.

Your notion of time travel as being instantaneous rather than a sort of hanging around and waiting is perfectly valid as a concept, and you were quite right to say that it seems impossible. It is also quite reasonable to say that the 'waiting around kind' is not 'real' time travel. I agree, although also agree that it must be impossible.

The speed of time is an odd idea, but seems reasonable. Perhaps in the formula for c we could define t in terms of c rather than c in terms of t. It wouldn't make much difference to the calculation, although it might require a very painful paradigm shift, since then we have variations in c rather than t. Still I suspect the maths might work. Perhaps someone here could comment on this one.

Your question starting "if I travel 3 light years away from earth in 1 year..." is not 'invalid' as a question. It is just impossible to do it. Mind you it might have been better to have slowed yourself down to 3 light years in 3 years and then asked the rest.

Never let unimaginative people criticise you for using the 'if' word unless you actually want to chain up your mind.

 

Now that something I can agree in.

 

Can you provide a link to support that, even Wiki will be OK. I believe you are repeating the conventional wisdom about the reason light slows when passing through glass. See what you can find to confirm that, since I can't find any legitmate source for the absorption/re-radiation scenario. I think there is some of that, but they refer to it as scattering.

 

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/02.18/light.html