I do hope you guys don't mind my little diagrams because I have drawn some more for this thread.

As Pete has said in another thread when pushing to the extremes our sense of reality can be threatened. But I would hold that if the math is correct it is correct regardless of the extremes.

With regards to the issue of time dilation and length contractions I have put together a diagram that is bound to confuse people endlessly but maybe , just maybe some one will see what I am trying to describe and supply the appropriate terminology.

<img src=http://www.paygency.com/velocitydistancecont.jpg>

This diagram shows the same situation from two perspectives.

It attempts to describe the way an object when travelling at 'c' or near 'c' contracts space and length so that at 'c' the object and the surrounding space becomes two dimensional. Accordingly this means that distance is universaly contracted in the direction and path of vector to zero. Thus an object travelling at 'c' is not travelling at all in that it has covered the entire distance required simply by being at 'c'.

In the first set of diagrams we have a green ball travelling at sub relativistic velocities... and distance is contracted but too small to discern.
the ball coloured orange is at relativistic velocities approaching 'c' and teh orange bar below it suggests distance that is covered at any time whilst at this velocity.

The last ball is now travelling at 'c' and is zero in dimension so that it is both at the start and end of it's journey simultaneously.

The second set of diagrams shows this progress to two dimensions from the start and finish perspective.

As you can see I am trying to show that the ball has contracted to zero length and thus the distance it needs to travel is now zero as well.

What I'd like to do is seek confirmation that this extreme rendition makes sense and is in accord with SR predictions? [have I got the logic right or am I playing with myself again....]
And if it is why would we feel the need to be sceptical of the result?

I had a discussion or two about this long long ago in a forum far far away...
However, the archives of that forums seem to have disappeared into the land of lost backups.

I remember that I wanted to draw some pretty hairy conclusions...

am interesting note is that in the orange balls case it shows almost complete contraction at say an abstract v of 0.9'c'...a question comes to mind how long does it have to stay at this velocity to complete a journey. Now we do not know the distance and I don't think it matters, distance is contracted by a certain percent and as this velocity is held iat fiorst it looks like the actual distance needed to travel at this velocity is markedly less that it should be.....

Say for example our distance is 2000ly.....or 40000 ly or what ever ti really doesn't seem to matter because all of space is contracted so if teh distance is 5 ly the object may have over shot...[ha...absurd...yes?]

but what I am trying to understandis that this sort of contraction has no relevance to distance whether it be 1million ly or only 5 ly.

But what does the math really tell us? And if it is similar to what I have described why should any of the math be taken seriously?

maybe I should simply put the question in this manner:

Scenario:

we want to travel 2000 light years and if we assume that we are travelling 0.9c for the entire distance how long would it take to get there.

At first glance it would seem an easy figure to calculate....2000/0.9 = 2222.22 years.
But:
At this velocity length and time is contracted to such an extent that the distance is almost non existent. So how long would it actually take for our object to travel the 2000 ly in such contracted space?

it suggest that from an earth observer it would take 2222.22years but t the object whilst it's time is severely dilated [almost stopped] it is always nearly there......sheesh ! this is confusing.....

I am sure this question is not new...... :)

so if the object was v=c then it doesn't need to travel and yet an earth observer would see 2000 years go by before the ship got there.
and
If you took a ride on a photon you would be already there but if earth measured your velocity it would be 'c'.

So from the photons perpective it has zero velocity but from the earths perpective it is 'c'....hmmmmmm.......