Travel at Speed of Light...pretty cool vid

[99 pewtercoupe]

Space is a big place!

[lander]

Make sure you go full screen...otherwise you sit there wondering wtf is going on.

[86RAG]

[Cybercowboy]

If you were truly riding light the video would be instantaneous because a photon does not experience time, it travels purely in the three spatial dimensions. As a matter of fact, there's no way a video like that could exist in nature, no matter what. So, sorry to be a buzzkill there Mr. Producer.

[CertInsaneC5]

A commute of over an hour to Jupiter's moons is completely unacceptable. I will have to find job closer to home. Thanks for the job offer. But I will have to decline your generous offer of $1,000,000,000 a year.

[Scissors]

1. Apparently, light is slow as ****.
2. I understand what they're getting at, but at near-light-speed velocities things would look very different.

[OddBall]

The music in space is boring and repetitive.

[Cybercowboy]

Originally Posted by Scissors

1. Apparently, light is slow as ****.
2. I understand what they're getting at, but at near-light-speed velocities things would look very different.

At near-light-speed everything in front of you would be massively blue-shifted and everything behind you would be red-shifted. The radiation flux would be complete bullshit, and the apparent speed would be totally fast and cool looking because of time dilation. You'd be a roasting kernel of relatively-loving fun as you hurtled to your imminent death from radiation sickness and as your systems failed one by one, you could reminiscence about Earth as you knew it 1,291,924,013 years ago.

[Nemesis]

Originally Posted by Cybercowboy

If you were truly riding light the video would be instantaneous because a photon does not experience time, it travels purely in the three spatial dimensions. As a matter of fact, there's no way a video like that could exist in nature, no matter what. So, sorry to be a buzzkill there Mr. Producer.

Originally Posted by Cybercowboy

At near-light-speed everything in front of you would be massively blue-shifted and everything behind you would be red-shifted. The radiation flux would be complete bullshit, and the apparent speed would be totally fast and cool looking because of time dilation. You'd be a roasting kernel of relatively-loving fun as you hurtled to your imminent death from radiation sickness and as your systems failed one by one, you could reminiscence about Earth as you knew it 1,291,924,013 years ago.

Since speed = distance over time, if there is no time there is no speed.

[Cybercowboy]

Originally Posted by Drew M

Since speed = distance over time, if there is no time there is no speed.

From a photon's perspective, time simply doesn't exist. Its entire lifetime is an instant in time of zero duration, and during this time could potentially travel from one side of the universe to the other. In the 4-dimensional universe that we live in, photons never experience one of those dimensions. Essentially any object moving in our 4-dimensional universe is constrained to a net velocity of c, and that means you and me too. I mean all the time you are moving through 4 dimensions at c, so when you're not moving very fast in the three spatial dimensions, you're moving really fast in the time dimension. Really, we spend almost all our lives moving through the time dimension at very close to c, and the remainder of our velocities in the spatial dimensions - when added as vector quantities - exactly adds up with that to c.

Interestingly, if tachyons are possible (theoretical particles that travel faster than light and can never travel slower than light speed) then they do experience time except for them it runs in reverse. As the tachyon moves through space, it moves backwards in time. The lowest energy state for a tachyon would be infinite speed, and the highest energy tachyon would be just barely above light speed.

[Nemesis]

I have a hard time believing a lot of the theories of time. Probably because our lives are centered on it.
For example, Steven Hawking states that time slows down as an object moves away from a large object. Which also points out that time doesn't actually exist. It is only perceived to exist by people. If you left earth and orbit Jupiter for a year. Say 100,000 years pass on earth. Would you see earth revolve around the sun 100,000 times? Would you age 100,000 years and die? Would you only age 1 year? Then again youre on jupiter, a huge planet. According to theory, time would speed up on that planet.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGpfu-KpuLw]

[Cybercowboy]

Originally Posted by Drew M

I have a hard time believing a lot of the theories of time. Probably because our lives are centered on it.
For example, Steven Hawking states that time slows down as an object moves away from a large object. Which also points out that time doesn't actually exist. It is only perceived to exist by people. If you left earth and orbit Jupiter for a year. Say 100,000 years pass on earth. Would you see earth revolve around the sun 100,000 times? Would you age 100,000 years and die? Would you only age 1 year? Then again youre on jupiter, a huge planet. According to theory, time would speed up on that planet.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGpfu-KpuLw]

According the to Einstein's theory of General Relativity, time will slow down in the presence of a large gravitational field. Here on Earth the effect is very small, but if you were to hover close to a neutron star it would be very noticeable. This isn't just a theory, it has been experimentally verified many many times, and our GPS satellites take into effect the small time difference they experience in the lower gravity they feel up in orbit.

The stuff I was talking about earlier is covered in Special Relativity, which does not take gravity into account. But it's really all part of Relativity, it's real, it's not just some unproven concept, it's very real.

What it really tells us is that there is no "universal" clock that is correct. Every place in the universe experiences the flow of time uniquely. Nowhere is special. Here on Earth we experience time move slower than would be the case if we were floating somewhere out between Earth and Mars. Take two clocks, synchronize them, and then move one out to that point in deep space. Wait a few years, and bring them back together. The one in deep space will be a few seconds ahead of the one that sat here on Earth.

If instead you moved one clock to be a few miles from a massive neutron star or black hole, what would happen? Well, when the clocks were brought back together, they could be years different. The clock by the black hole will have barely even moved, possibly if it is close enough and the black hole is massive enough. If you fell into a black hole and could somehow remain in one piece as you went through the event horizon, you would experience time coming to a stop and you'd never actually get to the black hole itself. An observer watching from afar would see you just disappear into the event horizon, and you'd look to them as if you were frozen in time just before you disappeared.

[Nemesis]

[VatorMan]

[Ol Timer]

So if I'm late to this conversation, it doesn't matter?

[VatorMan]

Originally Posted by Ol' Timer

So if I'm late to this conversation, it doesn't matter?

Depends-how close to a black ho are you ?

[Scissors]

Originally Posted by Cybercowboy

According the to Einstein's theory of General Relativity, time will slow down in the presence of a large gravitational field. Here on Earth the effect is very small, but if you were to hover close to a neutron star it would be very noticeable. This isn't just a theory, it has been experimentally verified many many times, and our GPS satellites take into effect the small time difference they experience in the lower gravity they feel up in orbit.

The stuff I was talking about earlier is covered in Special Relativity, which does not take gravity into account. But it's really all part of Relativity, it's real, it's not just some unproven concept, it's very real.

What it really tells us is that there is no "universal" clock that is correct. Every place in the universe experiences the flow of time uniquely. Nowhere is special. Here on Earth we experience time move slower than would be the case if we were floating somewhere out between Earth and Mars. Take two clocks, synchronize them, and then move one out to that point in deep space. Wait a few years, and bring them back together. The one in deep space will be a few seconds ahead of the one that sat here on Earth.

If instead you moved one clock to be a few miles from a massive neutron star or black hole, what would happen? Well, when the clocks were brought back together, they could be years different. The clock by the black hole will have barely even moved, possibly if it is close enough and the black hole is massive enough. If you fell into a black hole and could somehow remain in one piece as you went through the event horizon, you would experience time coming to a stop and you'd never actually get to the black hole itself. An observer watching from afar would see you just disappear into the event horizon, and you'd look to them as if you were frozen in time just before you disappeared.

This.

And to really mess with people's minds, in what order two distant events take place can depend upon the observer. To one observer event "A" could come first while event "B" could instead happen prior to "A" from the standpoint of another observer.

[Rob]

[Fasglas]

Originally Posted by Cybercowboy

At near-light-speed everything in front of you would be massively blue-shifted and everything behind you would be red-shifted. The radiation flux would be complete bullshit, and the apparent speed would be totally fast and cool looking because of time dilation. You'd be a roasting kernel of relatively-loving fun as you hurtled to your imminent death from radiation sickness and as your systems failed one by one, you could reminiscence about Earth as you knew it 1,291,924,013 years ago.

Not so fast...

Folding Space solves that problem. (Traveling without moving)
Frank Herbert : DUNE

[Cybercowboy]

Originally Posted by Fasglas

Not so fast...

Folding Space solves that problem. (Traveling without moving)
Frank Herbert : DUNE

Or warping space, but in that case you're not actually moving in real space near the speed of light. My previous descriptions only apply to moving in our standard 4-dimensional space-time at nearly light speed. If you were in a warp bubble moving faster than the speed of light, your velocity in the local space-time inside the warp bubble would be roughly zero. There are some simulations on the internet that shows what it would look like if you were in a faster-than-light warp bubble.