So apparently time stops at the speed of light?

[Plazmatic]

I'm confused, if time stops at the speed of light, then how can it take any amount of time for light to reach point A to point B? For example the speed of light is exactly 299,792,458 meters per second, and it takes 8 minutes for the suns light to hit earth, and for some stars light to get to earth it takes millions, and sometimes billions of years. If time stops at the speed of light, then how come it takes time for light to reach us? It seems to make more sense that time goes very slow at the speed of light.

Second question, theoretically, if you went faster than the speed of light you would go back in time, if you were to go faster than the speed of light, and lets say that the time it takes you to get from point A to point B is five seconds backwards in time, would you see your self before you traveled if your ending point (point B) at point B, if it was close enough ahead of your self to see (two meters ahead of your starting position for example)? (Obviously end up two meters ahead of your self at the speed of light you would not go in a straight line, you would travel far out and then back, almost make a circle, accept you would end up two meters in front of your original position when you stopped)

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Ouch, I think you've just killed my brain. Thanks al-ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.

 

[delet]

I always thought that it was going faster than the speed of light that allowed time to stop for you as you traveled from Point A to Point B. It makes more sense to me that way at least.

 

[Danny Ocean]

Yes. If you were somehow travelling at the speed of light time would appear to you to have stopped. Everyone else looking at you would be all like "How the fuck is he going at C?!"

Oh, I see. It's because light can travel in waves, and waves don't have mass. That's why waves are the only things that can travel at the speed of light. E=MC[sup]2[/sup] and all that means that it's impossible to reach it anyway. The faster you go the more energy you need to make you go faster. You can never get there. You can get damn close, but never there.

It's like walking half way from point A to B. Then half again. Then half again. Then half again. And each time it requires significantly more energy to halve the distance between you and B. You'll never get there. No matter how much energy you have.

Or something. I'd ask Harbinger here bef-

ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.

MY ATTACKS WILL TEAR YOU APART.

 

[Madaxeman101]

time doesnt stop at the speed of light, the mass of a body travelling at the speed of light increases and time slows down. Light photos have negligible mass and are unnaffected

 

[dagens24]

Who said times stops at the speed of light?

 

[Burningsok]

I'll get back to you on that one...

lol seriously I actually get what your talking about, but yeah; I can't really answer it.

 

[j0z]

You are correct in saying that if me or you, or a clock went at the speed of light it would seem that time was standing still. But, it makes sense when you remember that time and speed is all relative. And yes, theoretically, if you went fast than the speed of light, you would be traveling back in time.

But, it is impossible to go the speed of light because as you approach c your mass increases, and when you reach c (you can't) you will have infinite mass, and therefore you need an infinite amount of energy to move you.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

Light itself doesn't affect space-time, a mass moving at that speed would theoretically not see any passage of time though.

It all has to due with distorting space-time, if there is no distortion there are no relativistic effects such as the apparent stopping of ti-DIRECT INTERVENTION IS NECESSARY.

 

[Uberjoe19]

At lightspeed, relativistic effects become unignorable, and due to the way that the equation is written, the mass of an object at lightspeed is essentially infinite, which is impossible. Hence why lightspeed travel is ALSO impossible.

On this equation, v is velocity and c is the speed of light. As you can see, as the value of v approaches c, the Lorentz factor of the object represented by gamma becomes greater and greater. As it is clearly impossible to divide by zero in a way that does not introduce infinities, the mass of the object also becomes infinite. Let's put our resulting Lorentz factor value into the following equations:

,
Where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the speed of light.

Lightspeed is actually not obtainable because the closer you get to it, the more energy that is required to accelerate the object further, the energy required basically being infinite as well.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Yes. If you were somehow travelling at the speed of light time would appear to you to have stopped. Everyone else looking at you would be all like "How the fuck is he going at C?!"

Oh, I see. It's because light can travel in waves, and waves don't have mass. That's why waves are the only things that can travel at the speed of light. E=MC[sup]2[/sup] and all that means that it's impossible to reach it anyway. The faster you go the more energy you need to make you go faster. You can never get there. You can get damn close, but never there.

It's like walking half way from point A to B. Then half again. Then half again. Then half again. And each time it requires significantly more energy to halve the distance between you and B. You'll never get there. No matter how much energy you have.

Or something. I'd ask Harbinger here bef-

ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.

MY ATTACKS WILL TEAR YOU APART.

Light itself doesn't affect space-time, a mass moving at that speed would theoretically not see any passage of time though.

It all has to due with distorting space-time, if there is no distortion there are no relativistic effects such as the apparent stopping of ti-DIRECT INTERVENTION IS NECESSARY.

I can never see this whole harbinger thing getting boring, can you?

 

[steel_bee]

You are correct in saying that if me or you, or a clock went at the speed of light it would seem that time was standing still. But, it makes sense when you remember that time and speed is all relative. And yes, theoretically, if you went fast than the speed of light, you would be traveling back in time.

But, it is impossible to go the speed of light because as you approach c your mass increases, and when you reach c (you can't) you will have infinite mass, and therefore you need an infinite amount of energy to move you.

Bear with me, I only did A level physics, but doesn't that only hold when a body accelerates to C? In theory, if it were possible to instantaneously change your velocity without going through all the intermediate velocites, then one could travel at the speed of light? and presumably this is what light indeed does when it goes through a different medium and comes out the other side? (I forget what material it is that makes light travel slower than walking pace but I'd probably insert something about that here)

 

[Summerstorm]

Time doesn't stop at lightspeed. Just your perception of time does. (Well not just the perception, but your personal time).

For example if you fly at near-lightspeed somehwere you will say get there in 50 years, for you it will only have been a short while. This time dilation is ever present, even in slow speeds. Time is relative.

Also you don't go back in time when you get faster than light. Light is still not very fast (in the cosmic sense) you would need to go beyond the maximum speed (which is of course not possible)

 

[CoverYourHead]

Yes. If you were somehow travelling at the speed of light time would appear to you to have stopped. Everyone else looking at you would be all like "How the fuck is he going at C?!"

Oh, I see. It's because light can travel in waves, and waves don't have mass. That's why waves are the only things that can travel at the speed of light. E=MC[sup]2[/sup] and all that means that it's impossible to reach it anyway. The faster you go the more energy you need to make you go faster. You can never get there. You can get damn close, but never there.

It's like walking half way from point A to B. Then half again. Then half again. Then half again. And each time it requires significantly more energy to halve the distance between you and B. You'll never get there. No matter how much energy you have.

Or something. I'd ask Harbinger here bef-

ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.

MY ATTACKS WILL TEAR YOU APART.

THIS HURTS YOU.

*Ahem* Quantum mechanics hurt my head... a lot. Though as I understand it, time is relative, and thus high speeds distort time. Though some of the educated people here will probably be able to answer far better than I.

 

[Sampler]

I always thought it was a relativity thing - for you travelling at the speed of light* time would appear to have stop for everything you observe that isn't moving with you - ie if your space ship is doing light speed for everything aboard time would appear normal but if you look out the window time would appear frozen.

*presuming it was possible.

 

[Autumnflame]

time would appear to stop. becasue you would be traveling at the same speed so no new particles of light would be entering you eyes to see with. which would render you blind. till you slowed down.

the only way to effectively stop would be to suspend all atomic movement.
but that presents its own challenges. if you somehow managed to do it. you would either freeze to death or over heat and die depending if you could interact with the surrounding atoms

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

Or something. I'd ask Harbinger here bef-

ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.

MY ATTACKS WILL TEAR YOU APART.

Light itself doesn't affect space-time, a mass moving at that speed would theoretically not see any passage of time though.

It all has to due with distorting space-time, if there is no distortion there are no relativistic effects such as the apparent stopping of ti-DIRECT INTERVENTION IS NECESSARY.

I can never see this whole harbinger thing getting boring, can you?

RELEASING CONTROL OF THIS FORM . . . no, never.

 

[effilctar]

Time doesn't stop; it is relative to the speed at which a particle is travelling.

 

[Uberjoe19]

time would appear to stop. becasue you would be traveling at the same speed so no new particles of light would be entering you eyes to see with. which would render you blind. till you slowed down.

the only way to effectively stop would be to suspend all atomic movement.
but that presents its own challenges. if you somehow managed to do it. you would either freeze to death or over heat and die depending if you could interact with the surrounding atoms

Actually, the cessation of all atomic motion is impossible due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, because you would know both how fast and where the particles are at the same time, which violates the principle.