since nitro recently posted in another thread that there will be a tv show about brian greene's "the elegant universe", i started reading the book again. i think chapter 2 alone is worth buying the book. it deals with motion and time, which is what i'm about to discuss. anyway, as stated in the book, einstein said that all objects in the universe are always traveling through spacetime at the speed of light. the speed of an object through space is also how much of its motion is diverted through time. so, the more speed an object has towards the speed of light, the less motion there is for the passage of time; so time slows. as humans on earth, since we are not moving through space close to the speed of light, most of our motion is through time, not space. when an object uses all of its motion through space, there is no motion left for time. so at the speed of light, there IS NO PASSAGE OF TIME. now here is the point of my thread: what the hell are the consequences of the concept that at the speed of light, there is no time? what the hell does it mean to say there IS NO PASSAGE OF TIME AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT?! what i mean by that is: if you were alive and moving through space at 99.9% the speed of light, how would that be different than being alive and moving through space at 100% the speed of light? what would it be like to exist moving through space at 100% the speed of light and NO PASSAGE OF TIME?
the opposite question is also interesting: if you were alive and moving through space at 0.1% the speed of light, how would that be different than being alive and moving through space at 0% the speed of light? what would it be like to exist moving through space at 0% the speed of light, having no motion through space, ONLY PASSAGE OF TIME?
also in chapter 2 of that book, greene says that if we measure a car at rest on earth to have a length of 16 feet, if it were moving at 120 miles per hour, it would have a length of 15.99999999999974 feet. questions: what would the length of the car be, traveling through space at 100% speed of light? what would the length of the car be, traveling through space at 0% the speed of light?
If the car were traveling at 0% of the speed of light, I would image that it was 16 feet exactly. If it were traveling at the speed of light, its mass would become infinite. It would require almost an infinite amount of energy to get closer and closer to 100% of the speed of light. Theoretically, it would require more energy than exists in the universe for the car to reach the speed of light, so it would never happen. I believe you are referring to time dilation and the Lorentz gamma factor, which was introduced by the Dutch physicist Hendrik A. Lorentz. From the particle of light's perspective, it doesn't take 13 billion years to transverse the universe -- it does it instantly. A misconception a lot of people have is that it would take 50 years to get to a star 50 light years away while traveling at the speed of light. To the traveler's perspective, the trip would be over as soon as it started. It only takes 50 years from the standpoint of an observer on earth.
i don't know about that. if it was at rest ON EARTH, it already has motion through space because the earth is moving; it is already 16 feet. the more motion through space, the shorter its length. therefore, i would imagine its length would become larger the less it moves through space. i don't know if you have the book, but what you said is the very end of chapter 2. however, that is ACCELERATING an object towards the speed of light. in my original question, i meant if an object was already moving at that speed through space. in other words, what would it be like if you were currently moving through space at the speed of light ALREADY? would everything be FROZEN? see what i'm getting at? if things would not be frozen, how would they be? how is the opposite? moving through space at 0% the speed of light, you are not moving anywhere in 3 dimensions; time is passing and that is it. what would that be like? lol yes this is a very interesting issue, IMO, which really is the point of my entire thread: what it is like to be moving through space at 0% or 100% the speed of light. the more i think about light, it seems as if it travels instantaneously. however, relative to us, it seems like it takes time. is that how it is? in other words, is the speed of light really fast, or is it instantaneous and we are just really slow? i suppose this is relative. another thing, if at the speed of light there is no time, is there really a beginning and end to the universe? is motion through space at less than the speed of light the CREATION of time? i don't even know what the hell i'm talking about. this stuff blows my mind.
The obvious hole in this theory is the recent evidence that light actually slows over distance. Wasn't there a big, long thread on this in here somewhere?
from a photons perspective nothing ever happens space and time are interchangeable in such a way that the faster you go in space the more time slows down, until you hit the speed of light where time stops (unfortunately for objects with mass, the faster you go, the heavier you get, and the more energy it takes to push you faster. Like aphie said it would take infinite energy for you to go the speed of light) gekko, thats a great question about 0 velocity. but how would you know that you had attained 0 velocity? compared to WHAT? I would wager that on the scale of velocities of physical objects in the universe compared to the speed of light, that the effects would be miniscule. but who knows? if you manage to reach 0 velocity you could become an old man in no time..
here are some similar threads: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20909 http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12796
You might wanna nab a copy of Bentov's Stalking the Wild Pendulum. He approaches this rather extensively in various aspects. Been a long time since I read the book (over ten years, anyway) so at best I'm forced to paraphrase, but basically he shows that using Einsteinian space-time curvatures, any object at its maximum kinetic potential with zero momentum is actually expanding in infinite directions at infinite velocities. Oh my, could this be what space is doing? (Yeah, yeah; my science profs all hated me). The part I'm waiting for someone to grasp and apply is the fallacy all our theoretical science is built upon - that time is the only universal constant. Once someone finds a replacement for that in all the equations and starts applying the most logical principle - that our only available constant is measurement of space - then we'll be getting somewhere. If I were a true math geek I'd be insane .