there aren't many subjects more interesting to me than the concept of time. before i get into it, my disclaimer is that my wording may not be technically correct, but i think you'll still be able to get my point. maybe someone who knows the details better can explain it more precisely. anyway, here goes.... everything constantly travels through spacetime at the speed of light. you are right now. the more motion you have towards the speed of light, the less is available in the time dimension. therefore, time slows the more motion you have towards the speed of light. at the speed of light, all of the motion is used up and therefore there is no room for time. so time doesn't exist at the speed of light. bottom line, there is no "one" time; time is relative. if you could travel close to the speed of light for a few minutes and come back to earth. it would feel like a normal few minutes for you, but the people on earth would have aged significantly. btw, don't think that because of this you can live forever or something. how long you live would still feel the same to you, but you could fast forward into the future. i don't think there is a way to go in the past, however. THINK OF HOW AMAZING THIS IS...AND IT IS REAL. much of what i say comes from reading "the elegant universe" by brian greene. i would HIGHLY recommend reading this book if you are even remotely interested in what i just said. you don't need to be a genius to read it, either. i'm no genius. here are a few quotes from the book to give some substance to what i said: "einstein found that...the sharing of motion between different dimensions--underlies all of the remarkable physics of special relativity, so long as we realize that not only can spatial dimensions share an object's motion, but the time dimension can share this motion as well. in fact, most of an objects motion is through time, not space." "when an object moves through space relative to us, its clock runs slow compared to ours. that is, the speed of its motion through time slows down. here's the leap: einstein proclaimed that all objects in the universe are always traveling through spacetime at one fixed speed--that of light." "the speed of an object through space is thus merely a reflection of how much of its motion through time is diverted." "...the maximum speed through space occurs if all of an object's motion through time is diverted to motion through space. this occurs when all of its previous light-speed motion through time is diverted to light-speed motion through space. but having used up all of its motion through time, this is the fastest speed through space that the object--or any object--can possibly achieve." "...something traveling at light speed through space will have no speed left for motion through time. thus light does not get old; a photon that emerged from the big bang is the same age today as it was then. there is no passage of time at light speed." "...nothing can travel faster than light speed. you may have wondered, for instance, why we can't take some object...[boost it up to] 99.5 percent of light speed--and 'push it a bit harder,' getting it to 99.9 percent of light speed, then 'really push it harder' impelling it to cross the light-speed barrier. einstein's formula [e=mc^2] explains why such efforts will never succeed. the faster something moves the more energy it has and from einstein's formula we see that the more energy something has the more massive it becomes...the more massive an object is, the harder it is to increase its speed...it would require a push with an infinite amount of energy to reach or to cross the light barrier. this, of course, is impossible and hence absolutely nothing can travel faster than the speed of light." SCIENCE RULES, RELIGION SUCKS!
We can travel forward, backwards and sideways in space, we can't however travel forward and backwards in time. The four-dimensions of Einstein's theory of relativity brings space and time together into the science he named as Spacetime. It's amazing to me that his 'simple' equation of e=mc² still operates in fields of science which are only beginning to be understood today. Einstein's Spacetime deals with the massive scale of things in the universe but say you could look into spacetime with a microscope powerful enough for you to see down to the quantum level. It is thought that Spacetime would be rough and splintered and that within this there would be gaps opening up which would be entrances to other universes and parallel worlds. In this quantum existence you could travel forward or back in time without affecting your future or altering the past, as if you changed the future (say by marrying differently) you would change another parallel universe but not the one you came from. The manner in which the universe is perceived, understood and expected to function within the laws of physics and from the way in which consciousness handles it, is mainly based I suppose on the idea that one thing cannot be another at the same time. Electrons or Photons can either act as waves OR particles but not both at the same time. However at the quantum level this is not the case and events could be two things at the same time, manifested in alternative or parallel existence. You may be able one day to travel to another such universe . If you did anything to change events the result would be evidenced in a parallel world where it was simply an expected function within its own laws. An infinate number of futures in an infinite number of universes. Worlds within worlds - some of which end up back where you started from. Thinking of this perhaps makes the âhow come space never endsâ question a little more answerable. Some physicists find that general relativity equations also produce various ways of overcoming the restrictions inherent in its formula at the quantum level. In black holes for instance where the laws of physics are suspended. Including such things as "closed timelike curves" where someone would see their watch moving forward as they traveled through quantum time curves, to find the journey ends up where and when they started. I expect all this kind of thing was as likely as space flight would be to ancient religious based civilisations. Imagine suggesting the possibility of a Voyager Mission to Medieval Papacy. Youâd need to move to a parallel world to escape the wrath of his holiness! By the way, I bought a Time Machine next Wednesday. Unfortunately it was faulty and when I took it back, the scientist repair man told me " Ah yes, you know they don't make these things like they will do. Call back last Monday and I will have it ready for you". I did and guess what... it will be. Science Rocks.
stu, when i said fast forward into the future, i didn't mean travel into the future. what i meant was, you could slow time for yourself to the point that when you came back to earth, many years would have passed. everyone you knew would probably be dead, but you could see what the future would have been like if you had died and not slowed time for yourself. for clarification, in your point of view, your life feels like normal. to yourself, you don't feel like you lived 1000 years. you would still live as long as you normally would to yourself. if you could see what was happening on earth while you were close to the speed of light, everything on earth would be happening super fast. here's an interesting idea based on what i just said. say we figured out how to do this..and say the human life expectancy is 100 years. you would still only live 100 years to yourself, but say you decided you wanted to live on earth every 100 years for 1 year. instead of living your whole life in earth time, you could skip ahead and live a total of 100 years throughout thousands of earth years of human civilization. that didn't come out right, so here... it's the year 1999, live on earth til 2000. travel close to the speed of light for x amount of time, come back to earth in the year 2099. live on earth til 2100. travel close to speed of light for x time, come back to earth in 2199. live on earth til 2200. lol i hope you get my point here....
http://www.tvparty.com/recits.html Here are the lyrics: It's About Time ("It's About Time" by Gerald Fried and Sherwood Schwartz) It's about time, It's about space, About strange people in the strangest place. It's about time, It's about flight, Travelin' faster than the speed of light. About space people and a brave crew, As through the barrier of time they flew. Pass the Roman Senators, Pass an armored knight, Pass the firing Minutemen, To this modern site. It's about time for you and me To meet these people of amazing feats. It's about two astronauts and how they educate A pre-historic woman and her pre-historic mate. It's about time It's about space About strange people in the strangest place They will be here With all of us Dodging a taxi, a car, a bus. Where will they go What will they do In this strange place where everything is new. Will they manage to survive Watch each week and see. Will they get accustomed to the Twentieth Century. It's about time For our good byes To all our pre-historic gals and guys. And now, It's About Time It's About Time It's About Time It's About Time!
think about it---time is totally a construct of man. it's day and then it's night. it's summer, fall, winter, spring, summer...... the planets revolve, birth/death repetive patterns, cycles. we get old, but do we really travel forward in time when we age ? do things ( non living ) age ?? the concept of time is simply a control mechanism--- the clock and religion are the ultimate system of enslaving mankind. best, surfer