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    « Bigfoot | Main | 1066: William the Conqueror & Harold »
    Thursday
    Jul122007

    Why time slows down when approaching the Speed of Light.

    0375727205.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpgOk, so you’ve heard that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. (That’s not quite true. The expansion of the universe allows for faster than light travel but that’s another post.) You’re also aware that time slows down the closer you get to the speed of light. You know, the ‘One twin goes off to Alpha Centauri at the speed of light and comes back after 80,000 years but he’s only aged 3 months’ story.

    Ever wonder why? Here’s the crib notes.

    Everything in the universe always travels exactly at Light Speed. Always.


    Time dilation: Special relativity declares a law for all motion: The combined speed of any object’s motion through space and it’s motion though time is always precisely equal to the speed of light.


    spacetime.gifThat’s right, everything. You, me, the computer screen you’re looking at, your grandma’s French toast, Santa Clause… everything.

    Everything is traveling through Spacetime: space (the three dimensions we experience and the nine others that m-theory predicts) and time.

    Adding the total movement through both space and time always equals light speed. Always. Always. Always.

    Space and Time do not exist seperately, the are parts of the same thing, Spacetime.

    Since you must travel constantly at exactly the speed of light, when you increase your speed through space, you decrease your speed through time.

    Your head (and the rest of you) is traveling through spacetime at the speed of light. But, when you’re at rest (not accelerating) all of your head’s movement is through time, none of it is traveling (accelerating) through space. Every time your head moves (accelerates) through space; in a car, in a plane, in a spaceship… even nodding up and down, some of it’s movement in time is lost since it is now moving through space.

    Cool huh.

    What about light?

    Since light waves use all of their motion to travel through space at Light Speed, they have absolutely no motion through Time. Every photon that has ever been produced exists in an ageless state. (To us, the light seems to move through time but to the photon, time is standing still. This is one of the seemingly odd realizations fo Ensteins Theory of Relativity.) That's why poton's from the early universe don't 'fade out' or do something else. They can't, since for them, time is at a standstill.

    The universe ages, light does not.

    Reading: The Fabric of the Cosmos: Brian Greene

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    Reader Comments (83)

    If all speed is relative, then to the fast moving train passenger, the Earth could equally be seen to be moving fast while the passenger and train is at rest. So, why does time slow for the passenger and not Earth?
    Of course they are both moving through spacetime. But the train has the additional velocity of it's own motion on the earth - so RELATIVE to the earth, time aboard the train slows down MORE than it does for the earth alone. There is no physical object in the universe that is utterly motionless - due to the expansion of the universe. It is the 'friction' (metaphorically speaking) of objects in motion through spacetime - all objects - that creates our notion/perception of 'time'.
    Thanks for the explanation. I have never understood it before, but you made it easy.
    01.10 | Unregistered Commentervente d'or
    Also when light travels through anything but a vacuum it still is going at the same speed but is bounced around between the molecules so it has to travel farther which makes it appear that is is going slower.
    03.12 | Unregistered CommenterJoshH100
    People are or anything living are rare in this Universe. I believe that there is somethings that do live based on the math part of it. infinite starts=a fraction of probability. So the laws wasn't meant for us. Plus things we don't know like is there more then one Universe as pertains to a multiverse without alternate reality's cuz that impossible. A multiverse that has each one be different makes more sense and is apart of the same logic and math as life probability. And the view of time its self. What I am confused about is if we can look back and see the beginning of the the Universe after the big bang. Cuz the science says that our view slows down at our point and looking into space that the expiation is moving really fast the farther we look out.
    05.3 | Unregistered CommenterPurser
    When this clicks in your head, its gives you a weird feeling!
    05.11 | Unregistered CommenterRyan
    I wonder how long it will be before someone can build something that travels the speed of light
    08.6 | Unregistered CommenterJames
    nice content you can refer dinamani to know about world current affairs..
    10.9 | Unregistered Commenterdinamani

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