A Couple of Questions

[Inquisitive]

Hello all, I have recently taken an interest in time travel theory. However my knowledge thus far is very limited. I have a couple of questions about topics concerning time travel that i cannot yet answer.

If light can be slowed to 30 cm/s, then what is preventing us from shining a light beem in the dark at 30 cm/s and driving past it faster. This would cause the driver to be going faster than the light, so shouldnt that make him start going backwards in time?

And secondly, what is the reason that going past the speed of light is impossible? For as I understand it, if you were spinning around the earth at near light speeds, than from an earthlings perspective you would be moving very slowly. So concievably once you reached light speed from an earthlings point of view you would be stopped. However from your own point of view your still going at a normal rate. So why dont you pass the speed of light?

Thanks for any help given.

 

[Guest]

I have limited knowledge on the subject, but it might be of some help.

Answer: Mass.

Light has very low mass, and is the prime reason why it travels so fast. You can't slow it without adding mass to it, and obviously, we can't modify atoms let alone energy yet.

We're obviously too heavy to travel at the speed of light. Even if we were, we would be crushed to the back of the ship in about 3 seconds flat. The space shuttle would take roughly, to my knowledge, 9 months to reach the sun at 17000MPH, and this exerts a crushing force already. So imagine it going much much faster so it reached the sun in 8 minutes (or 8.3). You would have astronaut soup.

And this is all based on an assumption which could quite possibly be flawed.

 

[titorite]

On an interesting spiritual note we humans as a whole can not travel at the speed of light. But every day, every moment of your life light is being fired between neuons of your brain which gives us the ability to understand our universe through the windows of our soul.