I personally believe that travelling faster than the speed of light is not possibe because as we know the things we see are represented by the light refflected off objects, so assuming a car travells forward faster than the speed of light it would catch the light refflected from its earlier position and the light from its current position, so in a matter of just seconds it would be hit by so many photons(which compose light) that it would instantly melt. Am I right?

I am not sure i understand this right. What i get is that you are saying that if someone is able to move faster than the speed of light they would be able to time travel? Now it is known(fact) that time itself only travels forward and is somehow connected to speed of light so if you were able to move faster than speed of light that would only mean that u could go into the future but not the past. Is that right or am i missing something?

Matt wrote: #
To answer the question above. No, you wouldn't be traveling back in time. Its like leaving the starting line in a drag race after your opponent, but finishing ahead of him. Just because you finish before him, doesn't mean that you traveled through time any differently.

your stuped u dont understand

Why would accelerating slow down time?

You are all ****ing ****s, learn physics

Eric wrote: #
If you are debating time travel, u are saying that the speed of light is what time is dependent on. I am not sure but dont think it is. It mainly depends on distance for the 'arrive before you leave thing' to apply. And plus if anything moving faster than the speed of light is just the concept of teleporting, until it is possible, than it will be considered just moving reeeaaaalllllllyyyyy really fast.

Have you ever taken a Physics course? I kinda think that you haven't. Go take one. =) It'll change your world.

If you are debating time travel, u are saying that the speed of light is what time is dependent on. I am not sure but dont think it is. It mainly depends on distance for the 'arrive before you leave thing' to apply. And plus if anything moving faster than the speed of light is just the concept of teleporting, until it is possible, than it will be considered just moving reeeaaaalllllllyyyyy really fast. 

If you are debating time travel, u are saying that the speed of light is what time is dependent on. I am not sure but dont think it is. It mainly depends on distance for the 'arrive before you leave thing' to apply. And plus if anything moving faster than the speed of light is just the concept of teleporting, until it is possible, than it will be considered just moving reeeaaaalllllllyyyyy really fast.

Never say never guys! Just because we haven't figured it out yet does not mean we never will. I am no scientist so I won't pretend to know a whole lot about this specific subject, but think about it like this: for years, the most brilliant minds thought the world was flat and that the universe revolved around earth. Now, that seems pretty dumb eh? Well, in 1000 years, people will look back at all our "theories" and laugh. Technology and knowledge are both expanding so rapidly, what you consider scientific fact today could very well be contradicted tomorrow. Keep your minds open!

Mitchell wrote: #
m(relative)= m/(root(1-(v^2/c^2)))
therefore is something were to travel at the speed of light m would equal m over root zero, which gives an infinite result. If anything were to travel faster then the speed of light it would result in the root of a negative number which is impossible.

We don't know that. We don't know that a negative square route exists or even that it doesn't exist. It's kind of like considering acceleration in terms of units. Distance/(Time^2) : We know what Distance is, we even know what time "is". What the heck is TIME^2? Logically it doesn't mean anything to a person, but after we analyze the meaning behind acceleration we can determine was Time^2 is. I think once we know we are looking at the square route of a negative number in real life we can start to analyze what it actually is, but for now we just don't know. So we can't say it is impossible, we can only assume that something very odd would happen.

No way... I can`t believe that! Where is the source???

It is impossible to accelerate matter to or beyond the speed of light. It is possible, however, for "objects" to move faster than the speed of light as long as they do not have any mass whatsoever, so this must be what the scientists have done. Any object with mass would become infinitely heavy as it approached the speed of light.

I've heard that scientists have slowed light down to basically a stop. One of them theorized that if you were to surround a guy with that slowed-down light and let him walk faster than it, he would travel back in time. I never heard anything else about it. For example I never heard "They tried this theory and it didn't work." So...maybe they tried it and it DID work, and that's why we didn't hear about it. They're using it for military purposes or something...?

assume that you are wathing TV on earth, a person sitting 300,000 km away will watch the same frame after 1second. so if you can travel faster than light you can still go faster than the frame and again watch it. you can do it infinite times. so i think we cant travel in time but can watch the events occured long ago if we can travel faster than light. By the time the light coming from stars millions of light years away reach us they have died, we still se them. the light keeps coming for for millions of years.

kevin wrote: #
if we hear a loud bang when we move faster than sound, what would happen if we were to move faster than light ??

You don't hear a loud bang, because you don't hear anything at all.

You are infact moving beyond the speed of sound.

if you travelled at the speed of light minus 1 mph and then ran in that space ship you would turn into your granmothers wheelchair on holidy in magaluff....and thats a fact.

WOW!!!!!!! That's all I can really say about that.....

i doesnt mean that you would arrive before you leave. It just means it would look like youre in two places at once when, in fact you have just moved quicker than light. Same distance, same destination just quicker

okay, then i suppose this could be like the speedbreaker feature in nedd for speed most wanted. everyone's going at the same speed, its just that your reaction time has increased so that everything else seems slow...is this a good example? if not, can anyone explain why time dilation occurs. there's nothing about time in e=mc^2, so where did time slowing down while going almost as fast as light come in to this from? please do tell me...thanks. this is very interesting even if i don't know much physics...

Okay, there is a basic error in reference to all statements regarding traveling back in time. Einstein did not say that you would travel back in time, he said you would accelerate into time. Very VERY different. If the sunlight takes 8 minutes to reach earth, and you did it in 7, you may also have aged 9 minutes in the process. The faster you move, the slower the world around you moves- its all based on the observer, which is why its called 'relativity'.
It is, then, possible to travel faster then the speed of light from the perspective of the outside observer. By compressing space in front of a vessel and expanding it behind a vessel, you create a fairly static pocket of space where you exist. From your perspective, you may be traveling at nominal speeds or not at all (the environment outside your vessel would actually be moving, not you), while from the outside perspective, you indeed travel faster then the speed of light. This has an added advantage of survivability, since Mach 10 is pretty much as fast as you can go before dying otherwise, and 'warp speed' has none of the normal effects of acceleration. If you are thinking this is out of some space sci-fi movie, it is a concept being tested next year at the LHC.

karl rane wrote: #
actually, the article has a flaw..

say, in a straight path, and you are in a car that is faster than the speed of light in the starting line..
if you travel from the starting line to the finish line, you will arrive there faster than light, i.e., you will see instead a glimpse or a vision of yourself/the car somewhere between the starting line and the the finish line.. but the statement in the above article will be considered wrong:

you'd arrive at your destination before you'd even leave, theoretically, of course

because, what you saw was a vision or image, not the real you.. the light that was reflected from the the car in the starting point is still travelling, whilst the real car had already reached the finish line.. making you see or glimpse the past..

i agree....
for example, if you run faster than light from point A (assuming the human body can bear that), then imagine yourself running away from the light from point A that's following you in the same direction. when you would stop and look towards Point A, the light that was carrying the information that you were leaving point A would get to you, and you would see a sort of image of yourself running towards you. You wouldn't travel back in time, you would just get to point B before light could tell point B that you were leaving point A.
is this correct, maybe? I don't know much about quatum theories and relativity, i'm only 15 and making use of all i have read about this so far. however, the E=mc^2 bit, if its true, i don't understand where OUR speed factors into this energy relationship. all that matters in E=mc^2 is the speed of light and your mass. does mass increase with speed, thus increasing your total energy. if it does, still, what relation does it hav with time.
please explain and tell me if my example was atleast partially logical. thanks.
By the way, this is interesting!!

now, this may be off topic but with how many topics that ahve been mentioned here, what is off topic? Anyways, say you are in a space shuttle traveling to a planet 1 light year away? You complete the journey by noon (leaving at midnight) and arrive back at Earth at midnight. You have only aged a single day but everybody else has aged 2 years and a day, because (assuming Einstein was correct) no one can pass the speed of light in any frame of reference. Yet, the journey was only a single day for you, and assuming you have an infinite amount of energy. Why? Is it because the energy not used for the acceleration to the SoL contributed to slowing down your frame of time? If that is so, why does the energy lead to a slower perception of time rather than an increase in mass as you approach the SoL, due to the fact E=MC^2, which related energy with mass and if C is the constant, than as E increases M must as well...

well all have to is think about the g force that the human body can take and think about what the g force at the speed of light would be there no way that a human could ever go that fast we just die very fast because is nothing that we know of that could break this g force at all I mean look at fighter jets ok they documents states that most jet can go fast then what the hum an bobdy itself can take but with human pilots it can not go that fast so maybe in the future yes break it but Idout humans can go that fast

actually, the article has a flaw..

say, in a straight path, and you are in a car that is faster than the speed of light in the starting line..
if you travel from the starting line to the finish line, you will arrive there faster than light, i.e., you will see instead a glimpse or a vision of yourself/the car somewhere between the starting line and the the finish line.. but the statement in the above article will be considered wrong:

you'd arrive at your destination before you'd even leave, theoretically, of course

because, what you saw was a vision or image, not the real you.. the light that was reflected from the the car in the starting point is still travelling, whilst the real car had already reached the finish line.. making you see or glimpse the past..

The spped of light is a measurement of speed, so of course we could go faster for **** sake.