Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Physics Forum Time Dilation

Just a thought -

From the perspective of a stationary observer, time dilates as an object moves closer and closer to the speed of light. I know that it's experimentally not possible (at the moment) to surpass the speed of light, but... if an object were to reach the exact speed of light, then would time theoretically stop for that object? And if an object were to be moving faster than the speed of light, then would that object be moving backwards in time? It strikes me as kind of odd that something so abstract to us could be affected by a physical object's speed. Any ideas are welcome!

At no moment will anything ever travel faster than C. Predicting what is occurring on a ship approaching C is strictly a mathematical calculation. From the frame of reference of an observer on the ship the rest of the Universe would appear to be moving very fast. Time dilation is relative only to the observers frame of reference (clock). An observer falling into a black hole would see the rest of the Universe speed up.

It's worth mentioning that things can (and do) travel faster than c relative to each other - they just don't travel though space faster than c.

This is logical and basically true insight. For photon local time virtualy stops and tachyons are claimed to travel backward in time.

This animation demonstrates it in rather illustrative way: if we consider light speed invariant with respect to observer, then the speed of light spreading for object moving by near luminal speed simply should stop - which could be interpreted like if speed of time would cease to zero.