Light is the fastest moving entity in the Universe.
If you travel near the speed of light, time slows down.
If you travel at the speed of light. Time stops.
What if we travel faster than light?
Time Dilation
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If you have watched Interstellar starred by Anne Hathaway and Matthew McConaughey. The lead character who was a father of a young girl went to a mission to the outer space and go through a wormhole as a path to a distant galaxy and colonize habitable planets for human survival. When he was back in Earth, he was just months older than the day he left but his daughter was already an old woman on his deathbed.
Why is this?
What happened?
This is actually based on a concept in Physics called Time Dilation. Time Dilation is part of Einstein's Theory of Relativity that believes if you travel fast relative to the speed of light, the time slows down. Time Dilation follows the formula :
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| t' | is the dilated time, dilated time is like a stretched time. For example, 1 second of a travelling person will be equal to an hour of a person at rest. So 1 second is stretched to equal 1 hour. Dilated time is expected to be shorter than the Rest Time. |
|---|---|
| t | is the stationary time, this is the time on Earth where an observer is not moving |
| V | is the velocity of the moving object |
| c | is the speed of light which is equal to approx. 3,000,000,000 m/s |
Let's take for example the Twin Paradox. Samantha and Kevin are twins. Samantha went to a journey to outer space at 95 percent of the speed of light or 0.95c . Samantha went to the journey in 2005 (Earth time) and came back in the year 2065 (Earth time). Basically throughout the entire journey Kevin, the twin here on Earth, aged for 60 years. How about Samantha?
Here is an illustration to better show it:
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Here's how to solve it :
Given:
| symbol | value |
|---|---|
| t' | ? |
| t | 60 years |
| V | .95c |
| c | 300 000 000 m/s |
For the entire 60 years of Kevin waiting, Samantha just aged for approximately 19 years because Samantha's time dilated. This is a very fascinating thing. The concept of time and relativistic speed is definitely strange.
But what if we travel at a speed faster than light. What happens?
There are thoughts that you might be able to reverse time but this definitely difficult to prove because nothing travels beyond or even near it. But in the far future, we never know.
Isn't that Amazing??
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