Why does time Slow Down as we approach the speed of Light?
611403
HAVE A LOOK AT THIS AND IT WILL EXAMPLE WHY IT IS SO.
12211
Velocity distorts time.  The faster you go, the slower time goes for you.  This effect is negligable unless you are going very close to the speed of light.  In fact the formula is:\nt'=t/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2\nwhere t' is the time that has passed from a stationary observer, t is the time that has passed for you, sqrt means square root and ^2 means squared.  As you can notice, when v is small, since c^2 is so huge, you get a miniscule decimal, and 1 minus that number is basically as small as 1.0000000000001 or something, and so time is not really affected.  As v gets larger(it can never be the speed of light, then the denomonator would be zero) that fraction becomes closer to 1, so when you subtract it from one, the denomonator gets smaller and smaller, meaning t gets smaller(in order for t' to remain constant) this means that time slows down for the object moving at such velocities!  This formula is correct, it is part of Einstein's theory of relativity, and I have had to derive it myself from ordinary mechanics formulas.  \n\nAccording to the same factor, length also contracts.  It has been observed in certain tiny particles coming to the earth's surface.  These particles have a certain lifespan before they become unstable and decay.  They are also moving at a certain speed. (which is very fast; close to the speed of light.) You should simply be able to calculate v=d/t (velocity=distance/time) to find out how far they would travel.  However, they somehow travel farther than that.  When this calculated distance is put into that formula, we come up with the correct distance they actually travel!
257752
We traveled at the speed of light for about 30 minutes while Jesus stayed stationary.   This causes time dilation in relativity physics.
598949
Depends on your perspective.  As you travel closer and closer to the speed of light, time for you will seem to be normal, but you will see it speed up for others who are stationary.\n\nIf you are the one who is stationary, time will seem normal to you, but it will slow down for the one traveling.\n\nAn example - your twin has just been chosen to go on an interstellar trip.  Thankfully you're telepathic and can communicate over any distance.  As she speeds up, you will notice that there are longer and longer times between her transmissions to you, even though she says she'd contacting you at the same time every day.  And when she returns to earth 50 years later, you find she's only aged 10 years! (Robert Heinlein wrote a great novel about just this scenario - "Time for the Stars").\n\nScientists have proven this amazing fact in many experiments. They've put an atomic clock on a fast jet and flown it around the world.  When they returned, the clocks had different times than those on the ground.  But not by much - the clocks were between 50 and 270 nanoseconds different than their stationary counterparts - that's 50 billionths of a second.  Not much - but 500 mph is pretty slow compared to the speed of light.\n\nAnother way this is used in everyday life is the GPS satellites.  This navigation system has to take relativistic effects into account in it's transmission signals in order to get the high accuracy it's capable of. Every GPS satellite has an atomic clock aboard.  Because of the speed of the satellites, a ground observer will see them ticking slower than real time, so the signals have to be adjusted.\n\nTo answer your question - if you traveled around the world at 700 mph for a week, you'd be a few thousandths of a second younger than your friends who stayed behind.
271311
Your perception of time doesn't change if you travel even close to the speed of light. What changes is the perception that will have others respect of you. If they would be able to look at your watch they will see that it moves slower than theirs, and gets slower the more close to the speed of light you move. If you see their watches you will see that they are moving slower, because the movement is relative. It becomes absolute when a force is applied to it, for example an acceleration (the twins paradox). Time and space is relative to the individual that is moving at a certain speed. For you, a minute will always be a minute, you will perceive it as the same amount of time always.\n\n\n---Addition---\n\nThe equations you are thinking of are the Lorentz Transformation, heres a link\nhttp://www.classicalreality.net/Lorentz%20Transformation.htm\n\nWhen you travel nearly the same speed of light, light keeps on traveling at the speed of light from your point of view. So it is not "hardly moving" but in fact keeps on moving for everybody, independent of their velocities, at 300,000 km/sec (in vacumm). The only explanation to this is that time for the different observers is not comparable, everybody follows its own time, and space also.
855043
It's all theory, we don't know if (something) can exceed the speed of light. I would argue that time would be void at that moment, but again it's my theory. Interesting thought though.
1161934
Your understanding of relativity is wrong.\n\nYou cannot even accelerate to the speed of light, let alone beyond it. Relativity predicts that infinite enrgy would be required to accelerate a mass to the speed of light. IT makes no predictions that would make travel backwards in time possible.
188637
I'm actually studying this right now. Ok, I need you to consider "Time and Space". You've probably heard these terms used together quite often. Here's the story: Think of our Solar System as a bed mattress. If you put something heavy on it, like a bowling ball, then smaller objects (like a marble) placed next to it will be drawn to it, correct? This is basically the concept of gravity, and why we're on the ground and why Earth is revolving around the Sun instead of wandering off in space. Now, time is irrelevant because things revolving around the sun have different timeframes, for example, Mercury has a year of 88 Earth days, whereas a day on Venus is actually longer than it's year. Now, if something moves quicker, it is therorized to move slower in "Time". Therefore, if the Earth spun around the Sun faster, we would then live longer lives. Now Einstein understood that light is the fastest known thing in the universe, because it travels at 186,000 miles per second (300,000 km/sec). Now everything that we know of, that we can see, that does exist would be invisible unless there were light to see it, and for this reason, things are "relative" to the speed of light. Do you follow? Everything that moves, moves in a speed compared to light. It's kinda hard to grasp, but consider this; when there's a T-storm, and lightning strikes, you see the lightning, and then you hear the thunder. That's sound trying to catch up to the speed of light. Now, Einstein theorized that the faster you move, the slower time goes, because you are approaching the speed of light, and because light is the fastest thing in the Universe, there's nothing to compare it to, therefore time, in a sense, STOPS once you reach that speed. And If you exceed the speed of light, Time may very well move in reverse. Now do you see why time truly does not exist? Here's my favorite example: Let's say you have two identical twin brothers, and one of them is an astronaut, and goes on a space voyage in a spaceship travelling at the speed of light for a really long time. Long time? To who? To the astronaut? Nope. according to the Theory of Relativity, no matter how long he is gone, as long as he is moving at the speed of light, time will not pass for him at all. The astronaut could return after 50 Earth years to discover that his brother is an old man whereas the astronaut is still young enough to do backflips, not aging one bit. I hope that helps you, as You can tell I take a great deal of interest on the topic.
994407
simple explantion (not 100% accurate but it is something you can get your head around easliy)\n\nthe constant thing in the universe is the speed of light. Not time and not distance.\n\nAs you go faster, either time compresses and/or distance compresses. Like a bow wave on a plane or boat. The air/water gets compressed, it doesn't dissapear it just gets squashed a bit because it can not get out of the way of the vehicle fast enough.\n\nSo as you approach the speed of light, space/time gets really compressed, so compared to the rest of space that particular area is really dense. Your region of space/time would appear to be heavier than the rest of space/time, because there is more of it in that region.
1048247
There may be objects (tachyons) that move faster than light, up to perhaps infinite speeds.\nHowever, nothing already slower than light can accelerate to or beyond the speed of light.
419064
Well the answer comes with the Einsteins theory of relativity. Time is relative IE. it changes with respect to everybody. to explain in better way you have to first understand that speed of light is absolute. Suppose u are driving a car with a Friend in the same direction parallel to your Friend. if your speed is 10kmph and your Friend's is 20kmph then your Friends seed will be only 10 kmph with respect to you. However it does not happens with light. Suppose you are driving car with 150000000 m/s in the direction parallel to light and seed of light is 300000000 m/s then also speed of light remains the same with respect to you. In this case you will feel that time has slowed down. in this case for you 1 second will become 2 seconds. and if u travel with speed of light for you 1 second will become infinite second and time will stop for you
1009022
A very good question.  Newton pondered the same thing about gravity. The smallest denominator of light is the photon.  Photons are waves and they are particles (particle/wave duality -- quantum physics).  It depends on what you look for.  If you look for a particle, you get a particle.  If you look for a wave pattern, you get a wave pattern.  Either way, these bundles of light zip along at 186,000 miles per second in empty space.  They never slow down, they never speed up, and they do not move through time, as they have hit the cosmic speed limit and all their motion through time is diverted by their motion through space.  If you could travel at near light speed, I'm sure you've heard that time slows down for you relative to your friend back on Earth.  It may seem like a day to you, but your friend, when you get back, is 50 years older.  Anyhow, to answer your question, a space ship can travel through empty space, it doesn't need a medium - it keeps on going from that initial acceleration.  Once it is beyond the influence of Earth's gravity, it keeps on going, it never slows down, unless it enters another gravity well,  fires its retro-rockets, or hits something.  At lightspeed, you have all the energy you need to keep on going forever, until you hit an atom.  The atom absorbs the photon and gets all excited and the atom's electrons do a little quantum jump to a higher permitted electron orbital state.  When the atom settles down again, it emits -- you guessed it -- a photon, and the photon goes on its merry way.
706572
The answers already given are generally correct for light travelling in a vacuum. However, the speed of light slows down when it travels through any material substance (the exact amount depends on the material).
615996
You don't go 'back' because you can't get to that speed.  Time slows for you by the ratio of 1 over sqrt(1-v^2/c^2).\nYou have to get quite close to the speed of light before this is noticable at all.
68532
The first thing you have to understand is that the speed of light in a vaccum is constant, no matter how fast you're moving, nor how fast the source of the light is moving. This is bizarre. If someone standing on a conver tosses a ball to you at 5 mph while you're standing on the corner, you'll see the speed of the ball as being 5 mph relative to you. But if you're driving at 15 mph and they throw it at you at 5 mph, the speed of the ball relative to you will be 20 mph. This is how most things work. But with light, no matter the speed of the source or yourself, you'll always measure the speed of light as being 299,792,458 metres per second.\n\nEinstein accounted for this by postulating his special theory of relativity, which says basically that the reason for this is because if you move really fast, three things happen: 1) time slows down, 2) mass increases, and 3) length in directions parallel to the direction of movement contract. If you take those three hypotheses, you'll also note that the concept of things being "simulatanous" is a relative term, meaning two observers moving at the same velocity (or moving at no speed relative to one another) will agree on which events are simultaneous and which are not. However, observers at different velocities will have different concepts of what is and isn't simulataneous--and yet THEY'RE BOTH CORRECT. It's pretty mind-blowing, but if you take all of these notions together, you get a consistent view of reality.\n\nThat's Einstien's SPecial Theory of Relativity. About a decade later he formed his far more complicated general theory of relativity.\n\nThe general theory says that Newton's view that gravity operates by exerting a force on a falling object is incorrect. Rather, by general relativty, a free-falling object that is in a vacuum has no forces acting on it at all. The movement of falling objects isn't due to force, but rather the curvature of space-time--massive objects actually curve the surrounding universe. In Newtonian physics, we regard there being three spacial dimensions (up/down, left/right, and backwards/forwards) and a single dimension of time. In general relativity, there are four dimensions of space-time. In Newtonian physics, a foce makes the earth orbit around the sun. In general relativity, the earth and the sun curve the surrounding space-time continuum, and both bodies move in a straight line through curved space, resulting in the perceived sense that one body is circling about the other. In Newtonian physics, light should not bend to gravity, because gravity affects massive bodies, and light has no mass. But in fact, light does bend around stars and such.\n\nGeneral relativity has been likened to a stretched sheet of elastic material, like a trampoline. Heavier objects sink more, and make the sheet curve about them, and light obejcts rolling across are deflected by this curving.
468247
The speed of light is constant, approximately 300,000km/second. \n\nThe principals of relative motion are that if you are travelling at a speed, and you look at something else travelling at another speed, your perception of the speed of that something else will be the difference between your two speeds. For example if you are travelling 60, and you get overtaken by someone going at 70, you perceive them to be travelling at 10, since they travelling at 10 relative to you. \n\nHowever, you can never perceive the speed of light to be anything different than it's constant value. Therefore, if you travel at half the speed of light, time actually slows down to half of what it normally is, since this is the only way for the speed of light to remain constant. \n\nTherefore if you travel at the speed of light, time stands still. To answer your question, I don't know what you'd see, but probably nothing!\n\nTheres a more complicated explanation involving the magnetic and electric fields of a photo of light, but that's the basics.
23837
You're right, it is due to the speed they are traveling.  Velocity distorts time by the factor: t'=t/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) where t' is the time that passes for a stationary observer, t is the time that passes for the object moving at the high velocities, c is the speed of light, and v is the velocity the object is moving.  \n\nThis effect is basically negligable unless the object is moving close to the speed of light, but the orbiting satellite is moving pretty fast for a very long time, and so even though it's traveling at a very small velocity relative to the speed of light, it still builds up a little and creates a small distortion of time that is barely noticeable.  For example, let's say the satellite is traveling at 8,000 m/s for 5 years.  if you do the math, there are 157680000 seconds in 5 years.  The speed of light is 299792458m/s.  Now lets see how much this effects time.   That number will be t', since it's how much time passes on earth for 5 years.  Now let's see about on the satellite:\n157680000=t/sqrt(1-(8000^2/299792458^2)  solving for t, (must have fancy calculator with a LOT of places) we get t= 157679999.88772s  subtracting this from the original time, the clock is behind by .11228 of a second.  \n\nTime moved slower for the satellite, but since the velocity is so small compared to the speed of light, the amount that is different is so insignificant, that you wouldn't be able to see the difference through a telescope.  However, they want the clocks to be perfectly calibrated and exact, so they do that to make up for this small effect because it would build up more and more as time went on, and the faster the satellite is moving, the more time is distorted.