Let's say we have to planets, Planet A and Planet B. They are separated by many light years. A group of A-ins figure out faster-than-light travel and are able to get to Planet B with there bodies aging only a few days. They travel back to Planet A and find their loved ones have died and time has passed 1000's of years.
I don't understand because (and I know this is a little childish) if I drove a car to my friends house and then back really fast, the people at my house aren't older than I am. Or are they ever so slightly?
The second question is: Is there any way that you could theoretically counter this problem?
I don't understand because (and I know this is a little childish) if I drove a car to my friends house and then back really fast, the people at my house aren't older than I am. Or are they ever so slightly?
The second question is: Is there any way that you could theoretically counter this problem?
-
1. Yes they are slightly older. Any body in motion experiences time dilation. If you travel at 60mph for an hour, while I remain stationary, you will have aged slightly less than me. The point is this effect is sooooo unbelievably tiny it's not worth taking into account it is quite literally billionths of a second.
Even if you started going at the kinds of speeds some space probes have reached, something on the order of 250,000 miles per hour, this effect is still absolutely negligible. It's not until you approach relativistic speeds, some appreciable fraction of the speed of light we're talking several tens of thousands of miles per SECOND, then this effect starts to become noticeable.
Theoretically yes you could. There is something called an Alcubierre drive it was a theoretical concept where you would contract the space in front of you, while it expands back to normal behind you. To an outside observer you would appear to be going faster than light but in reality you are cheating because you are still travelling less than c but you are manipulating the distance to make it shorter. It's a novel idea but the problem with it is that it makes several assumptions in order to work for one you need negative mass matter. We don't know if that exists. Negative mass matter exists only on paper as a theoretical idea we really have no idea if it really exists or not.
Even if you started going at the kinds of speeds some space probes have reached, something on the order of 250,000 miles per hour, this effect is still absolutely negligible. It's not until you approach relativistic speeds, some appreciable fraction of the speed of light we're talking several tens of thousands of miles per SECOND, then this effect starts to become noticeable.
Theoretically yes you could. There is something called an Alcubierre drive it was a theoretical concept where you would contract the space in front of you, while it expands back to normal behind you. To an outside observer you would appear to be going faster than light but in reality you are cheating because you are still travelling less than c but you are manipulating the distance to make it shorter. It's a novel idea but the problem with it is that it makes several assumptions in order to work for one you need negative mass matter. We don't know if that exists. Negative mass matter exists only on paper as a theoretical idea we really have no idea if it really exists or not.