Posted by Übermenschİ at 128.252.192.192 on March 11, 2004 at 14:13:19:
In Reply to: Special relativity theory question posted by AshFan on March 11, 2004 at 13:10:07:
It's called the General Theory of Relativity for a reason: observed motions are relative. Say your ship is being measured as travelling 99.99% light speed from a vantage point on Earth. Also say you're by window so we can see you walking. From Earth, due to time dilation from your ship moving so incredibly quickly, you will be moving only imperceptibly, if at all. The closer an object approaches the speed of light, the slower that object's time passes (incidentally, this means that photons, according to the observer, do not age).
Your point of view is that you're moving 3 mph but that doesn't matter because you're actually ON the ship. And oddly enough, the light you see is still moving at ~3 x 10^8 m/s in relation to you even though your ship is also moving damn near the speed of light. Strangely, this does not mean the light you see is moving at twice the speed of light.
Ok, I've now totally confused you due to the difficulty of the subject matter and my poor explanatory skills.
(Nevermind the fact that accelerating a vessel to that speed would require utterly enormous amounts of power.)
This brings up the possibility that if someone could travel near light speed, they could effectively move forward in time.