I mean, it sucks, but all of modern physics points to the conclusion that the speed of light is a constraint on our universe meaning that it's not necessarily a property of light, but that the laws of our universe do not allow anything to travel faster than that speed. dem's the breaks.
The universe essentially has a limit to how fast anything can travel through it. Light (and a few other things) travel at the very top of that limit, but cannot exceed it. Nothing can.
The reason it takes so long for light to travel between galaxies is because they are so enormously far apart. Even something as seemingly fast as light seems slow when you consider the size of the universe.
Last edited by Netherspark; 2016-07-29 at 02:48 AM.
Slower from your perspective, faster for everyone else. The whole "twin paradox" thing.
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning.
-Kujako-
Maybe what confuses you between the 2 is when people talk on distance in terms of "light years" or "light minutes"?
These are used just to avoid big numbers. You take a distance in km (very big number if astronomical) and divide it by 300,000. Now you have the distance in "light sec" instead of "km". Divide this number by 60 will give you "light min"and so on.
Going faster than light is more than an impossibility.
It's a mathematical impossibility. Because mass-energy equivalence. The faster something goes, the more energy it has. The more energy it has, the more mass it has. The more mass it has, the more energy required to accelerate it. Due to the mathematics of it (the Lorenz equations I do believe?) this relationship between speed, mass and energy, hits infinity when speed is the speed of light (C). The mass of an object at C is infinite, therefore the required energy to accelerate the mass to C will also be infinite.
The only way to beat C is to go around C. Warping space is allowed because space can (and does) warp faster than C. So Alcubierre drive (a warp drive) is theoretically possible, if negative energy is a thing. Wormholes are also possible, if a way to open them and keep them stable is also possible. Though mathematically possible in Einstein's theories, no wormhole has been observed in the cosmos. Maybe they exist and haven't been found, maybe we need Matthew McConaughey (MUURRRPH!) but as we've never seen one to study, we don't know if they can exist in reality.
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From what I've understood, it's not so much that light can't exceed C, as much as light (and other massless particles) MUST travel at C, no faster, no slower.
I've also understood that if there was a particle (a tachyon in this hypothetical realm of physics) that appeared already going faster than C, then that's acceptable to physics. While there's no observed tachyon and they remain entirely hypothetical, these things could never slow down to C. So basically, objects that go slower than C can never accelerate past C, and objects faster than C, can never decelerate below C. But if no objects can ever accelerate past C, then how a tachyon would ever come to exist is a mystery, and they most likely don't exist.
Putin khuliyo
Actually, time slows the faster to travel, up to the point where it ‘stops’ once you reach the speed of light. (to go ‘backwards’ you would need to travel faster than the speed of light)
Let me explain it this way. A photon of light is trapped inside a container, it bounces in a straight line between the floor and ceiling of the container. The time it take to go from the floor to ceiling and back to the floor again is one second.
Now if you are to apply a velocity to the container, the photon (still bouncing between floor and ceiling) now travels in and angular direction, as it leaves the floor it travels up to the ceiling but also travels in the direction the container is moving, and then back down again at an angle.
The photon is still traveling between the same 2 point but now must travel further than when the container was static.
As time is a measurement of the distance travelled by light, this is the reason time slows the faster you travel. So if you are standing on a train platform time is moving slower for you than it is for the people on the train going past (it is a tiny difference that will never be noticed on earth, but it is still a difference).
By this same law distances contract as you move. For example if you stand on platform A and measure the distance to the next station platform B. That distance will be larger than if you were to measure that same 2 points while on the train, traveling from A to B. Again miniscule amounts that cannot be noticed on earth. That said distance only contracts in the direction of travel, it cannot contract perpendicular to the direction of travel.
As for the OP’s question, when moving at the speed of light, time ceases to exist, so the photon leaving the sun, from its own perspective, arrives instantaneously at Pluto. But as we are static, time is a factor and moves slow, so from our perspective it takes around 5-6 hours for that photon to travel that distance.
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The speed of light is C. that is where C comes from in the first place (how it is measures and the inaccuracies there are a topic on their own). Light can move slower than C using a median which would slow its travel, it can also be warped as it travels through space time. Which is effectively a black hole and how its gravity is so strong it pulls space time into which traps the light and bends it back onto itself, therefore not allowing light to escape at all, hence 'black hole'.
Light cannot travel faster than C as C is lights fastest speed in a vacuum. Other particles may be able to travel faster than light but those are theories and have never been observed. After all traveling faster than light is time travel, if that particle does exist observing it would be very difficult.
The question doesn't make sense, you're conflating layman terms with physical concepts. It's like me asking what you were doing before you were born. Space isn't a bubble or even a balloon that expands, all points of the universe are expanding concurrently it's not filling anything.
If you'd like a poetic conlusion from that, it means that every single point of the universe anywhere ever is relatively the centre of the universe. So, from your perspective, you are always the centre of the universe
Last edited by Ryme; 2016-07-29 at 11:01 AM.
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Light is the fastest anything can travel. Time isn't a speed, it's a dimension essentially.
Over a short distance light seems instantaneous because it's so fast. Over a distance of say ~150 million km, IE the distance from the Earth to the Sun, it takes around 7 minutes for a single photon (particle) of light to travel that distance.
In theoretical astrophysics, faster than light travel would cause a localised warp in spacetime to the object travelling faster than light. That's where the time travel aspect comes in, it's relativity.
Technically, we are time travelling all the time. The Arrow of Time theory dictates there is an obvious direction of time.
Last edited by willtron; 2016-07-29 at 11:24 AM.
1) Load the amount of weight I would deadlift onto the bench
2) Unrack
3) Crank out 15 reps
4) Be ashamed of constantly skipping leg day
Time is a measurement relative to distance speed and perspective. time does not exist for a photon of light, neither does distance. (explained different ways by others in this thread too). The time it take a photon to travel from the sun to the earth is only relevant to our perspective. from the perspective of that photon it is instantaneous.
If a particle could travel faster than the speed of light it would not warp space time. space time is a medium and only a massive gravitational effect can bend space time, such as a black hole. its the theory of general relativity, not relativity (they cover the same areas but are different)