Hear me out. It doesn’t even matter that it’s 96 billion light-years away if you’re traveling at light speed. Because if you can travel at light speed, time would be frozen for you relative to earth time.
So if you’re in a spaceship traveling at light speed to your destination, it would feel like you gotten there in an instant.
Also, due to length contraction, at light speed the universe isn’t 96 billion light years wide, it’s 0 anything wide.
At light speed there is no time and no distance, the origin is the destination. You won’t even experience a single tick of Planck time to get there. Instantaneous.
Yes, it requires infinite energy for any mass to get to light speed.
I don’t think our understanding of physics breaks down at such extremes though. I believe it’s decently understood, as in general and special relativity. I’m not a physicist though.
Time is frozen at light speed. You arrive at your destination instantaneously, not even experiencing a tick of Planck time. To an outside observer it takes you time. From the perspective of a photon from the sun, there is no time or distance passing between its genesis in the sun and it landing on your face. From an observer on earth it took 8 minutes and millions of miles.
Well, you arrive at A destination instantaneously. Important distinction. Though you might not all arrive at the same destination. And since no time passes for you and your computer… how exactly do you decelerate again? If you are going the speed of light, then you ARE light. You have ceased to exist as a Lemmitor. There is no coming back.
I mean if we’re already violating physics by having objects with mass going the speed of light, I don’t see what’s wrong with also assuming the thing we have for going light speed can’t also instantaneously accelerate.
I would think you’d have to instantaneously accelerate because incremental acceleration doesn’t work the way we typically think it does at high speeds.
If you’re moving at 99.999% the speed of light relative to Earth, anything close to your speed is going to be moving quite slowly relative to you. When you accelerate some more, the change in speed relative to those close things is much larger than the change in speed you experience relative to Earth (it gets smaller and smaller as you approach light speed). But as far as I understand, there’s no such thing as moving at light speed relative to Earth but not relative to other sub-light speed things. You’d have to instantaneously move at light speed relative to everything (every sub-light speed thing).
Think about it this way - everything moves through spacetime at the same “speed”, so the faster you go through space, the slower you move through time, which is why photons experience no time.
Hear me out. It doesn’t even matter that it’s 96 billion light-years away if you’re traveling at light speed. Because if you can travel at light speed, time would be frozen for you relative to earth time.
So if you’re in a spaceship traveling at light speed to your destination, it would feel like you gotten there in an instant.
Also, due to length contraction, at light speed the universe isn’t 96 billion light years wide, it’s 0 anything wide.
At light speed there is no time and no distance, the origin is the destination. You won’t even experience a single tick of Planck time to get there. Instantaneous.
Doesn’t it also require infinite energy to do so if “the thing” has mass at all?
ie. Our description of physics breaks down at such extremes, so in truth, we have no fuckin’ idea, just a best guess? (Thus far)
Yes, it requires infinite energy for any mass to get to light speed.
I don’t think our understanding of physics breaks down at such extremes though. I believe it’s decently understood, as in general and special relativity. I’m not a physicist though.
It’s my understanding that whenever infinity is encountered, it means that our model doesn’t quite work.
It may be the way it is with this particular model/equations/bit of physics, and it may simply indicate “Nope”. I suspect not though.
AFAIK the observable universe is limited by the parts of space which expand faster than the speed of light.
Some billions of years later and we might have not seen other galaxies at all, maybe we are lucky.
In an instant from the point of view of the people on Earth, but from your point of view time still moves forward.Edit: guess I was mistaken!
Other way around. Instant from your POV but not from Earth’s.
Not the other way? You’d feel like you got there in an instant, while people on Earth needed to wait years?
Time is frozen at light speed. You arrive at your destination instantaneously, not even experiencing a tick of Planck time. To an outside observer it takes you time. From the perspective of a photon from the sun, there is no time or distance passing between its genesis in the sun and it landing on your face. From an observer on earth it took 8 minutes and millions of miles.
Well, you arrive at A destination instantaneously. Important distinction. Though you might not all arrive at the same destination. And since no time passes for you and your computer… how exactly do you decelerate again? If you are going the speed of light, then you ARE light. You have ceased to exist as a Lemmitor. There is no coming back.
You’ll need to accelerate to the light speed though, which will take time.
So for the astronaut it’d take approximately a year to reach light speed if accelerating at 1G, and another year to slow down
I mean if we’re already violating physics by having objects with mass going the speed of light, I don’t see what’s wrong with also assuming the thing we have for going light speed can’t also instantaneously accelerate.
I would think you’d have to instantaneously accelerate because incremental acceleration doesn’t work the way we typically think it does at high speeds.
If you’re moving at 99.999% the speed of light relative to Earth, anything close to your speed is going to be moving quite slowly relative to you. When you accelerate some more, the change in speed relative to those close things is much larger than the change in speed you experience relative to Earth (it gets smaller and smaller as you approach light speed). But as far as I understand, there’s no such thing as moving at light speed relative to Earth but not relative to other sub-light speed things. You’d have to instantaneously move at light speed relative to everything (every sub-light speed thing).
Think about it this way - everything moves through spacetime at the same “speed”, so the faster you go through space, the slower you move through time, which is why photons experience no time.
😵💫