Tuesday, July 08, 2008

physics stuff

So, let's say it is possible to go the speed of light in a spaceship. And one of the laws of physics states that as you speed up toward the speed of light, time time slows down and is eventually zero when you actually get to the speed of light. So let's say we are in a space ship traveling from point A to point B. If no time elapses when the ship travels from A to B, then surely the space ship must be going infinitely fast.

Hmmm...but not really. Time does elapse outside of the space ship but it does not inside of it. So we will see the ship travel from A to B, but the ship itself (from its point of view) wouldn't be traveling from point A to B but instead "jumping" between the locations-without having any time elapse in between. In this way, (although laws of physics also state that you cannot get up to the speed of light) a rocket could travel from earth to another far, far away planet and the person inside of it would not even believe they went anywhere. The only problem is how would you stop the space craft? It is going at the speed of light so even if you set a timer to slow the rocket down in .nth of a second, that tiny amount of time would be infinite if time slowed down to a halt. The only way to stop it would be with some external force, I guess. Although accelerating to the speed of light without killing somebody with the force of acceleration would be a pretty difficult feat in itself.

I've spent an amazing amount of time biking and thinking and doing nothing. I wish people would include me more often. Maybe I need to include myself more often.

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