Ok so i was told that if you sent a twin into space in a rocket capable of exceeding the speed of light, and the other twin stayed on earth the twin in space would age slower, so for example, lets say Roger and Bob are twins, they are both 28 years old and Roger goes into space on a rocket and Bob covers it on the news, Roger passes the speed of light and comes back after 20 years, Now Roger is 30 and Bob is 48, therefore creating a time travel-esque scenario Opinions? Asshattery? Questions? Go ahead
Yes, that is a theory related to relativity and how time slows down when approaching the speed of light. I'm not exactly qualified to explain it, but I've definitely heard of this scenario before.
Its only a theory currently seeing as its impossible to travel faster than light without dying. The energy required to do so would be so great that your spacecraft would have to generate enough power to light up the world... And then some, all while consuming this power. That is just an approximation of how much, not actually accurate. But I don't think that the human bodies rate of decay changes depending on how fast you move, I think it depends on your environment. Ie. Outer space + zero gravity might = slower aging.
No, he means that the older one will have literally lived longer. However, I think it is the oposite. Time slows down while approaching the speed of light, not speeds up.
Very interesting. I've always been fascinated with space and time travel, and this makes for a very curious mind. Although time travel itself is very unlikely to ever come to fruition (I hope it never does), it's still fun to poke around at the various paradoxes created by it.
This is believed due to Einstein's contributions to the theory of relativity, which basically states that the speed of light is the same in all vacuums. In other words, the laws of physics should act the same no matter what someone's point of view, or reference frame is. If I am in an airplane and you are standing still on the sidewalk, you and I are in two separate "point of views", or reference frames. According to Einstein, no reference frame is "better" than the other, meaning that one could not say that I am moving while you are not moving, and vice-versa. That's part of the theory of relativity, that our reference frames are relative to each other and all other reference frames equally, or that's how it's been explained to me. The other part of this theory is that even if you and I are in two completely different reference frames, the speed of light should be the same no matter what frame we are observing from. But there are problems with this theory. Let's say I shined a flashlight on two pieces of paper, two different reference frames. The first paper is paper A, and it is sitting still relative to me. The other paper, paper B, is moving away from me at a very fast speed, although not as fast as the speed of light. If asked to record their observations, a person in the same reference frame as paper B would undoubtedly say that the light traveled slower, as the distance traveled per second would be less as observed by the person in reference frame B. This is where the theory that time travel could be possible arose, as Einstein theorized that perhaps time is measured differently in the separate reference frames. Time would have to be "measured slower", or time would have to pass more slowly in order for the observer in reference frame B to get the same speed of light as the oberver in reference frame A, because the equation for speed is distance divided by time. Time would have to pass slower so that the two observers' equations both equaled the speed of light; if they got two different answers for the speed at which the light traveled, that would void Einsteins theory that the speed of light is the same in all reference frames. It's really a very interesting subject, and I still know very little about it, along with almost everybody else.