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I have always wondered if we were to travel at past the speed of light (even beyond the current capability) would we be able to slow down time around us? I have asked my teacher at school and he has said that it is possible. Now I am not saying he is wrong. I would just like a second opinion.

Qmechanic
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user27394
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    possible duplicate of Would time freeze if you can travel at the speed of light? – Dilaton Jul 23 '13 at 11:27
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    Please note that Non-mainstream questions are prohibited. Any instance of refuting currently accepted mainstream theories, such as General Relativity, or the Standard Model, is not allowed. Do not promote your own (or anybody else's, for that matter.) non-mainstream ideas. Anything which is not in a reputable journal/acknowledged ArXiV paper is not mainstream. Physics is based on Mathematics. Popular Science is not real Physics. For more details, please see the Non-mainstream Policy. . . – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir Jul 23 '13 at 16:43
  • Thank you for pointing this out , iam new to this site and i was unsure in the limits of the questions , oh and i did not duplicate this question , it has been buzzing around my head for some time , any way thank you for pointing this out – user27394 Jul 23 '13 at 21:05

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As far as anyone knows at present, it is impossible to travel faster than light. Travelling close to the speed of light would indeed slow down time. In fact, that even happens at ordinary speeds, but the difference is so minute that you need very accurate instruments to measure it. It has however been measured in airplanes. Also, GPS satellites need to take it into account, or the position it gives you would be hopelessly inaccurate. GPS also needs to consider another effect: the lower the gravity you experience, the faster time goes. As the satellite is far above the earth, it experiences less gravity. This effect is actually greater than the speed effect. This and other effects were clarified in Einstein's theory of relativity. One of the other effects is that your mass increases as you go faster, so that it becomes more and more difficult to accelerate further. To go as fast as light, your mass would become infinite, and you would need infinite energy to get to that speed. Hence the impossibility.

Getting back to travelling faster than light, if we could, time would actually be going in reverse. However, that seems to be completely impossible.

hdhondt
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You cannot travel past the speed of light. If you accelerate and move away from another person, then according to him/her, you are 'defying' time in sense: You would age slower than he/she does, for instance, and your clock would be slower than his, according to him.

You would also undergo length contraction.

The formulae, if you are interested (if observer is travelling at velocity v, c= speed of light):

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Here's an EXCELLENT game that will illustrate all this for you: http://www.testtubegames.com/velocityraptor.html

mehfoos
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According to present knowledge travelling to the past is impossible for tones of reasons. Now about, messing with time. Einstein's theory explains why in systems moving with relative speed (and/or acceleration) time is being measured differently there than from inertial observers, however this isof little use, since communicating any information between such systems would again require to respect the speed of light boundary. In my opinion it is in the physics of black holes or singularities in general, where one could pose all his hopes for any deviations in all these facts.

Cala
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