Thread 41427896

The relativity of time isn’t just why we can’t go out into space and come back the same. It can actually be used as a tool to preserve someone traveling at faster-than-light speed or through a kind of wormhole. Someone who’s 25 in 2025 could leave on an FTL trip and come back still 25 but find Earth long gone. If the trip is planned right, they could skip ahead hundreds or even thousands of years and see what humanity became. Maybe people mastered life extension and stopped destroying themselves. Or maybe Earth’s just dead, and the traveler ends it there, or drifts out into space in case something else ever finds them.That’s basically time travel to the future. We don’t have FTL or wormholes yet, but they could be the simplest way to make it happen. An AI could someday navigate and calculate everything once we figure out propulsion, power, and materials. Particle accelerators might even point us in the right direction.I imagine two possibilities: one where Earth’s thriving, built up with massive structures, proof we made it; the other where it’s burned out after nuclear war. The first one’s worth betting on. Living to see what humanity becomes sounds way better than traveling to dead planets. And if we ever change our biology enough to live on other worlds, that’s a bonus. I’d take that risk, even if it means coming back to nothing. Or maybe one day we just turn Earth itself into a ship using its core for power and fly it through space. Imagine that.

>>41427896 (OP)
>a new player enters the game
>Negitivemass.webp
>moves backwards in time well doing nothing
>shits on the table
>flips the table
>leaves in triumph

>>41427896 (OP)
1 - you dont have to "go" anywhere. It just takes speed. A person orbiting the earth at light speed would feel the same relativistic effect as someone who traveled to a star and back.
2 - You still age normally on the trip. A person who's 25 and goes traveling at light speed for a year will be 26 when they get back.

>>41428783
>It just takes speed.
i was always curious, does rotation count too?

>>41428814
I dont know, but my impulse is yes. However to get significant time change would require the object to be extreme lengths - like trillions of miles - or require such a difference in speed from the inside to the outside that it would rip itself apart first.

>>41428830
what about a person moving from left to right?

>>41428830
The problem is the change in direction and the difference in speed at various points means the object would be under constant and varied structural forces that a single ship going in a circle wouldnt feel.

A ship in a circle, especially a very large circle the larger the better, is almost going straight, and so feels a pretty constant and uniform force application.
A really long object rotating feels every gradient of force from zero to the extreme end, and the further in you go the more you have to deal with the force of changing direction.
Acceleration comes from change of speed AND change of direction.

You would have to build something really long and strong. Like an adamantium rod twice the distance from Earth to Moon. And then VERY slowly start spinning it, with just the tiniest bit of acceleration so it slowly slowly goes faster without breaking.
The reality problem is around the time the edges reach light speed, it wouldnt be able to increase speed enough to keep up with the inner part rotation. It would break, and the inner part would change direction and seem to "speed up" in rotation, even if the outer edge was technically moving faster.
If the single object was instead a bunch of dots - you would start to see a spiral.
>>41428872
Any time spent at near light speed will put you out of synch with the slower things around you.
Going back and forth, though, means you are speeding up and slowing down a lot, so less time at max speed.

>>41428916
Does a particle trapped in a standing wave moving up and down experience different time?
Is this not applicable to macro situations?

>>41428954
I dont think I know, but I can attempt.
>particle
Needs clarity. If it has mass, my understanding is it deals with relativity at these speeds.
If you mean EM particles, photons, I understand them to be seen as massless.
If you mean atomic particles like a proton, then maybe? I think some particles of this nature are ALWAYS moving at light speed, so technically dont experience time in their framework.
>Is this not applicable to macro situations?
I think the moment you hit significant mass, the general thought is you arent going to be able to supply enough energy to accelerate it to light speed. I think if a macro object were vibrating to such a speed, it would catch on fire.
But this is /x/ - so I am no scientist, and you and others are free to speculate and extrapolate.