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wasnt_a_fluke t1_j6u5zj2 wrote

Reply to comment by ruico in Have you ever thought how/what it would look like to wander through space forever? by Twidom

Akchually.... Disregarding the "at the speed of light", travelling very close to the speed of light would make everything a very short time away, arbitrarily close to instant travel anywhere.

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GamerGrunt t1_j6uatcd wrote

Only for the traveler though, right? Like it might feel instant to you, but the universe will be how ever many light years you traveled older cause of time dilation, yeah?

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No-Session5955 t1_j6vgkjr wrote

Yup, from the moment a photon is emitted to whatever object it hits and gets absorbed by, from the photon’s perspective it is all instantaneous. Even if it’s traveling for 13.8 billion years or longer.

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Twidom OP t1_j6wqd1n wrote

Really?

Why is that? Its kinda sad.

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sintegral t1_j6wx6op wrote

Well, on the bright side, from its perspective, it’s exactly where it needs to be all the time.

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robit_lover t1_j6xgnh6 wrote

Relativity, the faster you move the slower you experience time. It means you could never actually get to the speed of light, but the math says going at the speed of light you wouldn't experience time at all.

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ruico t1_j6u7l46 wrote

Well, that you mention it...

It could be true, the preception of "passing time" could be less for a person that was travelling at the speed of light.

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HotCarlWithaK t1_j6w9yww wrote

I’m slow, how is the sleep of light instantaneous? I thought light can only travel at… we’ll… the speed of light.

Take the andromeda galaxy for example, It’s 2.5 million light years away so I thought light takes 2.5 million years to travel to us.

Even if we could travel at the speed of light wouldn’t it take 2.5 million years to get there?

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House13Games t1_j6wkp6v wrote

Its true that light takes 2.5 million years to travel to Andromeda, as seen by us who are mostly stationary and not doing the travelling. The thing is though, the faster you go, the more time on board the ship slows down, relative to the outside world. If the ship goes super fast, approaching lightspeed, it would look to observers on the outside that time is almost stopped onboard the ship. Or to look at it another way, from the point of view of astronauts on board the ship, the local shiptime is normal, but the time outside seems to get faster and faster. If the ship travels fast enough, you get to watch 2.5 million years go by outside, at which point you are at Andromeda.

If you are able to reach almost lightspeed, you can reach almost any part of the universe within your lifetime (or even years, or days, if you go extremely close to light speed), but, the universe will have aged by millions or billions of years when you get there. For photons, which actually do travel at lightspeed, the journey is instantaneous, as they don't experience time at all.

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evqnmchl t1_j6xjclr wrote

Speed up and slow down time still mean it would take an absurd amount of time even relative to you.

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