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I have a Physics question?
I am not a scientist, so hopefully what I ask is understandable.
From what I understand, 2 space craft, traveling away from Earth, while one is in front of the other, near the speed of light would age less then us here on the planet. This is because nothing could travel quicker then the speed of light, so if the traveler in the rear were to turn on his headlights, to them the light would still get to the traveler in the front at light speed... But, if we were to observe the travelers here on Earth through a telescope we would see the travelers at a near stand still, BUT, see the headlight travel at the speed of light.
If Im right so far, here is my question:
Who is to say whos traveling faster? What if they traveled reverse in our orbit, wouldn'they be traveling slower then Earth? If they were traveling slower, wouldn'te age less then them since the travelers are going slower? Whats to say who's traveling faster then the other?
OK, so I know theres an explanation for this, maybe somebody could send me some Wiki links. This has been bugging the heck out of me for a while. I watch the Science Channel and the episodes open more questions for me then answers.
Squirrel, I understand relative, but, as they say on Science shows, "the travelers would come back to an Earth 500 years in the future."
So, why couldnt it be the other way around?
Im not sure if you got my question, but if you did and you answered it correctly, I guess I dont understand.
Thanks Jesse, it didnt help, maybe I will reword it and repost it again. Believe me, it makes sense in my head.
2 Answers
- SquirrelLv 410 years agoFavorite Answer
Basically you would have to say 'relative' every so often, so time on the spacecraft going in reverse orbit would appear to be faster than on Earth but someone observing form a stationary point would see the spacecraft's time appear to run slower than at the stationary point. In these cases the spacecraft is travelling slower relative to the Earth and faster relative to the stationary point.
I hope I explained it alright and there may be a few (quite a few) mistakes but you get the jist :)
- Anonymous10 years ago
Im no scientist either and your initial 'setup sentence' is very confusing but if I follow it correctly I believe your wrong. We would see both the spacecrafts (assuming the space crafts speed is the speed of light) and the headlight traveling at the speed of light although to us, being this far away it would seem very slow or possibly not even moving (depending on how far away they are). Also us on earth would see (in relation to the space crafts) the past because they would be much farther than what we see. This is such a very confusing question but it is also very interesting :) Hope I helped or at least added to this question.
Jesse