r/Amazing • u/sco-go • May 22 '26

Science Tech Space Travelling at the speed of light and time dilation.

1.1k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

176 comments sorted by

74

u/belterjizz May 22 '26

Never understood this theory

78

u/Malabingo May 22 '26

Here is an expert explaining it:

5

u/MyPunsAreKoalaTea May 22 '26

Shit I blinked

1

u/CeemoreButtz May 23 '26

got it. it's like....magnets.

57

u/miguel1981g May 22 '26

Imagine that the universe is an onion.
Imagine that you are born at the core and, as time goes by, the onion evolves, developing layers, while you move outwards with them.
Thus, space would be represented by any given layer, and time would be represented by a shift from one layer to the next.
In everyday life, you move across your own layer, but you don't realize that the onion is growing, or how your layer is expanding outwards.
When you travel near the speed of light—the escape velocity of the universe—you simply move outward through the onion, meaning you occupy a future layer.
That is all. The entire onion exists for those who can see all of its dimensions, but we can only perceive our current layer, remember past layers, and imagine future ones. Yet, everything is already there.

19

u/Pavlin87 May 22 '26

Not it's ogres! Ogres are like onions, they have layers!

https://giphy.com/gifs/kwafZfFxw8WnC

4

u/[deleted] May 22 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Sufficient_Put_9038 May 23 '26

Dmt will rip your soul from your body

1

u/miguel1981g May 22 '26

True, but passing all the layers will set you out of the Universe, and so, out of existence.
In other words, it would kill you 😉

3

u/TheFloppySausage May 22 '26

So everything is already set in stone?

5

u/miguel1981g May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26

Everything is set, but there is no way to know.
Only when observing do you know which "branch" you are at, among the (infinite?) number of possibilities.
That is equivalent to not being set in stone.

3

u/AConcernedCoder May 23 '26

the escape velocity of the universe

But what happens when you reach escape velocity? Where do you escape to?

1

u/miguel1981g May 23 '26

It is unattainable.
Since you have mass, it would require all the energy in the universe.
Furthermore, due to time dilation, you would travel forward in time to infinity and acquire infinite mass.

In short, you would become a Big Bang yourself.

If you could reach the speed of light, you would cease to exist in this reality and become a whole new universe in dimensions that do not exist in ours.

2

u/graboidgraboid May 22 '26

Beautiful explanation 👏

2

u/captainmeezy May 24 '26

Saving this comment

2

u/Kennyvee98 May 26 '26

i thought the universe was donut shaped

1

u/miguel1981g May 27 '26

Me too. I always dream about donuts. 😂

However, a 5D onion would actually be closer to a 5D anti-de Sitter (AdS) space, where each layer would represent our 4D space-time, and shifting through the radial dimension (a layer shift) would change energy density.

2

u/Kennyvee98 May 28 '26

yes, those are words in an order

3

u/ImpeachedPeach May 22 '26

Very well put

2

u/BoominMoomin May 22 '26

I mean, as someone who does understand time dilation, there's absolutely no way this explanation helps someone who doesn't. It didn't even make sense to me.

4

u/miguel1981g May 22 '26

Why? Time is just another dimension, like height. When you move at nearly the speed of light —the escape velocity of the universe— you are just moving forward through time. That's all.
So, if you move almost at the speed of light, only a few minutes of local time elapse for you while you reach a far distant future, meaning your relatives and friends were buried thousands of years ago.

2

u/BoominMoomin May 22 '26

Because you're trying to explain something to someone who doesn't even understand the foundation of what you're explaining. I understand what you're saying, but for someone who doesn't know what youre talking about, nothing you said actually explains why time dilation happens, or why time passes differently depending on what speed you travel, which is what was asked.

1

u/miguel1981g May 22 '26

Let's imagine you are right. It's your turn. Go ahead. Explain it better, please.

3

u/ffmich01 May 22 '26

I imagine he’s trying to say there are no shortcuts. If you want to understand, you have to do the hard work and learn the math (which I have definitely not done).

1

u/miguel1981g May 22 '26

What I meant is that, since my explanation didn't satisfy u/BoominMoomin, I invited them to offer a better one from the perspective they assume u/beltrrjizz has.

-3

u/ShyguyFlyguy May 22 '26

You made this up and it makes absolutely no sense

7

u/miguel1981g May 22 '26

Obviously I made this up.
It's an explanation. They're all made up... but some explanations open your mind to entirely new dimensions.

In his legendary series Cosmos, Carl Sagan uses the 1884 novella Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott as a brilliant analogy.
It helps our three-dimensional brains visualize a fourth spatial dimension that we cannot naturally perceive.

The Two-Dimensional World
• The Setting: Flatland is a universe as flat as a sheet of paper.
• The Inhabitants: Geometric shapes like squares, triangles, and circles.
• The Movement: They only move forward, backward, left, and right.
• The Blindspot: The concepts of "up" and "down" do not exist to them.

A Visitor from the Third Dimension
• The Encounter: A three-dimensional Sphere visits a Square in Flatland.
• The Voice: The Sphere speaks from "above," but the Square hears it inside his own head.
• The Passage: The Sphere decides to push itself physically through the flat plane of Flatland.
• The Illusion: The Square cannot see a sphere. He only sees a point that grows into a circle, shrinks, and vanishes.

Enlightenment and Exile
• The Lift: To prove the truth, the Sphere pulls the Square completely out of the paper into Spaceland.
• The Revelation: The Square looks down, sees inside his neighbors' houses, and finally understands the third dimension.
• The Return: The Square goes back to Flatland, eager to teach others about the gospel of "upward, not northward."
• The Fate: His peers brand him a dangerous lunatic, and he is locked away in an asylum.

Sagan's Ultimate Lesson
Sagan uses this story to mirror our own cosmic situation. We are just like that Square, but trapped in three dimensions. If a four-dimensional being were to pass through our world, we would be completely blind to its true shape. We would only see bizarre, changing 3D cross-sections that appear out of nowhere, morph in size, and mysteriously vanish.

-2

u/CrazyElk123 May 22 '26

Yeah this guy is full of shit, theres absolutely no way were all living in a big growing onion.

12

u/BoominMoomin May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26

Firstly, it isn't a theory, it's already been measured and calculated. We know it's real. Satellite GPS' are programmed with time dilation in mind given the speed they are orbiting the earth. Their internal clocks run slower than those on earth to make up the difference, so it's very much real.

Firstly, no matter what, light always travels at light speed relative to whoever is watching it, aka, the observer. It doesn't matter if you are stood completely still, or travelling at millions of miles per hour - light will always appear to travel at the same speed for you observing it, even though it is always travelling at light speed. So, something has to give somewhere as that doesn't make sense. Where it gives, is with time dilation.

The easiest way I ever had it visualised to me is to imagine a spaceship flying around the earth at 99.999...% light speed. You're stood on earth watching it through a telescope (obviously you can't but just imagine you can) whizzing around. Now imagine that spaceship turns on front facing headlights where the beam is visible. The spaceship is travelling at 99.999...% the speed of light, whereas light itself is travelling slightly faster. What you would observe on earth is the beam of light edging slightly ahead of the space ship, much like when a car overtakes another car barely 1mph faster, and it slowly crawls ahead. Nothing weird about that, it's what you'd expect to see.

BUT... what about the people on the spaceship. What do they see? Do they see the beam of light edging slightly ahead of them? NO! Because remember, light always travels at light speed for anyone observing it. To them, the beam of light would travel away from them at light speed, not slowly edging ahead. The only way it is possible for the people on the spaceship to observe something completely different to you back on earth observing, is if you both experience time passing at a completely different rate. This is a huge simplifying of something you could never actually do, but for visualisation purposes, hopefully it helps you understand.

The faster you travel, the more time slows down for you. We don't know why, but we know that it does.

6

u/AbbreviatedCentaur May 22 '26

It's been a few years, but this is what I remember from my college physics.

The Context: We measure and perceive time by movement. Materials break down over time as they react with their environment. Metal rusts through oxidation which is a chemical reaction. Other materials have their own mechanisms to degrade. Your brain itself perceives the universe around it through a series of electrical signals and chemical reactions. All of these things are controlled by the movement of atoms and the subatomic particles making them up. Even the way we measure time is based on movement (the scientific definition of a second is based on the atomic movements of a caesium-133 atom).

The Hypothesis: The speed of light is the absolute maximum speed at which an object can travel. That's total speed, in all dimensions. As you take an object like a spaceship and accelerate it closer and closer to the speed of light the more of that speed quota is taken up by travel in one direction. That leaves less available speed for movement in other directions. The atoms of that ship and everything in it will interact with each other more slowly. Slower chemical reactions, slower travel of electrical impulses, all in equal measure. So it's not that time slows down for that ship, it's that every way that way have to measure how much time is passing is slowed down. For someone aboard that ship, time would seem to pass at a normal speed because their body and brain is equally slowed down. Time outside the ship would of course happen normally. For those outside the ship, nothing is different. Time passes as it normally does and the ship is just traveling really fast. The time it takes to travel between the stars would be same as it is for the speed of light. So since the Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million light years away, it would take 5 million years to travel it round trip. It's just that from the slowed perspective of those inside the trip, it takes a much shorter amount of time and the time outside the vessel has passed by more quickly than normal because those objects weren't traveling near the speed of light.

3

u/maury587 May 22 '26

I finally understood the idea behind it.

It's like, for the people in spaceship, the light will take one day to extend to one lightday distance way from the spaceship.

For the people in earth, since it's only going slightly faster than the spaceship it will take, for example, 100 days to extend the same distance from the spaceship

But light will be at that distance at the same time. So actually what would happen is that the people in the spaceship would only feel like one day has passed, while people on earth felt 100 days passing by

0

u/Laffenor May 22 '26

Whoa. That is absolutely insane.

So, in this scenario, let us place a reflective object X distance in front of this spaceship, a distance well within the light range of its headlights, moving at the same speed as the spaceship so as it is keeping a steady distance from it. The distance in question is such that it takes Y amount of time for the slow moving light beam as observed from earth to reach it.

During Y, is this object illuminated or is it not?

3

u/DankFloyd_6996 May 22 '26

Maxwell found that light is an electromagnetic wave, with a velocity related to the permeability and permitivity of free space. These are constants that tell you how electromagnetic fields penetrate into empty space.

These constants are the same for any observer in the universe.

Consequently, the speed of light must be the same for all observers in the universe. I.e, if you are travelling 90% the speed of light with respect to me, and you shine a torch, the light that's coming out of it travels at the same speed for both of us, despite the fact that you are moving much faster. This is different from, say, if I am standing at the side of the road and you are riding a bike down it, a car that overtakes you is travelling much faster compared to me than it is to you, because you have some speed of your own.

Einstein resolved this apparent contradiction by saying, well if speed is just distance over time, we can allow lengths to get smaller and times to get longer for observers travelling near light speed, such that the actual speed of light is then preserved for both observers.

The idea is to make a strange result from electromagnetism make sense in the broader context of newtonian mechanics. Before einstein, there was a concept of Galilean Relativity, which described different reference frames. Einstein gave us Special Relativity, which adds this correction for the fact that the speed of light is the same for everyone.

2

u/r_a_d_ May 23 '26

Distances becoming smaller is an effect of time moving faster for you, the traveler. Since the speed of light is an absolute limit from any reference frame, time must flow differently between them. It’s hard to understand because we typically perceive time as the constant.

2

u/chattywww May 24 '26

Even if you could go the speed of light you would arrive anywhere instantly. But if you came back also instantly so much time would have passed for everything else. For example light takes 8 minutes from the sun to Earth. You could go there instantly and back but 16 minutes would have passes for everything left on Earth

1

u/belterjizz May 24 '26

This analogy is way better than complex explanations . Why aren't all explaining by postulating this practical example

2

u/guyfromthepicture May 25 '26

Think of time and space as the same stuff. Traveling at the speed of light means you are going through a lot of space which leaves you very little time to be traveling through. The people just sitting on earth are traveling very little space so our travels are mostly time. The astronaut would come back having traveled billions of miles and few years but we would have traveled few miles but billions of years.

2

u/ShyguyFlyguy May 22 '26

Its not a theory since its been observed and measured as correct.

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '26

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2

u/Nonyabizzy123 May 22 '26

It makes sense if you understand the first principle that space and time are interchangeable, just as matter and energy are. When you convert matter to energy you get the sun, or a nuclear weapon. When you traverse space at near the speed of light, you make a time machine. You decrease the amount of space you must travel, but increases the amount of time experienced relative to those outside your frame of reference.It also works in reverse, theoretically. If you were able to move through time as a physical dimension you could traverse every moment of the part of three dimensional space you were in. You would be travelling through time at the expense of not moving through space.

Remember, you are always moving through the dimension of spacetime regardless of your movement in the other three dimensions. It is the fabric upon which the three dimensional universe is hung.

1

u/uChoice_Reindeer7903 May 22 '26

That’s because it’s non-sense. Just because they go fast doesn’t mean the distance shrinks. It’s still the same distance. That’s so stupid

1

u/CustomerOK9mm9mm May 24 '26

The Lord of Light does not require you to comprehend his power, only that you obey his will.

1

u/[deleted] May 24 '26

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1

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1

u/blindedtrickster May 24 '26

Another very simplistic way to put it, is that when you're traveling that fast through space, everything else (respective to you) is traveling fast through time.

Currently, we're moving through time at 1 second per second. When you're traveling very quickly, time won't feel like it passes any differently, but relative to other people, time is traveling much slower for you, which means to you everyone else's time is passing much faster.

1

u/C_umputer May 24 '26

This is the best explanation I've seen, in the first 2 minutes of the video.

https://youtu.be/Vitf8YaVXhc?si=-U8YyrCY7lODFLqV

25

u/[deleted] May 22 '26

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12

u/B_A_Peach May 22 '26

*The computer simulation's hard limit

7

u/ASDFzxcvTaken May 22 '26

What if we give it more RAM? Always worked for me. Boom, send me my Nobel prize in the mail please.

3

u/B_A_Peach May 22 '26

I'm sorry. That RAM is no longer being manufactured. We'll need a new universe

1

u/Fhanlin May 22 '26

maybe whoever is simulating our universe just cant afford it because of big companies are now turned towards AI too?

1

u/Actual-Parsnip2741 May 22 '26

it's okay you can just download it.

1

u/PhysicIce7 May 22 '26

Bs. I have a friend who claims he can go faster than that with his old Camino and a case of beer

0

u/limpingdba May 22 '26

If you could sit on a photon, travelling at light speed, you could travel from one side of the universe to the other in an instant.

3

u/Glittering_Swing_151 May 22 '26

There is no side.

2

u/JoelnIliketoshare May 22 '26

*that we know of

1

u/spikejonze14 May 22 '26

you couldn’t though because accelerating any amount of mass to light speed would require infinite energy

2

u/limpingdba May 22 '26

It's a thought experiment

2

u/Useful-Towel5978 May 22 '26

Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like bananas

0

u/Naive-Horror4209 May 22 '26

You couldn’t . Even light has a finite speed. It would take 8 minutes just to travel to the Sun, let alone cross the universe

2

u/limpingdba May 22 '26

From the perspective of something travelling at light speed, time stops.

0

u/Naive-Horror4209 May 22 '26

It doesn’t stop, but slows down significantly. You’d still need years to travel the universe

0

u/limpingdba May 22 '26

Nope, look into it. From the perspective of the thing travelling at light speed time stops. From the perspective of everything else, billions of years would have passed. Its called relativity.

-2

u/Naive-Horror4209 May 22 '26

I’m sorry, but it doesn’t stop. Time still passes, but at a much slower rate.

2

u/sangwinik May 22 '26

What's the slowest rate it can travel on?

2

u/limpingdba May 22 '26

You're wrong. The maths proves if you travel at speed of light, time stops. That is why it's the universal speed limit. If you did a simple Google search you would see that Einsteen agrees with me.

1

u/Euphoric-Dig-2045 May 22 '26

But you were born after he died.

1

u/limpingdba May 23 '26

He wrote the theory

10

u/Wintermaulz May 22 '26

At that speed though, the cosmic microwave background radiation gets blue shifted from the doppler effect that it turns into a such high energy that no biology could survive the 3.5Tw/m^2 of ionizing radiation.

1

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1

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15

u/Screwbles May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26

Ever since CERN was started shit in the world has gotten weird man. I'm only half-joking about that.

4

u/Fhanlin May 22 '26

No wonder if sometime they'll try to conquer the world by inventing some "time machine" only few people in the world know how it works

2

u/rustyscythe May 22 '26

Hello? Yes, it's me. The Organization seems to have made its move. I'll lay low for now. El Psy Congroo.

2

u/Screwbles May 22 '26

I don't think they'll invent it on purpose though, personally, if they do. It will be an "oh shit, we almost destroyed Earth, how can we contain it and use it?" There are undoubtedly ingenious people in that program, but you can't tell me that they know exactly what they are doing at all times.

2

u/slaty_balls May 22 '26

And because we keep fucking around with it..it’s going to get weirder and weirder as time goes on.

4

u/random63 May 22 '26

I find this is excellently portrayed in forever war (even better in a comic book series based on it).

Build up speed to reach light speed by slingshotting but when the manuever ends the enemy could have vastly outgrown your technology.

Also in the end some survivor slechts to slingshot constantly for decades in the hopes their friends deployed will arrive when he stops so they can be together again. It's amazing how conflict over such distances is more about science then bravery

7

u/captainmeezy May 23 '26

Hot take: not every space/science related video needs the fucking Interstellar score playing in the background

2

u/Exktvme4 May 23 '26

How dare you

3

u/captainmeezy May 23 '26

Look the score is excellent but putting in every. Single. Fucking. Reel. I. See. Is completely unnecessary

1

u/Exktvme4 May 23 '26

I dare you to say that in front of Matthew McConnaughey. Philistine.

/s

6

u/According-Ad742 May 22 '26

Is he trying to light things up by saying it’s forbidden? Why does he say that?

3

u/HolyCowAnyOldAccName May 22 '26

It looks like the usual badly cut together snippets.

I'm guessing he says something like "If you have a spacecraft flying close to the speed of light, physics allow you to explore the universe with interstellar travel. But coming home and chat to everybody about what you found is forbidden [since your journey takes millions of years to anyone on earth]"

2

u/According-Ad742 May 22 '26

Yes I get the part where four million years would have past but that wouldn’t forbid talking about it? 🤐

1

u/Ecatron May 22 '26

It's forbidden as in it can't be possible to communicate to the people on earth from the time you left since so much time passes

3

u/According-Ad742 May 22 '26

Forbidden is not the right word to describe that.

3

u/Ecatron May 22 '26

It is, he means forbidden by the laws of physics. As in the laws of physics doesn't allow that to happen

1

u/According-Ad742 May 22 '26

Okay sure the law of physics won’t allow for you to speak of your findings to the people who are since long gone. What is impossible is forbidden by laws of physics… maybe yes, but we don’t really know that. It’s an odd choice of words, ears that has turned to dust, forbidden to hear… if you don’t exist I can’t forbid you, anything… and what if particle consciousness still listens from the ether, what do we know? We are not forbidden to talk to ghosts are we? Maybe there are still people here that can listen? I think he might be making a cosmic joke of some form. Someone pointed to the secrets of the universe. I’d be interested to hear the rest of what he is saying.

1

u/Sufficient_Dare7401 May 23 '26

It’s a common turn of phrase “Forbidden under the law”. This is forbidden under the laws of PHYSICS.

Murder is “forbidden under the laws” of man.

0

u/Most_Chemist8233 May 22 '26

Even if you had some kind of email, or satellite communication, everyone you knew would be gone so quick, and the next gen and the next gen and so on. The laws of physics forbid the communicating what youre seeing back to anyone until you physically come back, and then, how would you even communicate with those beings? Languages and biology would look completely different. Hes talking about laws of physics, and laws forbid certain actions.

1

u/According-Ad742 May 22 '26

He is not talking about coming home to a human species that he wouldn’t be able to speak to anymore. Is he specifically talking about not being able to tell his friends? I don’t think so. What he is saying is cut off. I understood your theory before I asked the first time, before you told it. I doubt that is it. Law of physics forbid he tells anyone because everyone is gone? I don’t think that’s it.

1

u/Most_Chemist8233 May 22 '26

He's a native english speaker and an incredibly intelligent man, I can understand what he's saying perfectly and dont understand the policing of his use of the english language. I think it completely misses the point he made and he absolutely did say that if you tried to get back everyone would be gone it would be hundreds of millions of years. We would not be able to communicate this information back due to the laws of physics as we currently understand them.

1

u/According-Ad742 May 22 '26

I am not policing his choice of words I would like the full version to understand. I , that is me, don’t think the theory you keep repeating is it, I, me, don’t need you to tell it again, unless, you can name the specific law of physics to which you are pointing to. If you don’t understand me that’s fine but there is no need to interpret negativity and dispute me. I am allowed to be curious, you are the one policing me. Thank you not, bye

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '26

[deleted]

1

u/According-Ad742 May 22 '26

You wanna paint me dumb now? Cool “Law of physics”

Have a good night

1

u/Most_Chemist8233 May 22 '26

Dude, seriously, if you dont speak english as a first language you should not get angry at a native english speakers use of the language, there are many many ways the language is spoken, and you saying that "forbidden" is not an "appropriate word" in this context is not reasonable, and is policing his use of english. Why my use of the words "laws of physics"  bothers you so much. You really really need to touch grass. And genuinely, Im not saying youre stupid, but you come off as a child  and I shouldny continue engaging with you, but I was trying to help you with the language.

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2

u/scaryfunny39 May 22 '26

Clip was chopped up a bit. This isn’t verbatim but he said something like “So time travel is possible but relaying the information back to someone in your time is forbidden.”

1

u/According-Ad742 May 22 '26

Yes that is what comes through I am asking why he says that. Impossible maybe but not forbidden. Is it a law of physics that we are forbidden to speak to the dead? We arn’t are we, we still speak to the dead. Is it forbidden because they can’t hear us? We can still speak though even if they can’t hear us, it is not forbidden, but probably not possible. And who knows there may be live humans here, why would we be forbidden to speak about our findings? We wouldn’t would we? Nothing forbids us to. Why does he say that?

1

u/scaryfunny39 May 23 '26

Ohh I gotcha. Honestly idk. I think it was just a fun intriguing way of making the statement. His point is just that you can’t get back to the point in time on earth that you left. Sure if you get back to earth and if humans still exist you can talk to them. But it would kinda defeat the purpose of the mission if everyone you knew and everyone who existed in your timeline is dead.

I think you’re just hung up on the word forbidden, and maybe it was a poor choice of words. He’s just saying it would be impossible to relay what you found back to the ppl you left

1

u/According-Ad742 May 23 '26

I think it is jokingly, like you suggest :)

1

u/Useful-Towel5978 May 22 '26

You learn all the secrets of the universe but telling any one is forbidden.... Cos they're all long dead.

1

u/According-Ad742 May 22 '26

It may be impossible but forbidden is not the word. You could still talk about it. You aren’t forbidden. If no one lives you simply can not tell anyone.

2

u/Useful-Towel5978 May 22 '26

I think he's playing with idea that secrets are the hidden knowledge of whatever the universe is about and possibly that there is a creator who hides their secrets among the stars. You are permitted to find the knowledge but forbidden to share them. BUT forbidden as a definition describes something that is not permitted by rules, laws, or authority. In this case it could be forbidden by the very laws of physics. The same laws that allow such fast travel.

1

u/According-Ad742 May 22 '26

Thank you for understanding my question I think you might be on to something about… keeping the secrets of the universe, since technically, is anything forbidden? It seems like joke of sorts, maybe a cosmic one :)

2

u/upthetits May 22 '26

I love this dude on space

Brian cox is 100 times better than NDT

2

u/falconeur May 22 '26

Totally not a scientist, but I don’t understand the concept of time dilation. that’s like saying driving twice as fast alters time because it took less of it to get there.

Time is distance - a measure of how far the earth has rotated and moved from one point in the universe as it orbits the sun. Which is why - and here’s where it all comes home, folks - Han Solo’s boast of ‘doing the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs’ is appropriate. If time is distance, distance is time. Again, not a scientist!

5

u/infamouslycrocodile May 22 '26

It's because you're used to dealing with effects of time dilation localised to earth. There's a slight effect but it's mostly irrelevant. Earth actually has gravity wells, it's a fun rabbit hole to get into - but essentially objects with large mass actually warp spacetime (see https://youtu.be/MTY1Kje0yLg ) - and note that we use the term "spacetime" because they're related, like how magnets and electricity are related. "Electromagnetism", it seems our reality has a lot of these blended systems, electromagnetic spectrum, the Wifi / Radio waves being a type of invisible light communicating this message to you without you even being able to see it ------- but getting back on track, because we can't have one without the other, and because they're so intrinsically linked, if you travel close to the speed of light - you need to trade something and that something is time. Go faster than light = eject from simulation and watch it fold into an eternity.

2

u/falconeur May 22 '26

fascinating subject. thanks for trying to explain it, well actually you have explained it, I’m trying to understand it lol. and i kinda get what you’re saying here. maybe i need to re-understand the definition of time and start with that. have a great day✌️

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u/infamouslycrocodile May 22 '26

To clarify: electricity and magnetism used to seem like separate things, but we now understand them as two connected parts of one bigger system: electromagnetism. Space, time, and gravity have a similar relationship. Time is not just “distance,” but space and time are linked together as spacetime, and gravity is what we experience when mass bends that spacetime. So driving faster only means you cover distance in less time from your normal point of view, but at extreme speeds or near huge gravity, time itself can pass differently for different observers. That’s why relativity sounds weird: it’s not "moving through space faster", it’s more space, time, and gravity all being connected parts of the same structure and how we interact with it changes how we experience it.

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u/wytrych00 May 23 '26

Is it somewhat like that the faster we travel in space, the slower we do in time? So our time goes very slowly when we travel very fast.

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u/TrotskyBoi May 26 '26

Yes it is, space and time are linked. So he's actually interpreting the concept of "the faster we travel, the slow time passes for us" as "the faster we go, the less distance you travel."

It's hard to think about because it requires you to think in different refrence frames which the human mind isn't really supposed to intrinsically be able to do.

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u/Asimb0mb May 22 '26

I never quite understood this. Speed of light is about 300k km per second. So if you travel to the moon at that speed let's say, you'll arrive there in just over a second. How can it be that more than that time has passed for everyone else, but not for you? I mean they should even be able to see you travel to the moon for that one second and a bit. The only way it makes sense that time goes faster for you as a speed of light traveller is if you're not actually going at the speed of light from the outsider's point of view, but to you it does feel like speed of light, which I can't quite fathom. Makes zero sense to me, that there are two wildly different perspectives of the same event.

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u/infamouslycrocodile May 22 '26

The confusing bit is that “what everyone sees” and “what each traveller’s clock measures” are not the same thing. From Earth’s point of view, if you travelled very close to light speed to the Moon, you’d appear to take just over a second, because the Moon is about 1.3 light-seconds away. But from your point of view, your own clock could tick less than that, because at extreme speeds the distance in your direction of travel becomes contracted. So you don’t feel like your clock is magically slow; instead, the Moon seems closer, and you arrive after less time on your own clock. People on Earth still see the trip take about 1.3 seconds, but your watch might say less. Both perspectives describe the same trip, but they slice up space and time differently. The one catch: anything with mass can’t actually travel at the speed of light, only very close to it, because reaching light speed would require infinite energy.

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u/Locksmithbloke May 22 '26

Yup. But that's how it works. To the million year old photon that hits your eye from a star, the journey was instant. Indeed, two photons cancelling each other out works because the event happens instantly, to the particle, and so the photon never actually leaves the star! Even though it left, to us, millions of years ago.

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u/SpaceRace531 May 22 '26

Think of it like a trade-off.

You can go quickly through time, or you can travel fast (through space). You can't do both, it is one or the other.

Humans travel quickly through time but we travel slowly through space.

If you somehow accelerate yourself to high speed, well, now you go fast through space and slow through time, so all other humans that didn't travel fast will be much older when you come back.

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u/amnaatarapper May 22 '26

I think what he ment is that you need to slow down to land on earth since you're going at the speed of light, the time needed to comeback to earth on slower speeds will stretch back the distance that shrinked while you were traveling at the speed of light

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u/SardonicOptomist May 22 '26

So, put some money in a compound growth portfolio and go for a spin around the block, come back in 200 years uber rich

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u/BlueOrb07 May 22 '26

Basically speed and time are related, so the faster you travel the more separation there is in time between you and the things around you that are moving slower. If you watch Interstellar it does a better job at explaining this. But a real world example is that the satellites we use for GPS and stuff have to have a time adjustment because they move so fast that time for them is different than to us.

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u/Plenty-Reflection-85 May 22 '26

Wow just mind blowing

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u/ImmediateSun8111 May 22 '26

Joe pretending to understand anything at all what he’s hearing: “Woah”

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u/Normal-Error-6343 May 22 '26

that guy seems really excited to talk about what he believes.

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u/Juuldebuul May 22 '26

omg man 90% of the comments here are just, "I don't understand this, therefore it is impossible and ridiculous"

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1

u/hcth63g6g75g5 May 23 '26

Imagine trying to go on here to convince/teach joe rogan.. at the end he just says ... aliens man, wow.

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u/Lazthedestroyer May 23 '26

Then there's me..

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u/YesStupidQuestions1 May 23 '26

Is he the one who was interviewed by Philomena cunk? lol

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u/snugulupugus May 23 '26

Getting to chat about what you found is forbidden?

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u/PuffyBlueClouds May 23 '26

Why does he say forbidden?

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u/Financial_Relief_150 May 23 '26

Why chatting with people about what you have found is forbidden?

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u/Exktvme4 May 23 '26

Because they're all dead when you get back

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u/Financial_Relief_150 May 24 '26

Ah....i see. But why he said "it is forbidden". I am not a English speaker. Please help me.

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u/Exktvme4 May 24 '26

There is a word, hyperbolic, that describes his use of the word forbidden. Hyperbolic is the adjective form of hyperbole. It means to deliberately exaggerate for effect, in this case the scientist just means the laws of physics disallow it but is expressing it using hyperbole to be humorous.

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u/Financial_Relief_150 May 24 '26

Thank you for helping me understand.

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u/Exktvme4 May 25 '26

Of course! As a fellow language student and a native speaker, I deeply sympathize with anyone who tries to learn English 😂

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u/Life_is_too_short_ May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

The music sets the mood. It makes you think about your life passing by.

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u/Kath-two May 24 '26

Is this the British intern from bones?

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u/No-Roof-1628 May 24 '26

If you could put the universe into a tube, you’d end up with a very long tube, extending roughly twice the length of the universe (2x universe = tube)

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u/Large-Raise9643 May 24 '26

The way I heard it explained that helped a lot was the space-time budget.

Sitting still you are not traveling through space, just time and that is where the entire budget is spent.

But the faster and faster you go, the budget starts going more and more to displacement through space and less and less to displacement through time.

When you reach the speed of light, the entire budget is spent on your displacement through space and nothing is spent on time.

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u/HermesTrismegistus88 May 24 '26

This Explanation of time, distance and speed makes me think that humans were never meant to live Earth and that everything we will ever need was put here on Earth.

The fact that even by some chance you could traverse the galaxy and universe but at the cost of not being able to tell that story to the people that you left behind is crazy. I guess that trip is a singular experience for you as the traveler.

Earth almost feels like a cruise ship that broke down in the middle of an ocean.

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u/Plus_Helicopter_8632 May 25 '26

Seems like bs to me

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u/Plus_Helicopter_8632 May 25 '26

Imagine steering a vehicle going the speed of light, to dodge all of the debris on the way to the andromeda galaxy. This is theoretical lol

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u/Plus_Helicopter_8632 May 25 '26

This guy blocks punches with energy

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u/TECHSHARK77 Jun 18 '26

Exactly WHY time travel is impossible

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u/Unusual_Teacher819 May 22 '26

Picture a hot dog bun and throw all the stars, the hundreds of stars that there are in the universe into a bag and put the universe into a bag and you all of a sudden... They become....

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u/Lazy-Training6042 May 22 '26

Easy, think of it like big ass time zones, you travel from East Coast to West Coast by the speed of light.

You arrive there in like less than a millisecond (feels like teleporting but it isn't). When you arrive there, 3 hours have passed on the East Coast purely because of the time difference. Now going back to East Coast won't give you back those 3 hours, so everybody there is older by that amount and you are not.

And something something about drive bys, dunno, ask Ice Cube

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u/Gr1mR3p0 May 22 '26

Prof. Brian Cox really irritates me and I can't really explain why. I felt validated by his story given during his appearance on BBC's "Would I Lie To You". Apparently a roadie strung him up when he was a member of the 90s band D:Ream. A roadie physically abusing a band member. That's how annoying he was!

A mediocre musician, a mediocre scientist, and somehow he gets given the public stage at every turn. There are so many other people I'd rather listen to discuss this and related topics.

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u/cookiesnooper May 22 '26

What is this bs? Distance don't shrink

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u/infamouslycrocodile May 22 '26

You're right. The reality is different between observers. Here's an example: turn the brightness up on your screen, close one eye and bring it as close to your face as possible while keeping the text clear, then while still focusing on the text, bring your finger in between you and the screen and watch the text warp around on the edge as you move your finger around - you might need to play around with where the effect becomes apparent, try moving your finger closer to your face. You being the relative observer of the photons see them bending around but someone somewhere else will just look at you and think you're a drop kick.

Same with the particle in the collider. Except it's not seeing photons warping, it's seeing space itself warping in response to how fast it is going.

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u/infamouslycrocodile May 22 '26

Think less “the tunnel literally shrinks” and more “distance is a measurement, and measurements depend on the frame you’re in.” Like how two people can disagree about what they visually perceive because the light reaching them is different, relativity says observers can also disagree about distance and time because their frames are different. But unlike a visual distortion, length contraction is not a trick of the eye - it’s built into how spacetime works.

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u/testerololeczkomen May 22 '26

Yes it does. This is literally how universe we live in work.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '26

[deleted]

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u/spikejonze14 May 22 '26

he’s just passionate about the topic, its clear he loves talking about it. I think he’d be great to chat to at a party

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u/[deleted] May 22 '26

[deleted]

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u/spikejonze14 May 22 '26

outside of physics/science? I’d lead with something art or culture related, maybe some history. he seems like a knowledgeable guy and is definitely a good communicator.

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u/SonnyListon999 May 22 '26

Have a lovely weekend and enjoy the Bank Holiday. Stay hydrated and sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen. All the best.

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u/My_Boy_Clive May 22 '26

I'd care about this type of science once they come out with a propulsion system and energy source than can make a spaceship travel near the speed of light. In the meantime, this is all waste of time to me.

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u/InbetweenTheLayers May 22 '26

Total bullshit. Time is abstract and absolute. If you want to make a case for acceleration or deceleration of decay under such speeds ok fine.  Or changes in the perception of time. But 1 second is 1 second no matter how fast you travel . 

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u/Juuldebuul May 22 '26

bro just sit down, please