Quote:
Originally Posted by corporatejay
Why would my perception be instantaneous? wouldn't it still take 20 years for ship to travel at light speed? why wouldn't I notice that?
|
Einstein's theory of relativity states that as an object aproaches the speed of light, time slows down. You can even see this for yourself to a certain extent. Next time you have a long flight ahead of you (more than 8 hours round trip) set your watch to an atomic clock. When you get back, check it again. Your watch will be slow by about a second.
The thing to keep in mind is this is still a theory; we have no way or really testing it until we start building ships to go a significant % of the speed of light. People like Hawking have speculated that Einstein may not have been entirely correct about the relationship; or that there might be different rules in play once we leave our solar system or our galaxy. However both of those trips are still outside of our abilities.