Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Time travel is a concept in philosophy and fiction, particularly science fiction. In fiction, time travel is typically achieved through the use of a device known as a time machine. The idea of a time machine was popularized by H. G. Wells's 1895 novel The Time Machine. [1] It is uncertain whether time travel to the past would be physically ...
The theoretical study of time travel generally follows the laws of general relativity. Quantum mechanics requires physicists to solve equations describing how probabilities behave along closed timelike curves (CTCs), which are theoretical loops in spacetime that might make it possible to travel through time. [1] [2] [3] [4]
[35] Travel to regions of space where extreme gravitational time dilation is taking place, such as near (but not beyond the event horizon of) a black hole, could yield time-shifting results analogous to those of near-lightspeed space travel. Contrarily to velocity time dilation, in which both observers measure the other as aging slower (a ...
Time dilation: Moving clocks are measured to tick more slowly than an observer's "stationary" clock. Length contraction: Objects are measured to be shortened in the direction that they are moving with respect to the observer. Maximum speed is finite: No physical object, message or field line can travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum.
Faster-than-light (superluminal or supercausal) travel and communication are the conjectural propagation of matter or information faster than the speed of light in vacuum (c). The special theory of relativity implies that only particles with zero rest mass (i.e., photons) may travel at the speed of light, and that nothing may travel faster.
Time dilation explains a number of physical phenomena; for example, the lifetime of high speed muons created by the collision of cosmic rays with particles in the Earth's outer atmosphere and moving towards the surface is greater than the lifetime of slowly moving muons, created and decaying in a laboratory.
Speed has the dimensions of distance divided by time. The SI unit of speed is the metre per second (m/s), but the most common unit of speed in everyday usage is the kilometre per hour (km/h) or, in the US and the UK, miles per hour (mph). For air and marine travel, the knot is commonly used. The fastest possible speed at which energy or ...
By measuring their kinetic energy, mean muon velocities between 0.995 c and 0.9954 c were determined. Another measurement was taken in Cambridge, Massachusetts at sea-level. The time the muons need from 1917m to 0m should be about 6.4 μs. Assuming a mean lifetime of 2.2 μs, only 27 muons would reach this location if there were no time dilation.