I have often wondered why it’s not possible to go faster than the speed of light. My reasoning has been “well, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity (E=MC^2), you would require an infinite amount of energy to increase your speed by an infinitely small amount.” Until lately I have been been satisfied by this response, but I’ve always been stumped by this apparent paradox: Imagine you are in the back of a train going 1 MPH less than the speed of light. Now you get up and run to the front of the train at 8 MPH, would you not be going 7 MPH faster than the speed of light?. The answer is no, and here’s why. When you start moving forward you are perceiving yourself as moving normally, but in fact this is far from the truth. The closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time is. What this means to you on the train is that you feel like you are going the 8 MPH because you are also perceiving time more slowly than normally. If you were timing yourself with a watch, you would indeed get to the front of the train in the 10 seconds or so that you thought it took; however, if I were stopped on the outside of the train looking in, it would appear to me that you took many hours — maybe even days to run across the train. What this means is that it actually took you a very long time to travel the distance of the train, let’s say 50 feet in 24 hours. This speed is added to the speed of the train, but it’s far less than the 8 MPH you thought you were travelling at. What if you shoot a bullet towards the front of the train? It doesn’t matter what you do, the faster you go, the slower time goes. If you managed to get to the speed of light, time would stop completely, so you would not actually be moving.
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I still say prove it. Also, what would happen if you turned on a light on the front of the train? Would the energy from the light not be able to leave the bulb?
One more question, if you leave a window open on the train can you could reach in and grab the bullet out of the air because it is moving so slow?
I may have to read up on this…now you have me thinking
Oh, by the way, the part of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity that requires time to slow down (and space to contract) as velocity increases was first proven in 1971 by two physicists from the UK. They built two identical atomic clocks and verified that the kept exact time, then put one on a jet and flew it around to world close to the speed of sound. When the jet returned, they found that the clock on the jet had lost 50 billionths of a second during the flight. Atomic clocks measure the vibrations (or magnetic rotations) of an atom in a controlled environment so this experiment proves that time is in fact slower at higher speeds.
Proving this theory would be very difficult, however, disproving it would disprove Einstein’s special theory of relativity and probably his general theory of relativity. If you turn on a light on the front of the train the photons that carry the light would be produced, but they would be going forward very slowly in comparison to the train, so assuming the train is going 1 MPH less than the speed of light, this means the light would be going 1 MPH faster than the train. If you left a window open and tried to grab the bullet out of the air (I’m assuming you’re stopped and very very fast
) you would not be able to grab it because it would still be going close to the speed of light 
. It’s just that in comparison to the train it is not going much faster. Things would get strange if you were in the front of the train, however. If the bullet was heading towards you, your best chance of avoiding it would be to run towards it and avoid it because as you move towards the back of the train your perception of time increases in speed and everything around you looks like it is going really slowly (including the bullet). If you were going fast enough I suppose you could touch the bullet that is moving slowly in the air but it would probably not be possible to grab it out of the air because although it is covering a short distance in a very long time (going slowly), it still carries the full energy that it received from the gun – it’s inertia. I imagine you could push the bullet off course quite easily, but actually stopping it would require you to push on it for a while. You could assume, then that you would have stopped moving towards the back of the train, then time would slow back down for you again and you would end up being shot by the bullet 
Don’t forget that you also get infinitely smaller as you get closer to the speed of light. So your train from the outside would get squished in the axis of travel. This difference in time and relativity is used in GPS satellites that orbit the Earth much faster than us on the Earth. This calculation in relativity is crucial in making sure the timing down to Earth is accurate. Check it out!
Indeed, without the constant time correction of the atomic clocks on GPS satellites, they would drift, causing their accuracy to accuracy to drift as well – up to 6 feet per day!
You are actually incorrect in one of your statements.
” If you turn on a light on the front of the train the photons that carry the light would be produced, but they would be going forward very slowly in comparison to the train, so assuming the train is going 1 MPH less than the speed of light, this means the light would be going 1 MPH faster than the train”
If i was the conductor, and i was traveling at 1mph less than the speed of light, and i turned my headlights on. I would see the light traveling away from me at ‘the speed of light’
Light ALWAYS travels at 300,000,000 m/s, regardless of how fast the light source is moving relative to the observer. Always.
Indeed, thanks for the correction!
Time and space are connected. I think we can agree on that. Time and space are relative to the time and space you are in. Example:
What if there are 2 trains. both of these trains are going in opposite directions and at the speed of light. If you are on one of the trains how fast is the other train moving away from you relative to your space time? This would be twice the speed of light.
For the person that is looking at the both of the trains and is not on the train, the speed they are moving at are the same.
What i mean to say here is that something can move in your time space faster than the speed of light but a object that you are for example sitting on cannot go faster than the speed of light.
What if we could move space time, how does that effect speed in general. We cant just base all of are conclusions on a not yet defeated formula. Einstein still has the upper hand, but it is only a matter of time until we reach a different understanding about all the mechanics of the universe.
here, I think you are a bit wrong
lets assume the trains are moving at 99.9% the speed of light (couse you cant go 100% of the speed of light like you said in your example). if you are sitting in one train, then yes, the other train should be moving towards you at almost 2x the speed of light, but as it was said, that cannot happen. nothing ever goes over the speed of light, including this scenario. instead, you will see that the other train that is passing by has extremely slowed down time. so you are going 99.9% speed of light and the other train is in your eyes (with its slowed down time) going maybe only 0.09% speed of light.
please correct me if Im wrong, Im 15 and trying to grasp this subject
also sorry for any errors, Im not english.
divineadvancedhumanbeings.com
Light does not travel… Light is a chemical reaction process and a bi-product of Universal Respiration…
Many of the problems associated with determining how the universe was created relates to the measurement of light, which is used to measure our distance from other star systems. Current theory regarding the motion of light, supports the speed of light at 186,000 mps. This is highly theoretical! I would like to propose to you that light doesn’t move at all like contemporary science tells us. Light as opposed to particles (photons) moving through space, is a chain reaction associated with the motion of electrons and moves at the speed of frequency, which is almost instantaneous! Light is a chemical reaction which would occur at a slightly slower speed but nevertheless, almost instantaneous. In other words, the light which is used to measure whether a star is moving away from a center, is inaccurate as we are seeing this light in almost “real time”!
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