NASA finds 'new earth'

oh boy, relativity

there is no absolute frame. there is no stationary, only relative velocities. earth is moving quickly relative to the ship if you choose the ship as your frame of reference.

1) That's not how relativity works, at all. A body travelling at the speed of light only goes so fast as the speed of light, it would still take that many years to cover those light-years. The only thing is that they when they finally arrived there many many more years would have passed for the people on earth and on their destination.

As far as my understanding of relativity goes, I think you're both correct. Eldertree saying it wouldn't take as long as 600 years from the view of people on a ship going near light speed does have some support in special relativity.

It takes light 600 years in our (inertial) frame, and if you were moving near the speed of light,time dilation would mean less time passes for you to travel that same distance. Say you had two clocks, one on the ship, one on the earth, and,for arguments sake the ship goes at 99% the speed of light.

Then the amount of time that passes on the earth = 1/sqrt(1-v/c)* time passed on ship = 10* time passed on ship

So if your ship traveled at 99% of the speed of light, you would arrive at the new planet after 60 years from the view of a person on the ship, but 600 years later from the view of someone on earth.

So Elderwoods assertion that traveling at the speed of light would make the journey instantaneous is correct, at least in principle.

we can simply say those in the ship won't age the full time it takes for it to reach the planet, while the rest of the earth progresses at a "normal" time, correct?

we can simply say those in the ship won't age the full time it takes for it to reach the planet, while the rest of the earth progresses at a "normal" time, correct?

Sure if you want to be boring and have people actually understand what you're talking about.

oh boy, relativity

there is no absolute frame. there is no stationary, only relative velocities. earth is moving quickly relative to the ship if you choose the ship as your frame of reference.

I can't really wrap my mind around any claim of lack of objectivity.
There's a distance d (d = 600 lightyears) and a velocity v heading towards it (v = 0.99*c). Accounting for metric expansion, there should be a finite amount of time within which the object travelling at velocity v will have covered the distance d, no?

Or maybe you're talking about something else like the planet moving towards the ship instead of vice-versa, sure it's classical relativity, but I don't see how it has anything to do with this.

So Elderwoods assertion that traveling at the speed of light would make the journey instantaneous is correct, at least in principle.

So long as everyone involved is on the ship.