Einstein's Thought Experiment

This morning I woke up in my Buggati, and I was wondering what if my car's speedometer reached the speed of light, 3x10^8 m/s. If my Buggati (I don't really have a Buggati) reached that electromagnetic speed, my car would transform from a Buggati to a DeLorean. However Albert Einstein thought up this scenario with trains or rockets before I did with my fictitious Bugatti.

Einstein's thought experiment derived a time-altering equation by using simple mathematics--algebra and the Pythagorean Theorem.

In Special Relativity, the speed of light is an universal constant; however, in General Relativity, a more complicated topic, light can be altered or bent in space time by gravity. The speed of light is a misnomer because there are other things--gamma rays, radio waves, X-Rays, microwaves, and Gravitons (if they exist)--that have the identical speed. Instead of the speed of light it should be appropriately called the electromagnetic speed.

For time travel to be plausible, the speed of light has to remain constant in any reference frame. For example, there is a car that is traveling at 40 m/s and there is a truck traveling behind it at 39 m/s. The truck will perceive--in its reference frame--that the car is traveling at 1 m/s. However, if the car is traveling at the speed of light, 3x10^8 m/s, and the truck is traveling at 2.8x10^8 m/s, the truck will still perceive the car traveling at 3x10^8 m/s instead of 0.2x10^8 m/s. With that being said, the equation that was derived from the video proves that time travel to the future is possible--not to the past. By traveling at the speed of light, time is infinitely slowed down--basically stopping time. To acquire this speed, however, is completely impractical; it will take an enormous amount of energy to accelerate to the speed of light, and humans--more than likely--will not withstand that force (F=ma).

But that's no fun. Let's say that time travel is possible. With time travel comes interesting paradoxes like the Grandfather Paradox...

or Stephen Hawking's experiment.

Although time travel does not appear possible by the last two videos, keep in mind these videos prove that time travel into the past is impossible. So there is still a chance that time travel into the future is possible.