Is it possible to travel back in time if you could reach light speed?

Question

If you could run at the speed of light, would it be theoretically be possible to travel back in time? I might sound like an idiot, but I'm just curious.

Answer 1

You could never travel báck in time. As you can never run fáster then the speed of light.

The closer you'd get to the speed of light, the more difficult it would become to accelerate. And the slower time would go for you. You could never run exactly the speed of light, as that is not possible for objects with a mass. So you could never stop in time.

It would be possible to travel insanely fast and make time go very slow for you. But as you'd decelerate time would catch up with you again.

So the time speed difference would only exist for the time when you were traveling that fast.

Answer 2

p'=M*V/(1-(v/c)^2)^1/2

Here, p' is the relativistic momentum and m is the rest mass.

This has some interesting consequences. First, for an object with non-zero mass as its velocity approaches the speed of light its momentum will approach infinity. This implies that that it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light. Since this amount of energy is unavailable, objects with mass cannot travel at the speed of light (in vaccum) or faster. General relativity will expand on this understanding of the speed of light as a limiting speed in the universe.

Answer 3

According to the equations of relativity, as you approach the speed of light the equations approach infinity, ie they become invalid.  We know time slows as speed increases.  So it is reasonable to assume that time would completely stop for something travling at exactly the speed of light.  What is beyond the speed of light nobody knows.

Answer 4

first of all... you would have to find a course to not run into yourself... while traveling the speed of light on any given planet.. you would just run into yourself... think of a circle... BAM!!  what would happen.. you would turn to energy.. you would have to travel the speed or faster in space... but then think of the space debris or objects that you would hit....you would die before you even reach light speed.  Also it has been recently proven that light is affected by gravity.. that is why it gets sucked into a black hole... so what to say that light in another galaxy travels at the same speed?  it could be affected my an outside force....  but if you were able to travel faster the light.. by whatever means.. and if your body would pyshically be able to take it... you would only be able to see what has happened before hand.... only see what just happened... and this is by chance you could control where you stopped at... .but to actually be able to see more then a few milli seconds, you would have to travel WAY faster then the speed of light for a lot of time.... because if you stop... then the light and the present would just catch up to you.  So this being said... WHO KNOWS!!!

Answer 5

If you could travel faster than the speed of light you could stop,look back and see the past catching up with you.