Philosophy Now Forum

I'm not posting this under physics as this is a viewpoint of mine and I want to see who shares or doesn't as the case may be.

Say we have a train that moves at a constant 100 mph so after one hour, it moves ahead 100 miles. Now say a passenger transfers to a car further back along the train.
So with the new position, instead of moving 100 miles, that passenger moves 100 miles minus whatever the distance the passenger has moved in going say one car back (let's assume 50 feet).

Now r x t = d, right? The rate remains the same in this example. Now distance has diminished by 50 feet in my example, right? This means by the equation that time has diminished by a certain amount too or, in my point of view, the passenger has gone back in time in moving back one car.

Comments?

PhilX

Because the train is moving slower than the speed of light there are various times of arrival but no moving forwards or backwards in time.

Celebritydiscodave2 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 24, 2017 11:43 am Because the train is moving slower than the speed of light there are various times of arrival but no moving forwards or backwards in time.

Not true when you're moving slower than the speed of light. When you're moving at the speed of light, then time isn't moving as Einstein pointed out.

In my example, I'm saying that the passenger has the semblance of going backwards in time due to his repositioning on the train.

PhilX

Let me amend what I've said. According to the SR equation, at the speed of light you have nonsense because you can't divide by zero. The faster you move, the slower time moves relatively speaking.

You made one incorrect assumption. "The rate remains the same." and it drew an incorrect conclusion: "Therefore he moved back in time."

The rate of displacement over time for the train remained constant. But the rate of displacement of the person is not equal to the rate of displacement of the train.

The rate of displacement of the train is: 100 miles per hour
The rate of displacement of the passenger is (100miles minus fifty feet) per hour

Both displacements relative to the point of origin.