what is the theory of relativity?

The speed of light is the universes speed limit you could say. the faster an object moves, the heaver it gets, requiring more energy to move it.

now you could apply this to time travel since space and time shouldnt be seen as two differnt things, but one in the same. gravity off of a fast moving object can bend space and time causing time to be bent. satelites internal clocks have to be updated frequently because of how fast its orbitng around earth.

Here is relativity in a nut shell:

If a piece of matter moves at almost the speed of light, its energy must increase, and since matter and energy are similar, its mass will also increase. If its velocity equals the velocity of light, both its mass and energy become infinitely large and impossible to measure. Because of this, no object can travel with the speed of light, except light itself.

i have taken modern physics, yes your mass will increasing and the energy to get you to c also increases (in theory) when you reach the speed of light your mass is infinite and it will take an infinite amount of energy to get there. if you take for example the gamma function (a scalier multiplier of time and length dilation) it is: 1/[sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)] with some knowledge of calculus you take take a limit as v approaches c and you get 1/0 which is infinity....

relativity goes back to gallilo, who said basically if a man was walking on top of a train (even though they did not have trains but it is a common analogy) and the train was moving at 20 mph west and your walking 5 mph east then to an observer on the ground you are moving west 15 mph. now to another person standing on the train you will be moving 5 mph east

well lets say you are on a fast train moving at 90% the speed of light west, and you are a very fast person moving at 50% the speed of light west as well... well to some one on the ground you will be moving at 140% the speed of light... but the special theory of relitivty says you cant go faster than light its self...

there is a formula to find exactly how fast he is moving, but my text book is boxed up and i am to lazy to go find it.

there is also time dilation and space contraction... if you have a watch and wait 10 seconds while your friend moving close to the speed of light and you get together your watches want sink up. if you measure a space ship on the ground to be 100 feet long and the space ship moves fast enough you will see it as being a different length.

the faster you move the more mass you have

the faster you move the more kinetic energy you possess E=MC^2(gamma - 1) i know your thinking it is E=MC^2 but that is for the rest energy...

another part of the theory is that mass is a form of energy. think of it this way you shine a light at a various materials and the material shoots off an electron (how solar panels work) Einstein won the nobel prize for this, it is called the photo electric effect (he did not get it for relativity)

this is getting very long so i will wrap it up some applications of this are GPS, becase of the difference in gravity and speed (general and special relativity) the clocks on the GPS device is different, and being that it works on very accuretly calculating the time it takes for a signal to reach you and back it is necessary that they are correct.

Fermi labs and the LHC how much energy does a proton have in the collier, you can calculate this if u know the protons speed.

General or Special? General relativity is a theory that describes how massive bodies "warp" space time (a combination of space and time). The "warping" causes gravity.

Read if you want---> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity

Einstein didn't think we could go faster than light. In reality, I think we just can't perceive an object traveling faster than light. After all, what's stopping it from going faster?

bigred is right. Einstein predicted that an object bends time and space, which causes a dimple in space. Kind of like when you stand on a trampoline. This is what causes gravity. The "Special" relativity has to do with motion and time. Light travels at the same speed regardless of the relative speed of the observer. The only way for this to occur is if time itself were slowed from the observer's point of view. So, if you were to go into outer space at close to the speed of light and come back in 10 years, 100 years would have passed for those that remained on Earth. Those numbers may not be correct but the theory is explained.

Oh the wonders of google...

heory of Relativity – A Brief History The Theory of Relativity, proposed by the Jewish physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) in the early part of the 20th century, is one of the most significant scientific advances of our time. Although the concept of relativity was not introduced by Einstein, his major contribution was the recognition that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant and an absolute physical boundary for motion. This does not have a major impact on a person's day-to-day life since we travel at speeds much slower than light speed. For objects travelling near light speed, however, the theory of relativity states that objects will move slower and shorten in length from the point of view of an observer on Earth. Einstein also derived the famous equation, E = mc2, which reveals the equivalence of mass and energy.

When Einstein applied his theory to gravitational fields, he derived the "curved space-time continuum" which depicts the dimensions of space and time as a two-dimensional surface where massive objects create valleys and dips in the surface. This aspect of relativity explained the phenomena of light bending around the sun, predicted black holes as well as the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) -- a discovery rendering fundamental anomalies in the classic Steady-State hypothesis. For his work on relativity, the photoelectric effect and blackbody radiation, Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921.

Theory of Relativity – The Basics Physicists usually dichotomize the Theory of Relativity into two parts.

The first is the Special Theory of Relativity, which essentially deals with the question of whether rest and motion are relative or absolute, and with the consequences of Einstein’s conjecture that they are relative.

The second is the General Theory of Relativity, which primarily applies to particles as they accelerate, particularly due to gravitation, and acts as a radical revision of Newton’s theory, predicting important new results for fast-moving and/or very massive bodies. The General Theory of Relativity correctly reproduces all validated predictions of Newton’s theory, but expands on our understanding of some of the key principles. Newtonian physics had previously hypothesised that gravity operated through empty space, but the theory lacked explanatory power as far as how the distance and mass of a given object could be transmitted through space. General relativity irons out this paradox, for it shows that objects continue to move in a straight line in space-time, but we observe the motion as acceleration because of the curved nature of space-time. Einstein’s theories of both special and general relativity have been confirmed to be accurate to a very high degree over recent years, and the data has been shown to corroborate many key predictions; the most famous being the solar eclipse of 1919 bearing testimony that the light of stars is indeed deflected by the sun as the light passes near the sun on its way to earth. The total solar eclipse allowed astronomers to -- for the first time -- analyse starlight near the edge of the sun, which had been previously inaccessible to observers due to the intense brightness of the sun. It also predicted the rate at which two neutron stars orbiting one another will move toward each other. When this phenomenon was first documented, general relativity proved itself accurate to better than a trillionth of a percent precision, thus making it one of the best confirmed principles in all of physics.

Applying the principle of general relativity to our cosmos reveals that it is not static. Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) demonstrated in 1928 that the Universe is expanding, showing beyond reasonable doubt that the Universe sprang into being a finite time ago. The most common contemporary interpretation of this expansion is that this began to exist from the moment of the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. However this is not the only plausible cosmological model which exists in academia, and many creation physicists such as Russell Humphreys and John Hartnett have devised models operating with a biblical framework, which -- to date -- have withstood the test of criticism from the most vehement of opponents. Theory of Relativity – A Testament to Creation Using the observed cosmic expansion conjunctively with the general theory of relativity, we can infer from the data that the further back into time one looks, the universe ought to diminish in size accordingly. However, this cannot be extrapolated indefinitely. The universe’s expansion helps us to appreciate the direction in which time flows. This is referred to as the Cosmological arrow of time, and implies that the future is -- by definition -- the direction towards which the universe increases in size. The expansion of the universe also gives rise to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the overall entropy (or disorder) in the Universe can only increase with time because the amount of energy available for work deteriorates with time. If the universe was eternal, therefore, the amount of usable energy available for work would have already been exhausted. Hence it follows that at one point the entropy value was at absolute 0 (most ordered state at the moment of creation) and the entropy has been increasing ever since -- that is, the universe at one point was fully “wound up” and has been winding down ever since. This has profound theological implications, for it shows that time itself is necessarily finite. If the universe were eternal, the thermal energy in the universe would have been evenly distributed throughout the cosmos, leaving each region of the cosmos at uniform temperature (at very close to absolute 0), rendering no further work possible.

The General Theory of Relativity demonstrates that time is linked, or related, to matter and space, and thus the dimensions of time, space, and matter constitute what we would call a continuum. They must come into being at precisely the same instant. Time itself cannot exist in the absence of matter and space. From this, we can infer that the uncaused first cause must exist outside of the four dimensions of space and time, and possess eternal, personal, and intelligent qualities in order to possess the capabilities of intentionally space, matter -- and indeed even time itself -- into being.

Moreover, the very physical nature of time and space also suggest a Creator, for infinity and eternity must necessarily exist from a logical perspective. The existence of time implies eternity (as time has a beginning and an end), and the existence of space implies infinity. The very concepts of infinity and eternity infer a Creator because they find their very state of being in God, who transcends both and simply is.

have you heard of E=MC^2 well thats basically what it is with E meaning energy, M meaning mass, and C being the speed of light squared. And what that is basically say is if you have something with mass and you get it to go twice the speed of light it will turn into energy.