[MERIT]

I am just thinking out loud here. Feel free to ignore or contribute as much as you would like.

As of next month, I will be 24 years old. What does that mean? Well, it means that I have been alive long enough for the Earth to revolve around the sun 24 times while travelling at a specific average speed.

On average, the Earth is about 93,000,000 miles (or 150,000,000 km) away from the sun. Using the formula for the circumference of a circle (c=2*pi*r), that would make one rotation around the earth equal to roughly 584,336,234 miles (or 942,477,796 km). After 24 years, that means that I have travelled roughly 1,402,409,616 miles (or 22,619,467,104 km).

Using the formula for speed (s=d/t), that means that the Earth is travelling around the sun at an average speed of roughly 67,000 mph (or 111,000 km/h).

Per Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, time appears to slow down the faster that you get towards the speed of light (known as "Time Dilation"). Therefore, as speed increases, time decreases.

If the Earth was travelling faster around the sun (it's speed increased), the time that it takes to orbit the sun (the length of a year) would decrease. So if the Earth was moving faster, we would all be younger (as it would take fewer years to travel the same distance). And if the Earth was moving slower, we would all be older (as it would take more years to travel the same distance).

So what does relative time (and thus speed) have to do with anything? Well, maybe travelling faster than the speed of light is possible. Imagine that you're driving a car at 60 mph. If you're sitting inside of the car, you appear stationary, but the plane outiside of the car appears to be moving at 60 mph in the opposite direction.

Imagine that the Earth is the inside of the car, and space (our galaxy) is the outside plane. The Earth is travelling around the sun at 67,000 mph, but we feel like we are stationary. Keep in mind that our solar system is travelling roughly 550,000 mph around our galaxy. That puts our speed up to roughly 617,000 mph (67,000 + 550,000). Our galaxy is moving roughly 900,000 mph relative to the cosmological microwave background radiation, now putting our speed up to 1,517,000 mph (617,000 + 900,000). With each addition frame of reference, we get closer towards the speed of light (roughly 667,000,000 mph). With enough additional frames of reference, we could surpass the speed of light. For all we know, relative to other frames of reference (other locations in the universe), we could be travelling faster than the speed of light right now.

Now, picture a bullet being fired from a rifle. The bullet travels faster than the speed of sound. You would see the muzzleflash before you hear the shot, as the bullet is travelling faster than the speed of sound, but slower than the speed of light. Now, imagine if the bullet was travelling faster than the speed of light.

If the bullet is travelling faster than the speed of light, it could hit us or pass through us before we could even hear or see it. That means that depending on how much faster than the speed of light the bullet is travelling, it could pass through us and be hundreds of yards behind us before we even see or feel a wound. Imagine you are looking at your chest, exactly where the bullet will hit you. It hits you and passes through you, yet when you look down, you you haven't even seen the bullet hit you yet, and your chest is free of any holes or wounds.

What does this mean? It means that an action can occur before it is even perceived. If this is possible, what else has occured, but we have yet to perceive it? Is everything predestined? Has our life (or even the entire life of the universe) already happened, but we just haven't perceived it yet? This opens up a whole new can of worms.

What are your thoughts?