Suppose someone is hypothetically traveling at close to the speed of light, departing from earth and bound directly towards the sun.
To an observer on earth, solar light takes roughly 8 light minutes to travel from the sun to the earth.
In this case, however, the traveler is heading in the opposite direction of the solar light, so to the observer from earth at velocity 0, it would appear this traveler is moving past the solar light at the speed of light + his velocity, and it would take less than 8 light minutes for this traveler to see the solar rays.
But the traveler has a watch on his wrist that measures time; and in order for the light to be passing him at only the speed of light and not any faster, his watch would have to still show that exactly 8 light minutes pass before the solar light reaches him. Hence his watch would have to be ticking faster, not slower, than a clock on earth, right?
But suppose another object of light is moving from earth to the sun, same direction of the traveler.
How is it now possible for this traveler to be passed by Both these objects at the speed of light while with respect to one direction, the traveler's clock would have a slowing down affect, but with respect to the light going from earth to the sun to see THAT at speed of light, the traveler's watch would have to be ticking at faster than earth's clock?
What am I not getting here? Is this traveler watching time elapse in different increments unique to many different objects?
The only way I can rationalize this would be that if the traveler made a 180-degree turn and headed back to earth at any velocity, the time would then appear slower to the traveler as measured by earth than on the sun to bring the timeframes of the two objects earth and sun back into equilibrium with the earth viewer once the traveler made it back home to earth
Because if time just slows for the traveler, then from the traveler's vantage point, you would sense moving faster than light when traveling "towards' a beam of light
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