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@Science
Interesting fact of the day:
Despite popular belief it is not really correct to say the speed of light is a universal speed limit in the universe. It would be more correct to say one object can never go faster, relative to another object by the speed of light.
In other words, no matter what speed I am going relative to the earth (or anything else) doesn't matter; if there is some object going the same speed and direction as me I can still accelerate up to the speed of light faster than it.
All that matters is that nothing can go faster than the speed of light relative to me the observer.
#Science #Physics #Relativity #SpecialRelativity #Einstein #Space #astronomy #Astrophysics
@freemo @Science is this a time dilation thing?
because intuitively if one thing is moving away from you and another thing is moving in the same direction, if you accelerate fast so that your relative speed is equal to the speed of light, is it possible to travel away from both of them at the same speed? and would that only be from your perspective so like, the relative speed by an observer who was traveling even faster than the other object you could be moving slower relative to all three things from their perspective because time would be going differently to them?
@swiley @freemo @Science tbh I completely don't remember writing the word intuitively and I don't really remember what I meant to type but I'm pretty sure that word wasn't supposed to be there. I think I meant to say initially actually, like, to establish the original speeds and then acceleration being a change in relative speeds cus that's the moment I was wondering about.
When we talk abotu special relativity we usually dont talk about acceleration. We assume everyone has some speed and direction and that those speeds and direction are not changing. That is in fact what makes the difference between special relativity and general relativity. Once you get into acceleration then we have moved on to discussing the more complex ideas behind general relativity (though that is also where things get cool).
If you pretend acceleration doesnt have any effects and only think in terms of special relativity then under conditions where acceleration occurs the whole system breaks and you get logical paradoxes that dont make sense. General relativity resolves those paradoxes and describes the additional effects that take place when acceleration is introduced to the through experiment in some way.
