Friday 6 May 2016

Time dilation

According to Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, the speed of light is the same for all observing it. It’s always stuck at approximately 300,000,000meters/second, no matter who’s observing it. If you take the diameter of the earth to be about 13,000,000meters, travelling at the speed of light, you will have gone round the earth 23 times before one second elapses! That means that If you start travelling straight from your current position at the speed of light without stopping, you will pass through your current position 23times in a second. This in itself is incredible enough, given that nothing can move faster than light. The really cool part of Special Relativity is an idea called time dilation, which states that the faster you go, the slower time passes for you relative to your surroundings. Seriously—if you go take a ride in your car for an hour, you will have aged ever-so-slightly less than if you had just sat at home on the computer. Of course, time can only slow down so much, and the formula works out so that if you’re moving at the speed of light, time isn’t moving at all. Note that moving at the speed of light isn’t actually possible, unless you happen to be made of light. Technically speaking, moving that fast would require an infinite amount of energy (except maybe you try diabolical sources).

No comments:

Post a Comment

Your comments are very much apreciated