I read something really interesting in The Elegant Universe. Let's say you throw a spoon at me at 5km/h, and I turn and run away at 4km/h, then the spoon moves towards me at 1km/h right? Right.
Let's say the spoon twirling end over end is not enough to persuade me to run away, and instead I run towards you (and the spoon). Well, then the spoon is actually gonna slap me on my forehead at a speed of 9km/h right? Right. But when it comes to light speed, which is something like 670 miles an hour, no I mean 670 million miles an hour (7 and a bit times around the Earth in a second), or about 1080 million kilometres an hour (basically going to from Bloem to Cape Town a million times in an hour). The point is, if you got onto a surfboard mounted on a Photon Torpedo a la Star Trek, that was capable of blitzkrieging you at say 100 million miles per hour, then you know what, you wouldn't catch the light beam...and if you went for it head on, it wouldn't come towards you any faster. The Speed of light is constant.
A lot of scientists tried to disprove this, but there is a lot of evidence in nature. One of the best examples is binary stars, two suns revolving quickly around each other. The light of both stars reach us her eon Earth at exactly the same time, even though one star is rapidly moving away from us, and the other towards us, they rotate around each other. What are the implications of this? Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment