this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
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Science Memes

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submitted 16 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 16 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

I'm reasonably sure that Einstein's breakthrough was more that he assumed light only travels at the speed of light and the all the equations worked.

Every experiment since has confirmed it.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (2 children)

Technically everything moves at c (the speed of light) through spacetime, all the time. Most objects that have mass spend the majority of their motion in the time part, and thus move relatively slowly in space. If an object moves fast in space (where fast is a significant fraction of c) then it moves noticeably slower in time because the total spacetime vector value is always c.

Photons, being massless, do not move through time at all, and move through space at c.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

To add to this, this is always relative to an observer. If an object moves fast in space compared to you then it moves slower in time compared to you.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 12 hours ago

That'll break a few brains. To elaborate with an example: From the perspective of a photon, it's "life" is over as soon as it begins. Even though it takes about 8 mins for a photon to travel from the sun to the earth from our perspective, no time at all has passed for it.

(Correct me if I misspoke.)

[–] workerONE 7 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Any speed that light travels is the speed of light

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago

The real breakthrough

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago

The other way around. Experiments said that light always moves at C and he deduced what follows from that for space time.