this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2026
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Science Memes

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[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The speed of light isn't even really a speed, it's a property of space itself.

[–] Spooge@lemmy.world 16 points 23 hours ago (2 children)
[–] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 5 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

And also my furniture is a property of space itself

[–] Spooge@lemmy.world 5 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Mine isn't. I got it at Bed, Bath, and Infinitely Beyond.

[–] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Your one furniture can do my favorite things but not my favorite amount

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 1 points 6 hours ago

I get to know either where the favourite things the furniture is doing is happening, or when the favourite things the furniture is doing happen, but not both. It seems like a big enough flaw to throw the furniture out into the skip.

[–] bampop@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

If your furniture is a property of space, is keeping it in a small apartment an act of theft?

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 1 points 6 hours ago

"Property is theft"

[–] minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 points 17 hours ago

It's like it's both space and time.

[–] LordCrom@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (6 children)

And remember, a photon of light does not experience time. Time only applies to mass. When a photon is emitted traveling at the speed of light, it is eventually absorbed by something, eglight from the sun hitting your eye. The photon of ligjt, from the photon POV is emitted and absorbed in the same instance.

[–] heartSagan5@lemmy.zip 5 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

But some of the photon is absorbed by the material it passes through called spectroscopy. I guess then it’s good it’s also a wave, as per the Light Slot Experiment.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 14 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

It wasn't a wave when I checked.

[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

😂😂😂

[–] amansman@lemmy.world 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it.

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 1 points 6 hours ago

Keep the faith. Don't collapse the wave.

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[–] 5too@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (7 children)

A bit late to the party, but I'll try anyway!

So, first, speed is distance over time. Miles per second, kilometers per hour, whatever.

Consider a person rocketing by a planet in a little spaceship at a good fraction of the speed of light. To amuse themselves, they're bouncing a ball between two paddles on opposite walls of their craft. The ball describes a path like:

O--------O

--O----O

-----O

Of course, to a person on a planet they're blasting past, the path looks different - the ship moves a long way between each bounce, so they see:

O----------------------------------O

-------O------------------O

----------------O

The thing is, both of these are correct from each point of view - from each reference frame. For the shipboard person, the ball moves the width of the ship, and for the planetside person, it covers the distance the ship traveled in the bounce (plus some for the width).

Now, swap the ball for a photon, which always moves at the same speed. The distance the photon travels from the two points of view - the two reference frames - is different, so the time component of the photon's measured speed must change as well because the photon's speed remains the same! Each side sees the photon moving at the same speed, despite the difference in distance traversed each pov sees - which means each must also have a different measurement of the time involved!

So, time is compressed on the spaceship relative to the planet - from the ship, the planetside observer is moving very fast, while to the planetside observer, the space pilot is moving in slow motion. The speed of the photon is universal - it's the distance it travels between bounces, and therefore how long it takes to bounce, that differs between their perspectives.

[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I want to know why it works that way. I'm pretty sure we don't actually know why that is a law of nature, just that it is. Some of these things I learned in physics I was frustrated that we can't explain the why. We just kind of know this is what experiments tell us, and the math.

[–] starelfsc2@sh.itjust.works 1 points 16 hours ago

If you mean the relativity part, to my understanding space and time are basically a shared dimension, so the faster something is moving in space the slower it's moving in time. Why it's shared, I have no clue.

[–] MJKee9@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And that is what is meant by time dilation, and why Matthew Mcconaughey was younger than his grandkids. His balls took longer to bounce......

[–] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 3 points 21 hours ago

Alright alright alright

In relativity both the planet and the ship see the other as moving slow. Not one fast the other slow.

[–] SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Great explanation, well done!

[–] 5too@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago

Thanks! Wish I could remember where I saw an animation describing it this way - it was some educational software from the nineties, I'm pretty sure.

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[–] whitedovebooks@lemmy.world 31 points 1 day ago (11 children)

If you were on a train that was travelling at 60 mph and you threw a ball (inside the train) and the ball was travelling at 10 mph (inside the train), then the ball would objectively be travelling at 70 mph. Any observer (outside the train) would be able to understand why it looks like 10 mph inside the train and 70 mph outside the train.

Are you with me?

Okay, so the same thing does not happen with light! If you turn on a flashlight (inside the train), the light would be travelling at 670,616,629 mph regardless of whether the train was stationary or moving. So an observer outside the train would see the light travelling at the same speed as an observer inside the train. Even if the train was some supersonic invention from the future, the light inside the train would still be travelling at 670,616,629 mph - not 670,616,629 mph plus the speed of the train. And both inside and outside the train, observers would see the light as travelling at that speed. That's the big thing to get hold of!

How can this possibly be the case?

The answer is that time itself actually slows down when we are in motion. At low speeds, the effect is negligible, but the closer we get to the speed of light, the more the effect becomes observeable, until, when we are travelling at the speed of light, time stands still. If we were able to go faster than the speed of light, we would be travelling backwards through time.

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[–] stupidcasey@lemmy.world -3 points 15 hours ago

Not true, the universes speed varies and thus the speed of light varies with it.

[–] D_C@sh.itjust.works 22 points 1 day ago (9 children)

Ok, firstly I'm not very smart. Secondly I don't understand the meme AND don't understand the explanations in the comments.
Can anyone actually dumb it down so a stupid person like me can understand it?

[–] pomegranatefern@sh.itjust.works 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I suggest watching these videos from Float Head Physics. They're just some of the clearest and most intuitive explanations of relativity I've seen, and any other explanation I give here would just be me attempting to paraphrase him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkv8sW6y3sY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vitf8YaVXhc

He has a whole playlist on special relativity which is really insightful if you want an even deeper dive, as well as playlists on other things like general relativity and quantum mechanics, all of which are based on building intuition instead of starting with complicated math equations.

[–] D_C@sh.itjust.works 2 points 15 hours ago

Thank you for this.

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