World Science Scholars

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  • @Timothy, yes, that’s my understanding as well.
    At light speed both the rate of passage of time reaches zero (time dilation) and the length of space is also shortened to zero (length contraction). This also means anything with mass (requiring space to hold that mass) can never reach light speed as it cannot fit in zero space.

    Using the formula first works for me, it allows me to explore how it behaves with different parameters. It’s similar how you might try to understand functions written by someone else in software development. Exploring a more complex formula might take too much time to achieve the same level of familiarity, though.

    @Sajith: I would interpret the result 0/0 as the question of “what’s the speed of another object while I’m traveling at the speed of light” doesn’t make sense in special realitivity. Why?
    When you measure the speed of another object (its “relative speed”) you need to reference it against your “base speed” which you set to zero. If you travel at the speed of light you would need to make the speed of light your reference speed and set it to zero. By setting the speed of light to zero you are breaking the basic law of special relativity: “the speed of light is always a constant ~300m m/s for every observer”.
    If you ignore this rule you’re not working with the theory of special relativity, but a new theory. Good luck proving it with real world experiments! 🙂

    I found this article very helpful https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2014/11/03/why-is-time-frozen-from-lights-perspective/

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