A simplified summary of Einstein's theory of relativity:
Albert Einstein came to an astonishing and revelational realization one evening
while heading home from work as a Janitor. At 12:00 PM he was driving in his car
headed away from a clock tower and looking back at the clock face he was pondering
what I would term a universal reality of time. Okay let me simplify this as best
I can.
- What we visually perceive through our eyes when we look at things is light
refracting at the speed of light from those objects.
-or-
Light bounces off objects and hits our eyes.
- When a light is bouncing from an object into our eyes it does take a certain
ammount of time. It's an extremely short period of time of coarse, but just
make sure to note that light does in fact have a definite speed.
So Einstein's driving away from the clock tower and he wonders "what if
I was traveling away from this clock at the speed of light?"
What if Einstein was moving away from the 12pm clock face at the same speed
as it was traveling? Say he's moving parallel to and positioned directly in
front of this spectrum of light waves bouncing from the clock face and hitting
his eyeballs.
If he is in fact moving away from the clock face at the speed of light he should
be right in front of the same 12pm light beam the whole time since they're both
moving the same speed.
So a minute goes by and what's happening to Einstein's view of the clock? Well
actually after 60 seconds the light that's reflecting 12pm has moved exactly
the same distance as Einstein has and directly in front of him is still a clock
face showing 12pm.
What if he looks at his pocket watch now after 60 seconds? Since his pocket
watch was moving at the same speed as him and the light...wow it actually shows
12:01!
So if you just kept moving away from the tower at the speed of light what would
happen after 10 minutes? You would still see 12:00pm on the clock tower. But
now your pocket watch would say it's 12:10!
Further ideas of Relativity:
What if we moved away from what we were looking at a speed faster faster than the speed of light?
That's right - Time Travel!
Atleast from a visual perspective you could theoretically be able to watch events that happened in the past. Could you interact with these events? I don't know, I'm skeptical but who knows we're learning more about the power of our minds every day.
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