Craziness!!

Life is simple, isn't it? Wake up in the morning, do your work and go back to bed. It isn't complex. But, have you ever thought about life being too complicated that you wouldn't understand what's goin' on. I'm talking about the kind of life where you and your friend have different speeds of time, that kind of life where you and others perceive events differently. Also... umm... It's a spoiler.. That kind of life where you could see things behind your back... No! Literally!   Well, that's exactly what happens when you travel close to the speed of light!

300,000 km/s.... sounds familiar? Yeah, that's the speed of light. The highest limit for speed in the whole universe. Nothing can go faster than that. Or, we think so.....

D'you people remember the guy having messy hair sticking his tongue out? Um....... Einstein, you say? Yes. Well he was the first person to think about this.

Let's think of it this way. In the 19th century, it was discovered that a changing electric field can produce magnetic field, and a changing magnetic field can produce an electric field. Putting these two together, James Clerk Maxwell showed that if you created a changing electric field, it would generate a changing magnetic field, which would in turn produce a changing electric field and so on - the pair of oscillating fields could move through space all by themselves, quite self - sustaining, with no need for wires! He formulated an equation to calculate it's speed. And when the speed of this 'electro - magnetic wave' was worked out, it came out to be 300,000 km/s - the speed of light!

So far so good - but it caused a serious philosophical problem. Ever since Galileo, it had been believed that position and velocity were purely relative - i.e., there was no experiment you could do to tell where you were or how fast you were moving. You could only tell your position or velocity relative to something else. But the equation used to work out the speed of light was not relative to anything. It just said that this the speed of light. End of story.

Okay, going for a bit of common sense ahead..(And insanity!! ) 

So, imagine if you were moving at half the speed of light and shone a light beam forward. Would this light then be moving at 1.5 times the speed of light? Or just the normal speed of light, in which case it would moving at half the speed of light, relative to us? (Because, to find the speed of something in such a situation, you add the speed at which you threw the object, and the speed at which you are moving). If we were flying along - side a light beam at the speed of light, then would it appear stationary to us? (Imagine you and your friend running at the same speed side by side, then relative to us, they would appear to be stationary). But a light beam, which is an electro magnetic wave, cannot be stationary according to Maxwell. Fields need to move or propogate to exist. It's impossible for a light beam to be stationary. 

Either seems problematic. 

To solve all this, lots of physcisits came up with so many theories  - using common sense - that didn't actually fit into the picture. But Einstein thought, let's put common sense aside for a while, and change the things we take for granted. So what happens is your time runs differently compared to someone else. 

Then, Einstein came up with his Special theory of Relativity. All it says is, when you move at speeds close to that of light, from the point of view of someone watching you, you are nearly at the speed of light, but time has slowed down for you and your length has been compressed. Maybe the distance you are traveling is large, but traveling at the speed of light makes is much easier. It's not only because you are moving fast, it's because you are moving fast and the distance FOR YOU has reduced. 

Okay that was a lot of physics...... 

Simpler way... If you are travelling at 98% of the speed of light, then for people watching you from the Earth, your trip to Mars will take 5 mins, but for you it will just take a minute, because your distance to Mars has reduced.... 

Insane! Isn't it? 

Ask me? If you want to know what is insanity, then go study the Special theory of Relativity.... 

P. S...... Imagine the life of light now!