eli5: At constant speed and no vision, are you supposed to be able to tell if you are travelling forward or backwards? How?

Question

Was on the train and it was pitch black outside. Thought I was sitting facing the direction of travel but turned out I wasn’t.

Even when I felt the acceleration/decelerating, I didn’t know which it was.

In: 16

Answer 1

We are on a spinning globe, whizzing around the run, flying through the galaxy and we can’t feel that at all. The only way we know we’re moving is by watching the other stars. We can’t feel any of that motion.

Even in a perfect world, you wouldn’t be able to tell direction. Even if the train was accelerating/decelerating/turning, you would be able to tell the direction of acceleration and mangnitude, but not direction of velocity unless you already knew the magnitude and direction of your velocity at any one instant of the journey.