I get that time can change depending on where you are in the world; however, I feel I have less of an understanding of time being relative after diving deeper into it.
In: Physics
Time is relative because the speed of light is constant in all reference frames.
Basically there is not a speed you can go that you will be able to observe the speed of light going any slower than 299,792,458 m / s (speed of light.)
Lets say you are in a car going 30mph.
Now lets say someone next to you is traveling 40 mph.
Relative to YOU, they are only traveling 10 mph. In reality they are only traveling 40 mph relative to the earth.
Even though that car in the first example is going 40 mph, it seems to get slower as you pull up to it. This is basic relativity.
Like the speed of sound, or the speed of anything, everyone just assumed that the faster you go to catch up to an object, the slower that very same object appears to get. However, it was different for the speed of light because if you were to travel along a light beam, you would never be able to catch up to the speed of light! The speed of light travels 299,792,458 m / s.
If I traveled at 299,792,45**7** m / s, 1 m/s slower than the speed of light, you would think that I would see light traveling at 1 m/s! But that doesn’t work! light would still appear to be traveling 299,792,458 m / s.
So if the speed of light is constant, then some other variable in the equation has to change.
speed=distance/time
Since distance and time relate to speed, they will always change the value of speed. So in order to keep the speed constant, you would have to warp both of those variables.
That’s where we get Time dilation and length contraction.
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