ELIF: how is time relative?
In: Physics
Time is relative to the frame of reference.
Bad analogy, but kind works. New year’s eve is celebrated at different times for the first calendar day. Why does this happen? We set are clocks to how the sun cross the sky. So, a person in China will celebrate the new year 13 hours before us, because there sun sets before ours.
Einstein noticed a problem in classical physics. The basic rules would no longer apply. For example, you can approximate a car speed based of yours. You know your speed is 60 MPH and the driver driving faster so you could say the other driver speed is 70 MPH.
However, if you are in a spaceship traveling at the speed of light and fire a missile, what is the speed of the missile? This is where you need to change you reference frame.
You set your frame as not moving, this allows you to calculate the speed of the missile. Your calculations show that the missile is traveling at a third the speed of light.
Meanwhile, an observer sees the spaceship fire the missile and wants to know the speed of the missile. He uses two stars as indicator for distance and calculate the missile was fired at 100MPH.
Both observer are correct for their reference frames. This why time is relative.
By the way seed is calculated by taking the distance and dividing by the time.
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