I’ve only just learnt that the speed of light is really the speed of causality and I’m trying to understand it. I’m sorry if this is a stupid question but imagine I had a seesaw a lightyear long. I sit at one end and the other end lifts instantaneously. If someone was sat at the other end I would be lifting them faster than light could reach them. Their being lifted would be faster than the speed of causality. Is this wrong? Does one end of a seesaw dropping and the other end lifting not happen instantaneously with one another?
EDIT: Thank you to the people who have all responded so far. I can see that my thought that the two ends of the sawsee moving simultaneously with one another was the error in my thinking, and that the reason I thought this was due to scale and in reality a seesaw seems instantaneous but it’s not. Thanks again to those who took the time to reply and I’m grateful for your kindness.
In: Physics
I’ve seen this question in here a lot and what it comes down to is that there’s no perfectly ridged material that would allow for that kind of transfer of energy from one side to another instantly. Even steel, though it seems like it’s hard and inflexible, is still very bendy at those size scales.
Even if we pretend like it exists, this material would have to have a ton of weird and paradoxical properties. For example, there’s nothing you could do to move it because it would require infinite energy due to the atoms needing to accelerate to the speed of light the moment you try to move it.
If we assume we can move it, then the moment it moves, you and everything around you would instantly burst into a ball of fire and death because you just had an object accelerate to the speed of light right next to your hand.
Latest Answers