I’ve heard this as I’ve had a look at special relativity, but I don’t get why.
In: Physics
“Why” is rarely a question for science. It’s indeed very counter intuitive that the speed of light (in a vacuum) is independent of reference frame, and leads to tons of weird relativity effects. I wouldn’t blame anyone who wants to know why
If the question is “how”, the answer is that time itself changes, because time (and space) are not truly a simple as we experience it in our typical human conditions. It’s a bit like how an ant might think they are standing on an infinite plane, even if their world was a sufficiently large donut. We experience such a small fraction of the universe in such a small range of conditions that we aren’t prepared to imagine it at such different scales.
In the case of relativity, I’m referring to conditions of incredibly high amounts of mass (black holes bending space) or speed (photons, neutrino experiencing time differently).
Everything about it makes no sense to us – it feels extra complicated and chaotic – but that’s only because our little experience is so simplified. We are the ant on a doughnut asking “Why” their world isn’t simply flat
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