This maxim prompted the comedian Stephen Wright to ask: "If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?" If you drive your car alongside a railroad track, a train coming at you will seem to be moving much faster than if you turned around and followed it in the same direction.Įinstein said that all observers will measure the speed of light to be 186,000 miles per second, no matter how fast and what direction they are moving. This result was surprising to physicists because the speed of most other things depends on what direction the observer is moving. That may seem simple enough, but it has far-reaching consequences.Įinstein came to this conclusion in 1905 after experimental evidence showed that the speed of light didn't change as the Earth swung around the s un. Special relativity came first and is based on the speed of light being constant for everyone.
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