I am proud to announce that I am reading the sequel to ‘The Elegant Universe’,
‘‘The Fabric Of The Cosmos’ by Briane Greene
and I finally understand what is meant by the term ‘Space-Time’.
I needed to post this, lest everyone think I am just another pretty face interested only in Halle Berry.
So, basically, while everything, whether moving or at rest, regardless of the reference point used, regardless of its velocity, the speed of light remains constant at about 300,000 km per second.
Einstein wondered what a beam of light would look light if he was traveling alongside it a the same velocity, and thus, ten years later, the special theory of relativity was conceived. He was the first to realise, and quite a leap of insight it was, that time itself would change, and you would perceive that beam of light next to you as still outdistancing you at 300,000 km per second, even though you yoursefl are also traveling at that same rate.* And the only way for that to happen would be if time, for you, slowed down, relative to what it had been before you accelrated to 300,000 km per second. When you returned to your home base, your friends would all think you had been gone much longer than you thought you had been gone, meaning you had a pile of over-due bills to pay, and probably a lot of green moldy things in your fridge.
Quite incredibly brilliant, no one had ever considered that time itself was not an absolute constant, and its very definition depended on your velocity through space, as measured by an outside observer.
Thus, space and time are kind of dependent on one another, and are really one and the same, like pie-a-la-mode, both the ice cream and the pie need each other.
*Yes, I know that our observer cannot travel at the speed of light, the example is for illustrative purposes only
Dan the Truly Dynamic Deep Thinker, if you don’t think he is absolutely brilliant, just ask him yourself [gee, Dan, all you did was re-cycle something you read, even George Bush could do that!]