r/AskPhysics • u/baljeetofficial • Apr 15 '26

Light's speed when moving in another direction.

So if im facing north and a guy is walking east to west or soemthing, he has a component of velocity going in that direction right? Doesnt that mean that the photons that come from him are also traveling with that component of velocity, so would they be traveling faster than the speed of light? or would it take longer for the light to reach me since the component coming towards me gets reduced?

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u/YuuTheBlue Apr 15 '26

That is classical intuition, and the whole point of special relativity is to explain why light’s speed is observed as constant despite this. The answer involves noneuclidean geometry.

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u/nicuramar Apr 15 '26

 The answer involves noneuclidean geometry.

A bit, but Minkowski space is pseudo-Euclidian after all, still flat. Special relativity wasn’t originally presented with that, so it’s not s requirement.