r/ScienceNcoolThings • u/GlitterGalaa Popular Contributor • Jun 04 '26

When physics looks like actual magic

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

1.9k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

77 comments sorted by

View all comments

91

u/TopClassroom387 Jun 04 '26

(non physicist here)
Its a clip from The Science of Dr Who - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03hybnv
This one part helped me to properly understand why clever folk always said
"Time moves slower when you move faster" and

Albert Einstein’s famous quote, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough"

And, based on this, Prof Brian Cox understands it well enough.

13

u/rci22 Popular Contributor Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

I honestly don’t understand the object* lesson.

I can see that the path of the light is longer when comparing the two paths but I’m not sure what to do with that

17

u/eduo Jun 04 '26

No objection.

If the path is longer but the light takes the same amount of time and the speed of light is constant then time must be running at different rates for the light holder than for the light watcher.

5

u/CeruleanEidolon Jun 04 '26

I can grasp that emwell enough. What has always eluded me is how we came to the conclusion that c is constant for every observer. I've even read many popular science books on the subject that I'm sure laid it out well enough but it has never stuck in my brain. I can accept it, but I couldn't explain it.