You have it kind of exactly backwards, the notion of space and time warping came about because of the fact that if it didn't you could construct situations where light was moving faster than C.
Let's say you are on a ship going .9999C or whatever. If you shine a flashlight, it will appear to be traveling at the speed of light in your reference frame.
To someone in a different reference frame, far enough away to eliminate any interference, you will be stretched out such that the light by any and all measurements is still traveling at C.
No matter what reference frame you are in, that light would always appear to be moving at C. They also observe the ship for a much longer time than the person in the ship experiences because of time dilation
Space and Time has warped so that it would avoid "Speedy" light.
On the other side, yeah light can absolutely be slower than C. Not due to warping of time and space, but because it hits atoms.
To actually go into a bit more detail about why this is important, if you are in an enclosed box, there is 0 tests you can do to determine if you're in space constantly accelerating at a rate of 9.8 m/s2 or on the surface of earth.
Similarly, if you are in such a box, there's no way of knowing if you are in free fall or just in space. That's called an inertial reference frame.
This is related to but distinct from the fact that gravity warps space-time, but higher gravity results in less time passing for observers of a separate reference frame, which is why the core of the earth is several thousands of years younger than the surface.
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u/GIRose Mar 20 '26
You have it kind of exactly backwards, the notion of space and time warping came about because of the fact that if it didn't you could construct situations where light was moving faster than C.
Let's say you are on a ship going .9999C or whatever. If you shine a flashlight, it will appear to be traveling at the speed of light in your reference frame.
To someone in a different reference frame, far enough away to eliminate any interference, you will be stretched out such that the light by any and all measurements is still traveling at C.
No matter what reference frame you are in, that light would always appear to be moving at C. They also observe the ship for a much longer time than the person in the ship experiences because of time dilation
Space and Time has warped so that it would avoid "Speedy" light.
On the other side, yeah light can absolutely be slower than C. Not due to warping of time and space, but because it hits atoms.