this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2026
681 points (98.7% liked)

Science Memes

20452 readers
1660 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 5too@lemmy.world 40 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

A bit late to the party, but I'll try anyway!

So, first, speed is distance over time. Miles per second, kilometers per hour, whatever.

Consider a person rocketing by a planet in a little spaceship at a good fraction of the speed of light. To amuse themselves, they're bouncing a ball between two paddles on opposite walls of their craft. The ball describes a path like:

O--------O

--O----O

-----O

Of course, to a person on a planet they're blasting past, the path looks different - the ship moves a long way between each bounce, so they see:

O----------------------------------O

-------O------------------O

----------------O

The thing is, both of these are correct from each point of view - from each reference frame. For the shipboard person, the ball moves the width of the ship, and for the planetside person, it covers the distance the ship traveled in the bounce (plus some for the width).

Now, swap the ball for a photon, which always moves at the same speed. The distance the photon travels from the two points of view - the two reference frames - is different, so the time component of the photon's measured speed must change as well because the photon's speed remains the same! Each side sees the photon moving at the same speed, despite the difference in distance traversed each pov sees - which means each must also have a different measurement of the time involved!

So, time is compressed on the spaceship relative to the planet - from the ship, the planetside observer is moving very fast, while to the planetside observer, the space pilot is moving in slow motion. The speed of the photon is universal - it's the distance it travels between bounces, and therefore how long it takes to bounce, that differs between their perspectives.

[–] MJKee9@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And that is what is meant by time dilation, and why Matthew Mcconaughey was younger than his grandkids. His balls took longer to bounce......

[–] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

Alright alright alright

[–] SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Great explanation, well done!

[–] 5too@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Thanks! Wish I could remember where I saw an animation describing it this way - it was some educational software from the nineties, I'm pretty sure.

[–] musicalphysics@discuss.online 3 points 1 week ago

In relativity both the planet and the ship see the other as moving slow. Not one fast the other slow.

[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I want to know why it works that way. I'm pretty sure we don't actually know why that is a law of nature, just that it is. Some of these things I learned in physics I was frustrated that we can't explain the why. We just kind of know this is what experiments tell us, and the math.

[–] starelfsc2@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you mean the relativity part, to my understanding space and time are basically a shared dimension, so the faster something is moving in space the slower it's moving in time. Why it's shared, I have no clue.

[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

We don't actually know that space and time are a shared dimension though. Relativity treats it that way mathematically, but we don't know what space and time are. I'm also just one of those people who want to know the answer to everything, so when the answer is we don't know, or it works that way bcz it works that way frustrates me.

Even the idea that space and time are interconnected seems like an incomplete explanation to me.

To me, there's no reason space and time have to be connected. But they obviously are.

My favorite theory is that time isn't real, just an extremely stubborn illusion. Fun to think about, really difficult to prove.

[–] starelfsc2@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Well strangely a lot of things are "it just works that way," at least to our current understanding, like gravity, electromagnetic forces, things tending towards lower energy states. We could conceivably live in a universe where a ball doesn't roll down a hill, it just stops where it is and retains its energy.

I saw something called the "fine tuning argument" that said there must be some higher power because our universe could not exist without those constants being what they are, but we also wouldn't exist to experience it otherwise so ¯\(ツ)

[–] Mordred_85@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

You mean Aristoteles? Many of your questions belong to philosophy not physics, give it a try when you need answers!

[–] MeThisGuy@feddit.nl 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] 5too@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Hah, I debated saying something about that, but decided that was a separate conversation

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 0 points 1 week ago

So, even if I run very fast, I still don't reach in time for the target people.
Welp, I just have to start early.