Tag Archives: speedoflight

Faster than the Speed of Light

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Marissa LePore

In summer of 2013, the New York Times published an article about NASA’s (then) newest project. Physicists and engineers were trying to determine whether “warp drive” might one day be possible. Warp drive, for those of you who are not Trekkies, is traveling faster than the speed of light or 3.0 x 10^5 km/s, and thus far […] Continue reading →

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Mass, Space-Time, and Light

Posted on February 16, 2014 by zkorman

Mass, as we know, bends space-time. Examples of such bending (in 2 dimensions for ease of comprehension) can be seen here for our sun, a white dwarf, a neutron star, and a black hole. A good question was asked recently, and I would like to clear up some misconceptions. The question, which was very insightful, … Continue reading Mass, Space-Time, and Light → Continue reading →

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Issues with time

Posted on January 26, 2014 by colepospisil

Imagine a perfectly accurate clock, one that measures nanoseconds away without any margin of error. This clock is more advanced and precise than anything we have today, even the atomic clock pictured above. If you wanted to know what time it is right now, this clock would still be a little behind, unfortunately. This is […] Continue reading →

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The speed of light in everyday terms

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Elizabeth Merriman

The idea of light years is pretty mind blowing.  Click on the above picture to watch a cool video explaining how we measure distance with time in everyday life.  The difference between saying I live 10 hours from Nashville and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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The Speed of Light and Time Dilation

Posted on January 27, 2013 by kevinm387

Relativity is probably the most interesting area of physics in my opinion, and this video does a great job of succinctly explaining the concept of time dilation. To summarize, objects moving at speeds close to the speed of light experience time more slowly from the perspective of a stationary observer because the speed of light […] Continue reading →

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Near Speed of Light Travel in the Atmosphere

Posted on January 25, 2013 by fathomingthestars

When physics classes learn about relativity, typical problems involve calculating relative velocities, masses, or distances for objects moving near the speed of light, 3 * 10^8 m/s.  These objects might be objects like spaceships, travelling in outer space, but they are often more common objects like cars and trains, or even baseballs.  The two different […] Continue reading →

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