Why does time bend to make the speed of light exactly the same to everyone?

Answer 1

Because the speed of light is the only constant in the universe, its speed is independent of the reference frame of the observer. It's also because time is not a constant. It takes a bit of thought and openmindedness to get this to stick. Let's take a trip. We'll jump around a bit, so buckle up. Atomic clocks keep time by monitoring the radioactive decay of an unstable nuclide (or radioisotope, if you prefer). If we wind up a pair of them and stick them in a room by themselves for a while to get acquainted and sync up, we can begin an experiment. We take one clock (selected by a coin toss) and put in on an airplane, fly it around for a while, then bring it back. We then stick it back in the room with its twin and compare the times. The clock that went on the trip slowed down and now runs behind the clock that stayed home. The clock that went on the trip had time slow down in its inertial frame. That's because time is not a constant. By any way you try to measure time, it moves more slowly in an accelerated frame. It really does. If you guessed that astronauts who have gone into orbit have had their aging processes slowed down a bit, you'd be right. Not much, but we're all just a bit older (relatively speaking) than those space cadets who return compared to them. This almost sounds like the application circular logic to explain why the speed of light is a constant. But the speed of light really is a constant, and since speed is distance per unit time, and time is not constant, that "allows" light's speed to be constant.

Answer 2

According to Galilean relativity, it should be impossible to tell whether one is moving or not when traveling at a constant speed. If the speed of light was not constant relative to the observer, then once a certain speed was reached, one would notice light around them moving slower. This would violate Galilean relativity because one could then tell that they were moving. Also time dilation and spacial contraction are derived from this law, which have been proven true by atomic clocks.

Answer 3

Because the higher your speed, the more your ruler shrinks and the slower

your clock runs. So no matter how fast you're traveling, when you use your

ruler and your clock to measure the speed of a light beam passing you, you'll

always measure the same number.

Answer 4

First light is not matter.

Second its velocity is finalised by the electrical permittivity and magnetic permeability of the medium.

Hence, though the energy is lost due to absorption its velocity remains the same.

The speed of light changes when it passes from one kind of material into another,

like crossing from air into water, or from water into jello. But as long as the light

travels through the same 'medium', its speed is constant.

Answer 5

Nobody knows why.

Related Information:

Einstein's big discovery wasn't so much the why as just the fact that it does.

But that isn't even the whole story. Not only does your clock run slower when you move fast, but your mass also increases, and your ruler also shrinks.

And if you think that's weird, listen to this: It works both ways!

If you fly through my laboratory, then I see you move past me at a high speed, and you see me move past you at a high speed.

If you look at my wrist watch and my ruler and I look at yours, then you say that my watch is running slow and my ruler is too short, and I say that your watch is running slow and your ruler is too

short. And we're both correct.

We may not know why, but we know it is so. It's been observed and proved thousands of times in the past 100 years.

- Particles accelerated to high speeds in the super-duper high-energy research rings, become more massive and live longer than when they're at rest.

- A super-accurate atomic clock, carried around the Earth aboard a fast aircraft, is behind time when it gets back to where it started from.

- Relativistic corrections, for the speed of the GPS satellites in their orbits, are built into the GPS system. If they were not, the GPS system wouldn't work. It would give us incorrect locations of our cars and of targets for our GPS guided weapons.)