Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by andrewflnr 1241 days ago
It doesn't really make sense until you grok how relativity thinks of events and "observing" them, and then stare at the relevant spacetime diagram for a while.

Note that the time when the light arrives from (in your scenario) Earth is not the same as "observing" it; observing is a much stronger sort of hypothetical measurement, more like assembling all the evidence in retrospect and deducing a consistent physical story. That's the story where, if stuff is moving FTL, you start seeing cause and effect reversed.

Ed: the key difference between c and your hypothetical speed of sound is that light is the same speed no matter how fast the observer is moving. Two observers both have to see a laser moving at c, even if A also sees B moving in the same direction at c/2. With your example, B can actually see the relative speed of an object moving at s as s/2.