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Originally Posted by janoskiss
Light travels at the same speed relative to all frames of reference: you, the quasar other objects moving however fast in whatever direction. They all see the same speed for the same beam of light. There is no adding or subtracting or otherwise combining the speeds of the light the source and the observer, like you might think. The speed is the same for all! It goes against everyday "common sense" but "common sense" is plain wrong in this case, or to put it more eloquently: "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen" (Albert Einstein).
Light travels the same speed with respect to all frames of reference irrespective of their motion. This is a most revealing observation and shocks people when they comprehend the meaning of this statement for the first time, but that's how nature does it.  |
Dear fellow members, Steve is correct. If anyone is interested for a further explanation / clarification, the following references may be consulted. They require late high school / early tertiary mathematics. They are arranged in order of increasing mathematical difficulty.
1. The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol I, Feynman, Leighton, Sands, Pearson / Addison Wesley
2. Gravity from the ground up, an introductory guide to gravity and special relativity, Bernard Schultz, Cambridge.
3. Gravity, An introduction to Einstein's general relativity, James B. Hartle, Addison Wesley
And by the way, if anyone thinks that special relativity is common non-sensical he or she should look up quantum mechanics. Very interesting aspects of quantum mechanics are its statistical nature, the dual nature of light, the wave nature of matter and especially the Uncertainty Principle. But do not dispair, even the founders of quantum mechanics clearly state that no body can understand it, that is from the common sense point of view.
George