My most favorite concept in Physics!

Science is a fascinating stuff, and in it consists of not only boring laws of the natural world, but some mind boggling facts that can also be in simple language called as miracles.

While science often is thought as a opposite to religious and superstitious beliefs, based on real facts which denies any stuff that is not understandable by the human mind, it is sometimes science itself that presents the human mind with concepts and ideas that not only makes us awe and amazed but their reality sometimes makes us question about our own rationality!

One of such concept is the theory of relativity, discovered by our beloved Albert Einstein!

This is one of the most fascinating concept that has ever been discovered in the history of mankind.

For centuries, it was thought that time is something that is constant, that an hour on the planet earth is an hour on the moon and is an hour on Jupiter, but what Einstein discovered, changed our perceptions of reality completely.

The concept is a bit simple yet so interesting. Let's say there is a train which is travelling at a speed of 100 miles per hour. If I was to run in the same direction in which the train is moving, say at a speed of 10 miles an hour, the speed of the train relative to me will automatically reduce and it will for me look like travelling at a speed of 90 miles an hour unlike for someone standing rest on the ground.

This is something we experience in everyday life as well. If two trains are moving at the same speed in the same direction, any person sitting on either side of the train will notice that with respect to them, the other train is not moving at all!

But, the interesting stuff happens when we involve light. We have discovered that light travels at a fascinating speed of around 300 million meters per second! And it is the fastest speed possible in the universe!

But, when say, we turn on a torch and say a ray of light starts travelling at a speed of 300 million meters per second, let's say, I am wearing a super booster shoes that allows me to travel at a speed of 100 million miles per second (1/3rd of the speed of light).

Now, normal law of relativity will deduce that since the ray of light is travelling at a speed of 300 million meters per second and since I am travelling at a speed of 100 million meters per second in the same direction, the speed of light to me will appear to be 200 million miles meters per second! And it might be intuition as well. But facts say otherwise.

Facts say that the speed of light is constant irrespective of the frame of reference, which means, even if I am travelling at a speed of 100 million meters per second at the same direction in which a ray of light is travelling, I will still find that the speed of light is 300 million meters per second with respect to me and it remains constant irrespective of my speed or the direction I am travelling towards.

This radical finding totally changed our perception, since if light travels at a constant speed for all frame of reference, then, for stuffs to happen and be observed by all frame of reference at the time they happen, something else should be variable and not remain constant. And that is time itself! Time itself doesn't remain constant and every frame of reference will have its own clock and rate of time.

Which means, for me to observe speed of light at a speed of C, even if am travelling in the same direction with 1/3rd of the speed of C (C is the speed of light), time itself would slow down for me, time itself will change for my frame of reference! I will age slower, will think slower, the watch I will wear will tick slower, I will live much much longer as compared to the person sitting at rest since my time will slow down a lot as compared to the person at rest!

This is the same concept that has been shown on a nice movie named Interstellar while a bit exaggerated. This concept is also used to make corrections in times of GPS and satellites which revolve around the Earth at great speeds hence a change in their time changing rate!

This theory theoretically and hypothetically also opens doors for us to have hopes when in a advanced world with lots of technology, we might be able to slow down time for us to sneak peek into the future faster than which mother nature would allow us to!