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(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Technically everything moves at c (the speed of light) through spacetime, all the time. Most objects that have mass spend the majority of their motion in the time part, and thus move relatively slowly in space. If an object moves fast in space (where fast is a significant fraction of c) then it moves noticeably slower in time because the total spacetime vector value is always c.
Photons, being massless, do not move through time at all, and move through space at c.
To add to this, this is always relative to an observer. If an object moves fast in space compared to you then it moves slower in time compared to you.
That'll break a few brains. To elaborate with an example: From the perspective of a photon, it's "life" is over as soon as it begins. Even though it takes about 8 mins for a photon to travel from the sun to the earth from our perspective, no time at all has passed for it.
(Correct me if I misspoke.)