"The strangest explanation was put forth by an Irish physicist, George Francis Fitzgerald. Perhaps, he said, the ether wind puts pressure on a moving object, causing it to shrink a bit in the direction of motion. To determine the length of a moving object, its length at rest must be multiplied by the following simple formula, in which \scriptstyle v^2 is the velocity of the object multiplied by itself, \scriptstyle c^2 is the velocity of light multiplied by itself: \scriptstyle \sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}. ...The speed of light in an unobtainable limit; when this is reached the formula becomes \scriptstyle \sqrt{1-\frac{c^2}{c^2}} which reduces to 0. ...In other words, if an object could obtain the speed of light, it would have no length at all in the direction of its motion!"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Martin Gardner, Relativity Simply Explained (1962) Ch. 2 The MichelsonâMorley experiment
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Speed_of_light
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Speed of light
44 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Speed of light â
Related Quotes
"You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousanâŚ"
"Fermat had recourse to the principle of the economy of nature. Heron and Olympiodorus had pointed out in antiquity thâŚ"
"The speed of light sucks."
"One of the funniest examples of these kinds of statistics comes from Evolution: Possible or Impossible by James F. CoâŚ"
"Hubble's law predicts that galaxies beyond ...the Hubble distance, recede faster than the speed of light ...this distâŚ"
"The radiation of the cosmic microwave background... has a red shift of about 1,000. ...the hot plasma of the early unâŚ"
"A light beam that is farther than the Hubble distance of 14 billion light-years ...cannot keep up with the stretchingâŚ"
"When you are next out of doors on a summer night, turn your head towards the zenith. Almost vertically above you willâŚ"
"Another topic deserving discussion is Einsteinâs modification of Newtonâs law of gravitation. In spite of all the excâŚ"
"One of the problems has to do with the speed of light and the difficulties involved in trying to exceed it. You can'tâŚ"