Special Relativity – Perception of Light Speed When Traveling Between Two Light Sources

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I'm struggling with a fundamental understanding of time dilation and special relativity (if I'm correct).

Many online sources explain it as the following:

Simple analogy

With the ship moving away from the lightbeam it would perceive this as moving slower than c. However, at these relative speeds time slows down on the moving ship, leaving it to perceive the light as traveling at c.

But following that, imagine this expanded analogy that would include multiple light sources.

Expanded analogy

With the light from andromeda moving towards us we would have to speed up time to perceive it as traveling at c. However this conflicts with the light beam traveling from behind us. How can we perceive both these beams of light as traveling at c?

It's likely there are many sources online explaining this well, however I've been unable to find them. If anyone here can point me in the right direction that would already mean a lot to me.

Thanks in advance!

Best Answer

It's always tricky to gain physical understanding using time dilation/ length contraction without talking about relativity of simultaneity. It is actually this last phenomena that truly helps preserve the speed of light after switching inertial frames.

Mathematically, this is all encapsulated in the Lorentz transformation. Say the star uses the reference frame $(x,t)$ and the ship uses $(x',t')$, and it is moving at velocity $v$ with respect to the star. The transformation now reads (with $\gamma = 1/\sqrt{1-v^2/c^2}$):

$$ x' = \gamma(x-vt) $$ $$ t' = \gamma(-vx/c^2+t) $$

(sanity check: $x'=0$ corresponds to the wordline $x=vt$) or conversely: $$ x = \gamma(x'+vt') $$ $$ t = \gamma(vx'/c^2+t') $$

The fact that $t'$ depends on $x$ as well is the matheatical translation of relativity of simultaneity, while the extra $\gamma$ factors translate time dilation.

A light path has the world line $x=\pm ct$, plugging in the Lorentz transformation, this becomes $x'=\pm ct'$, so you recover your result. You'll notice that in the end, time dilation did not play an important role at all.

You can visualize these abstract calculations with a nice space-time diagram, but MinutePhysics already does a very good job at illustrating it in its SR playlist. Hope this helps and tell me if you find some mistakes.

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