Relatively Special Facts About Physics
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution." – Albert Einstein. The universe is a crazy place.
We’ve learned a thing or two about it’s mysterious nature, but we still have a long way to go! Here are 32 of our favourite physics facts.
Physics Facts
32. The speed of time.
If you traveled at the speed of light, time would stop. According to Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, the faster you go, the slower time passes for you relative to your surroundings.
Seriously—if you zip around in a Ferrari for an hour, you’ll have aged ever-so-slightly less than if you had just chilled at home on the computer.
The extra nanoseconds you get out of it might not be worth the price of gas, but hey, it’s an option.
Now, before you whip up a get-immortal-quick scheme, note that moving at the speed of light isn’t actually possible, unless you happen to be made of light.
Technically speaking, moving that fast would require an infinite amount of energy (and frankly, not even a Chihuahua has that much energy).
31. Spot that star.
Our sun bends light. Affected by gravity, the path of a beam of light is not entirely straight. So if a beam of light from a distant star passes close to our sun, it will actually bend slightly around it.
The effect on an observer—like us—is that we see stars in different spots than they are actually located.
30. Where’s the mass hiding?
The amount of total mass in the universe is vastly greater than the mass we can actually account for.
Physicists developed an explanation for this, and the leading theory right now is that dark matter—a mysterious substance that emits no light—accounts for the missing mass.
Dark matter and dark energy account for approximately 95% of the mass in the universe.
