All advertising revenues of this video are transferred to the victims of the earthquake directly.
---
Think of something so fast that in just one second go around the whole world 7 times. I'm talking about the light that has intrigued scientists for centuries, that we know that no matter in the universe moves faster than it, and that even makes this video possible for us to see everything around us. And of course... Perhaps from Albert Einstein's "special theory of relativity" that made it one of the most popular topics in science... But first, let's play a little science game with you. Now I'm going to make two crazy claims about the speed of light. Can you guess which one of them is correct?
1) If you turn on the headlights of a spacecraft traveling at a speed close to the speed of light, someone watching you from the outside will see the speed of light coming out of the headlights, not as the speed of light plus the speed of the spacecraft , but as the speed of light.
2) When we look at our neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, we see it as it was 2.5 million years ago. Because it takes that long for us to see that even the fastest light in the universe reaches us from Andromeda. But if we were to jump into the spacecraft and get there, even if we were slower than the speed of light, we could only get there by getting just a little older. Could you guess? Think a little bit more before you decide. In this video, we'll dive deep into the amazing properties of the speed of light. What exactly is light? No doubt we owe being able to watch this video to it, don't we? But what our eyes can see is actually a very, very small part of the spectrum of light. It's just a narrow area called the visual zone. Photons, which are the fundamental particles of light, have different energies and appear in different places. For example; X-rays. The microwave in microwave ovens. Infrared in the remote controls or radio waves in communication are actually the same thing, photons. They just have different energies. Therefore, their effects and usage areas are different. This is where the word radiation comes from. Radiating, as in shining. For this reason, it was translated into Turkish as radyasyon. When we say radiation, we are actually talking about ionizing harmful radiation, a high-energy light such as X-rays. However, its only difference from the light that allows us to see is its energy. So one of the most fundamental properties of light is its energy. But there is a much more fundamental property of light that has puzzled scientists for centuries. speed. The speed of light. Let's go back a few centuries now. You are a scientist, scribbling on your desk under the candlelight on a cold rainy night as raindrops tap on the side of the wooden window. You watch the shadow of your quill pen dance as the air coming out of your breath shakes the flame of the candle. Then it pops into your mind. How long does it take for this shadow to form? How long would it take for the light to come out of the candle and hit our table? I know it's in a blink of an eye because I've never seen it move slowly. So if I want to measure this, I have to increase the distance a little more so that I can measure the amount of time before It reaches the target.
For example, if I synchronize my watch with a friend of mine and climb on top of two neighboring hills at the same time, and cover my lantern and remove the cover at once; How long will it take for this light to reach my friend? Like many other things in the world of science, this idea has come to someone's mind before. And has been tested many times of course! In fact, we know the person well with his many other important discoveries, the person who tried it. Yes, I'm talking about Galileo. However, Galileo's attempt did not turn out well. No matter how hard he tried, the light between those two hills came true just as fast as the candle on the table illuminated the table. As a result of his experiments, his conclusion naturally was “at least too fast to be measured in this way.” At this point, of course, the following question comes to mind. Why would light have a speed? What if it has no speed at all! What If it could be anywhere instantly! Does it necessarily have to have a speed just because other things we see have speed? Maybe it arrives at its destination as soon as it occurs, can't it? Because what we experience, that is, what we see with our eyes, is actually the moment we see the light when it occurs. We see it with our own eyes, what else? It seems to catch our eye instantly. In this case, we have no evidence to suggest otherwise. Why are we so stubbornly trying to measure it? When even Galileo couldn't find it! Because there is a reason why we developed the scientific method.Our intuitions, perceptions and experiences. So our own mind Is very prone to mislead us.
---
Researched and written by: Ögetay Kayalı
Presented and edited by Barış Özcan