this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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It can look dumb, but I always had this question as a kid, what physical principles would prevent this?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Relativity would prevent this. If the train moves at the speed of light, then nothing inside it will move because time will stop. The amount of trains inside trains doesn't really change much except the effect of time dilation (slowdown) on each train. You can't actually accelerate to the speed of light.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago

as a software engineer that watches too much youtube, this is the first time it’s clicked for me:

If the train moves at the speed of light, then nothing inside it will move because time will stop.

the pieces of information:

  • time moves slower the faster you travel, and
  • nothing can travel faster than the speed of light

have never been concretely connected in my head, but this makes a lot of sense now: time moves slower (for you) the faster you travel BECAUSE that’s the thing that stops you from moving faster than the speed of light… AND that holds true from all perspectives because it’s like… a trade-off?