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Bend Your Mind With Special Relativity

Ever dreamed of traveling nearly as fast as light? Zipping across the universe to check out the sights seems like it could be fun. But, not so fast. There are a few things you should know before you jump into your rocket. At near the speed of light, the day-to-day physics we know on Earth need a few modifications. And if you’re thinking Albert Einstein will be entering this equation, you’re right!

We live our daily lives using what scientists call Newtonian physics, as in Isaac Newton, the guy who had the proverbial apple fall on his head. Imagine that you are on a sidewalk, watching your friend walk toward the front of a bus as it drives away. The bus is moving at 30 mph. Your friend walks at 3 mph. To you, your friend is moving at 33 mph — you simply add the two speeds together. (The 30 mph the bus is moving plus 3 mph that your friend is moving inside the bus.) This is a simple example of Newtonian physics.

However, imagine that your friend on the bus turns on a flashlight, and you both measure the speed of its light. You would both measure it to be moving at 670 million mph (or 1 billion kilometers per hour) — this is the speed of light. Even though the flashlight is with your friend on the moving bus, you still both measure the speed of light to be exactly the same. Suddenly you see how Einstein’s physics is different from Newton’s.

This prediction was a key part of Einstein’s special theory of relativity: The speed of light is the same for any observer, no matter their relative speed. This leads to many seemingly weird effects.

Before talking about those surprising effects, it’s good to take a moment to talk about point of view. For the rest of this discussion, we’ll assume that you’re at rest — sitting in one spot in space, not moving. And your friend is on a rocket ship that you measure to be traveling at 90% the speed of light. Neither of you is changing speed or direction. Scientists give this a fancy name — an “inertial frame of reference.”

With the stage set, now we can talk about a couple of super-weird effects of traveling near the speed of light. Relativity messes with simple things like distance and time, doing stuff that might blow your mind!

Let’s say you have a stick that is 36 inches long (91 centimeters). Your friend on the rocket doesn’t know the stick’s length, so they measure it by comparing it to a ruler they have as they zoom past you. They find your stick is just 16 inches (40 centimeters) long — less than half the length you measured! This effect is called length contraction. And if they were moving even faster, your friend would measure your stick to be even shorter. The cool thing about relativity is that both of those measurements are right! We see these effects in particle physics with fast-moving particles.

If your friend was traveling to our nearest neighbor star, Proxima Centauri, how far would they think it was? From Earth, we measure Proxima Centauri to be 4.2 light-years away (where one light-year is the distance light travels in a year, or about 5.8 trillion miles). However, your friend, who is traveling at 90% the speed of light in the rocket, would measure the distance between Earth and Proxima Centauri to be just over 1.8 light-years.

That’s just length … let’s talk about time!

Now let’s say you and your friend on the rocket have identical synchronized clocks. When your friend reaches Proxima Centauri, they send you a signal, telling you how long their trip took them. Their clock says the trip took just over two years. Remember, they measure the distance to be 1.8 light-years. However, you would see that your clock, which stayed at rest with you, says the trip took 4.7 years — more than twice as long!

This effect is called time dilation — time on moving clocks appears to tick slower.

None of this accounts for your friend accelerating their rocket or stopping at Proxima Centauri. All of this math gets more complicated if you and your friend were speeding up, slowing down, or changing directions. For instance, if your friend slowed down to stop at Proxima Centauri, they would have aged less than you on their trip!

Now you’re ready for a few tips on near-light-speed travel! Watch the video below for more.

Now, if you need to relax a bit after this whirlwind, near-light-speed trip, you can grab our coloring pages of scenes from the video. And if you enjoyed the trip, download a postcard to send to a friend. Finally, if you want to explore more of the wonders of the universe, follow NASA Universe on Facebook and Twitter.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

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Timothee Chalamet - A Rainy Day in New York (2019)

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The Making of a Family Home in ‘Call Me by Your Name’

Around three or four years ago, Luca Guadagnino began to look at far-flung properties by the (already small) town of Crema, Italy, where he lived. He phrases the decision in his now-recognizably dreamy way: “I’d been flirting with the idea of becoming a gentleman of the countryside,” says the Italian film director, known for “I Am Love” and “A Bigger Splash.”

Upon the suggestion of an acquaintance, he visited Villa Albergoni, a run-down 17th-century estate in Lombardy, and “found it immediately beautiful, and a little bit sad, even.” He briefly considered buying it; then, some time later, he came across the movie script for “Call Me by Your Name,” based on the 2007 novel by André Aciman. Although the book takes place in Liguria, on the Mediterranean Sea, Guadagnino’s mind wandered back to the villa. He decided to set his version there, with the permission of the house’s owners.

“First of all, I had to make sure the villa felt alive, that it felt beloved,” Guadagnino says. “I also had to convey the period, because the movie unfolds in 1983, and to get everything right in terms of the characters’ psychology.” He turned to his friend the interior designer Violante Visconti di Modrone — “a woman of incredible elegance and wisdom.”

“I hadn’t done set decorating before,” Visconti di Modrone recalls, “and I thought this would be particularly difficult because the villa was enormous, and mostly empty.” She spent slightly more than a month gathering furniture and paintings from antique shops, and selecting assorted tchotchkes from her father’s house. She ultimately put together an inimitable home for the Perlman family as backdrop for the action.

Below, Guadagnino and Visconti di Modrone talk to T about the revitalized Villa Albergoni and its grounds.

The Living Room

Guadagnino imagined Villa Albergoni as “a place for culture and leisure — and not a place for wealth, but a place rich in history.” He wanted the living room to be the heart of the Perlmans’ inherited country home, which meant Visconti di Modrone had to soften up the space. She hung a series of Japanese paintings on one of the larger walls and covered the floor in carpets. She pulled archival prints from Dedar fabrics for the sofas and armchairs (and, elsewhere, the curtains and tablecloths) and curios from Piva Antiques in Milan. The family could convene around the television set or the early-1900s piano (not pictured).

The Office

“Every angle of this room is about books,” Guadagnino says of Mr. Perlman’s office. Some belong to Villa Albergoni and Visconti di Modrone rented others. (You can choose from stacks by a variety of themes, for those curious.) The faded scarlet sofa came with the house. “Luca had said, ‘I don’t want it, it’s too shabby,’ and I said, ‘Listen, this is perfect — I can see Mr. Perlman passing the time, reading on the sofa,’” Visconti di Modrone remembers. “Even if Luca isn’t with you in your decisions, he listens when you say no.” Behind the sofa, small cameos of Lombard kings surround a gilded mirror. Strewn across each surface is the paraphernalia typical of Mr. Perlman, an archaeology professor.

The Entrance Hall

The entrance to Villa Albergoni had been austere, so Visconti di Modrone hung giant maps from an antique book shop, Perini, in Verona. She lined the corridor with stiff chairs she found around the villa — in the film, the Perlmans inherited the house, and, presumably, furniture like this. Visconti di Modrone was careful to always have bamboo leaves in the vases. “In this corridor, you need to have life,” she says. “I want the feeling that Mrs. Perlman has gone into the garden and put them there.”

The Garden

Guadagnino and Visconti di Modrone handed the garden over to the landscape designer (and their friend) Gaia Chaillet Giusti. She constructed a pergola and brought in apricot and peach trees, which aren’t native to Lombardy. “We stuck some real, ripe peaches to the trees, but others were props,” Visconti di Modrone explains. “It’s amazing how these things are done — you can have anything in movies.”

Elio’s, and Then Oliver’s, Bedroom

Elio, the 17-year-old protagonist, cedes his bedroom to Oliver, the doctoral student (played by Armie Hammer) but his poster selection remained. The beds had to be pushed together to accommodate Hammer, who is 6-foot-5.

Elio’s Second Bedroom

Elio moves into an adjacent storage room — Visconti di Modrone’s favorite space to work on. “It’s messy and filled with all of the things the Perlmans didn’t want in the house,” she says, “but Elio has to sleep there, and it has to look good on camera.” On the desk are the books (and comics) that a teenager in the ’80s would read, but the miscellany collected through the years makes this corner, and the villa as a whole, timeless.