Galilean Relativity

Relativity can be described using space-time diagrams. Contrary to popular opinion, Einstein did not invent relativity. Galileo preceded him. Aristotle had proposed that moving objects (on the Earth) had a natural tendency to slow down and stop. This is shown in the space-time diagram below.

Note the curved worldline above. This shows a variable velocity, or an acceleration. Galileo objected to Aristotle's hypothesis, and asked what happened to an object moving on a moving ship.

Now it is still moving in its final state. Galileo proposed that it is only relative velocities that matter. Thus a space-time diagram can be transformed by painting it on the side of a deck of cards, and then skewing the deck to one side -- but keeping the edges along a straight line:

Straight worldlines (unaccelerated particles) remain straight in this process. Thus Newton's First Law is preserved, and non-accelerated worldlines are special. This Galilean transformation does not affect the time. Thus two observers moving with respect to each other can still agree on the time, and thus the distance between two objects, which is the difference in their positions measured at equal times, can be defined. This allowed Newton to describe an inverse square law for gravity.

But Galilean transformations do not preserve velocity. Thus the statement "The speed limit is 70 mph" does not make sense -- but don't try this in court. According to relativity, this must be re-expressed as "The magnitude of the relative velocity between your car and the pavement must be less than 70 mph". Relative velocities are OK.

Special Relativity
But 200 years after Newton the theory of electromagnetism was developed into Maxwell's equations. These equations describe waves with a speed of 1/sqrt(epsilono*muo), where epsilono is the constant describing the strength of the electrostatic force in a vacuum, and muo is the constant describing the strength of the magnetic interaction in a vacuum. This is an absolute velocity -- it is not relative to anything. The value of the velocity was very close to the measured speed of light, and when Hertz generated electromagnetic waves (microwaves) in his laboratory and showed that they could be reflected and refracted just like light, it became clear that light was just an example of electromagnetic radiation. Einstein tried to fit the idea of an absolute speed of light into Newtonian mechanics. He found that the transformation from one reference frame to another had to affect the time -- the idea of sliding a deck of cards had to be abandoned. This led to the theory of special relativity. In special relativity, the velocity of light is special. Anything moving at the speed of light in one reference frame will move at the speed of light in all unaccelerated reference frames. Other velocities are not preserved, so you can still try to get lucky on speeding tickets.

Because the speed of light is special, space-time diagrams are often drawn in units of seconds and light-seconds, or years and light-years, so a unit slope [45 degree angle] corresponds to the speed of light. The set of all light speed world lines going through an event defines the light cones of that event: the past light cone and the future light cone. An example of light cones is shown above. The fancy light picture on the left shows both the past and future light cones of the event where the two worldlines cross, while the schematic version on the right is easy to use in more complicated diagrams.

Thus in the situation shown in 3 space-time diagrams below, the central section shows the worldline of one stationary observer, one observer moving to the right, and two events on the future light cone on the event where the two observers' worldlines cross.