The Ladder Paradox - Can You Solve It?

One of the most important ideas anyone has ever had - relativity - challenges our assumptions about the universe, and leads to paradoxes. Can you solve this one?

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😎: Kyle
✂: Charles Shattuck
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[akromakroma]

The most educational thing about this video was the moment we all suddenly learned Kyle can actually spit some MAD bars

[Real]

I like when ARIA compensated, they used red light to signify red shift. And when they decompensated, they used a blue light to blue shift.

[MechaByteChannel]

“Not only is the universe weirder than you think it is, it might be weirder than you can think it is. The only way forward is science” that is a beautiful line right there

[chalkeater]

Me: "hey where are you at?"
My friend coming to pick me up at relativistic speeds: "uhhh..."

[LMMusic]

I love this kind of stuff. The universe we live in is a weird drug trip given form in a soup of fields.

[giggityguy]

As always, Special Relativity is some of the most mind-melting stuff to try to wrap your head around

[fabiosilveira]

Minutephysics actually took a step further and built a physical version of that diagram in which you can move the bars and see the length being contracted as the observer changes. This is one of the coolest thing I've ever learned!!

[briancherry]

I think Paradoxes tend to show a lack in our fundamental understanding. A piece of the puzzle we don't know is missing yet. An object we cant observe, or an influence you can't measure. It's the red leaves of autumn to my color-deficient child - they didn't exist until the day someone told him they did.

[chrisanderson]

This was impossible for me to understand but I still enjoyed it

[srawat]

You should make a Part 2 discussing "Terrell Rotations". It's my favorite relativistic effect.

[itzdabbzz]

I tried BetterHelp before, and they continuously gave me a new therapist each meeting. got really annoying re-explaining myself each time, then randomly tried to charge me 600$ for one session. so personally not a good company.

[Nethershaw]

My favorite way to think of relativistic effects like this, and resolve the paradox in my head, is to imagine that the moving object's length hasn't really changed -- it's just _not there yet_ in our reference frame. This is more like saying the object has turned, or rotated, into the time-like direction. The length is all there; geometry doesn't go missing, but the component of it that isn't turned in the same spacetime direction relative to an observer is... displaced. Because it isn't at rest, mutually distant parts of it _can't all be there all at once._

If an object were to approach arbitrarily close to the speed of light, that displacement would be so complete that it would have almost no length at all in its direction of motion -- it would look nearly like a two-dimensional image of itself, if you could see it and get out of the way before being annihilated. Reminds me of higher-dimensional objects intersecting with Flatland.

[AFlameofVengance]

PIZZA ROLLS IN THE AIR FRYER!?

Hot crispy outside while maintaining that delicious juicy center. It's beautiful. I'm crying.

[willjanszen]

The laser clock thing around 5 minutes in was the best, clearest, most concise explanation of time dilation I've ever heard. Nice work as always from this channel

[aliraamish]

This reminded me of my first year in Engineering, in my Physics class, we had to learn about how Muons are found on Earth's surface, despite having very short life. We learned about time dilation and relativity that day.

[skipmylizzle]

That animation for time dilation is the first thing to ever put time dilation and relativity into something somewhat understandable for me. Thank you.

[clueless]

KYLE YOU'RE THE MAN.
Been watching since the early days of Because Science.
Always thought provoking and entertaining.
Thanks for all your hard work over the years.

[benkpeltz]

"Are you still with me? Good." was way too big an assumption. I've studied this a number of times, including learning the math in Grade 12 Physics, but it still hurts my brain. 😂

[truhartwood]

The solution to the problem is that time is different for the observers as well, not just space (distance). To the ladder, the front of the ladder passed through the other side of the barn before the end entered the barn. To the observer, the front and end of the ladder were both inside the barn at the same time - the end was fully inside the barn before the front came out the other side. It's this squishing of space *and* time that *both* contribute to the effect. It's only a paradox when you ignore time.

[citypavement]

I think I finally got it. Because of a disagreement on what "now" is, to the ladder, both doors of the barn are never closed at the same time.