Aug 3, 2001

My patio is well lit by the summer sun, which illuminates the floor and the adjacent walls. Last year I noticed that when a bird flew overhead, it cast a shadow on the patio. The bird was flying at the correct height to just clear the wall on my right. Its shadow moved across the patio floor at the same speed as the bird. However, when the shadow reached the base of the wall, it accelerated instantly, climbing the wall before reaching the top and continuing along the flat roof, again at the same speed as the bird. If the bird had been an object travelling at the speed of light, then the shadow on the ground and the flat roof would have also been travelling at the speed of light. But what of the period when the shadow was travelling up the wall? Under this condition, the shadow would have had to travel faster than the speed of light, which would present a direct challenge to Einstein. Is there any other explanation?


Do you have nothing better to do than think of questions which are fundamentally easy to answer, but you yourself are to stupid to solve?

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