Well distance is relative to speed of travel. If one step was 8 “miles” long, a mile would need to be recalibrated. Things are measured by how long it takes to get there at different speeds. Lightspeed changes everything. Moving that quickly would relegate any travel on earth to almost “too close” to measure. It would be the equivalent of millimeters.
This is not super relevant, but we do have a smaller lightspeed-based measure of distance: data miles, which are 6000 ft. Data miles came into use during ww2 with the development of radar, and are based on the distance travelled by light in 6 microseconds (or more specifically, the distance a radar signal can travel and then return in 12 microseconds if the speed of light is rounded to 1 ft/nanosecond). I just think it's neat that we have lightyears, which are unfathomably far, and data miles, which are a 20 minute walk.
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u/woodworking_raccoon Nov 27 '24
The principle is called time dilation