Relativity distorted classical expectations in a way that Clavain still did not find entirely intuitive. Slam… — Alastair Reynolds
Relativity distorted classical expectations in a way that Clavain still did not find entirely intuitive. Slam two objects towards each other, each with individual velocities just below light-speed, and the classical result for their closing velocity would be the sum of their individual speeds: just under twice the speed of light. Yet the true result, confirmed with numbing precision, was that the objects saw each other approach with a combined speed that was still just below the speed of light. Similarly, the relativistic closing velocity for two objects moving towards each other with individual speeds of one-half of light-speed was not light-speed itself, but eight-tenths of it. It was the way the universe was put together, and yet it was not something the human mind had evolved to accept.
p. 463Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
More from this book
There were choices to be made, harder choices than I would have liked, and I realised that I had been neglecting them because of their very difficulty.
p. 667
Volyova did not like planets at the best of times, and gas giants struck her as an unreasonable affront to human scale and frailty. In that respect, they were almost as bad as stars.
p. 206
And even if what they showed you is true, that doesn’t begin to make it right. The cause might be just, Felka, but history’s littered with atrocities committed in the name of righteousness.
p. 662
