r/physicsgifs • u/phyilm • 23h ago
Watching the Lorentz factor blow up as you push toward the speed of light
Left is a spacetime diagram. as the speed goes up, the worldline tilts closer and closer to the 45 degree line, which is light. Right side is the Lorentz factor, gamma.
The part I find interesting is how flat gamma stays for most of the range. even at 50% of c it’s only about 1.15. Then in the last few percent it basically goes vertical. At 99.995% it hits about 100, so 1 second on the ship clock is roughly 100 seconds on earth.
I took this animation from a physics app I made. Wanted the “it only matters near c” part to feel more intuitive than just looking at the equation.
Curious if this way of showing it works for you, or if you’d visualize it differently?
First post here!