Re: Elementary Minkowski Geometry Question

Tom Roberts <tjroberts137@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]

As someone else pointed out and I forgot to mention, this is only in
1+1 dimensions -- in 1+3 dimensions it is easy for infinite object and
light pulse worldlines to never intersect.

I see! Because light only travels in one direction, so if it happens to
be the wrong direction it will miss you.

I keep thinking of light the way we did before the laser was invented,
that it follows the inverse square law like an electric field. It's hard
to remember that light really travels like a whole bunch of little
individual lasers strictly in straight lines.

And I'd have expected an electric field to propagate at lightspeed in
all directions too, but of course it could get blocked from you and then
it never reaches you.
.