Online Course Support | Understanding Einstein: The Special Theory of Relativity

Imagine that you are traveling in a spaceship that passes by Earth at a velocity of 0.87c (Lorentz factor = 2), and you fire an escape pod from your spaceship pointed straight up (in the y or z direction, perpendicular to the spaceship’s direction of travel). If the escape pod has a perpendicular speed of 0.6c with respect to your ship, what is the perpendicular speed of the escape pod from the perspective of a person on Earth?

 

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