Comments on: This Is What Happens When a Physicist Reads “Goodnight Moon”

By: paul

paul — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 19:39:21 +0000

Yeah, time dilation would work the other way, but simple motion could keep the moon wherever you want. The other obvious choice is that the pictures display a subtle shift in viewpoint, so that the apparent motion of the moon is affected by parallax. (Or the house is on some kind of tippy foundation, so the the view out the windows changes even while the viewpoint inside remains the same.)

Landslide house!!!

By: Brian Too

Brian Too — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:09:39 +0000

Orzel has (understandably) missed a 3rd possibility.

Who says that the story is from Earth? Maybe it has been “translated” for human readers, and the Moon is a moon from another world…

That could explain a shorter lunar orbital period.

By: sam

sam — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:54:12 +0000

Actually, the house need only move along the Earth’s surface at a speed slightly less than the speed (in revolutions) at which the moon orbits.

By: Nemesis

Nemesis — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:14:55 +0000

Would it actually be: “relativistic time dilation makes the 1 hour 10 minute rise of the moon appear to take 6 minutes” instead of the other way around?