2 ms·
That's generally true, but it's not meaningful in this case. If I say "One in 10,000 stars in the Milky way is a hypervelocity star moving at relativistic spee
by jessriedel 6y ago
That's generally true, but it's not meaningful in this case. If I say "One in 10,000 stars in the Milky way is a hypervelocity star moving at relativistic speeds", there is no context to provide a threshold for the magnitude of relativistic corrections that are important.
(And if it's just about escape velocity, they should just say that. The Milky Way's escape velocity is 550 km/s = 0.002 c, for which relativistic corrections are extremely tiny: \gamma ~= 1.0000017.)
- ineedasername 6y agoYes, absolutely-- the general claim lacks enough specificity to fully evaluate it. Should there be a need for extremely high precision, even somewhat "slow" speeds would be considered relativistic in terms of the need to take such corrections into account.