Would a Conveyor Belt from Earth to Mars Have a Time Delay?

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SUMMARY

A conveyor belt extending from Earth to Mars would not transmit movement instantaneously due to the principles of relativity and the speed of sound in the material. Even in a hypothetical scenario where the conveyor belt is frictionless, the movement of atoms within the belt propagates at a finite speed, specifically the speed of sound in the material. This means that activating the conveyor belt would result in a delay, taking significantly longer than 8 minutes for the movement to be felt on Mars, as physical disturbances cannot exceed the speed of sound in the conveyor material.

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nbj622
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Consider a very long conveyor belt from Earth to Mars. If we turned on the conveyor belt from Earth, would its opposing end instantly move on Mars? Or would the timing be slowed somehow from relativity? Thanks
 
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Yes, assuming it's frictionless and everything perfect, it would still be slowed down. The movement of the conveyor is the atoms in the conveyor belt moving and this movement is basically propagated by the electromagnetic force, which of course is not an instantaneous force and obeys relativity.
 
So if I turned it on, it would take about 8 minutes to just start moving on Mars?
 
nbj622 said:
So if I turned it on, it would take about 8 minutes to just start moving on Mars?

Actually I should have mentioned this in the first post. The disturbance would propagate at the speed of sound in the material. So it would take far far far longer than that. Physical disturbances travel at the speed of sound in the material
 
thanks!
 

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