If an observer on earth sees two space ships approaching each other and she measures the speed of ship 1 wit (with respect to) herself to be 0.80 to the right and ship 2 to be \( 0.7 c \) to \( t \) left. An observer in ship 1 also sees the approach of ship 2 . What velocity does he see ship moving at wit his ship 1?
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To find the speed of ship 2 as observed from ship 1, we use the relativistic velocity addition formula: \[ u' = \frac{u + v}{1 + \frac{uv}{c^2}} \] where: - \( u \) is the velocity of ship 2 as seen by the observer on Earth (in this case, \( -0.7c \) since it's moving to the left), - \( v \) is the velocity of ship 1 as seen by the observer on Earth (\( 0.8c \)), - \( c \) is the speed of light. Plugging in the values: \[ u' = \frac{-0.7c + 0.8c}{1 + \frac{-0.7c \cdot 0.8c}{c^2}} = \frac{0.1c}{1 - 0.56} = \frac{0.1c}{0.44} \approx 0.227c \] So, the observer on ship 1 sees ship 2 moving towards them at approximately \( 0.227c \).