I am having a bit of confusion, let us say there are two observers observing two simultaneous lightning strikes with a finite distance between them. Now one observer is located such that he is in between the two lightning strikes, while the other is near to one strike and away from the other. In this scenario, the observer situated in between will perceive the lightning strikes to be simultaneous while the other will perceive them differently, since he is close to one and far from the other. Does this mean the Principle of Relativity holds even without actual motion?
Answer
As already stated by John Rennie, the observers are already aware of the property that light travels at a constant speed, and they account for the given fact, so even if the lightning strikes are not simultaneous for them, they know that because of the fact that light travels at a constant speed.
But for any two observers moving relative to each other, even after accepting the fact that light travels at constant speed, they will have different agreements on the lightning strikes. In short, if two observers, observe those lightning strikes while both of them are at rest but different locations, they can subtract the time taken (t) for the lightning to reach both of them, and so both of them would get same remaining value, whereas in case of relative motion, even after subtracting (t) from their time measures, they would not get equal remaining values.
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