A yogi's guru resides in a Karakoram cave, located 1000 km away from the house of the yogi. The yogi asserts that whenever he thinks about his guru, the guru instantly knows about it. Determine the minimum possible time interval between the yogi thinking about the guru and the guru becoming aware of it.

Step-by-step solution

According to the special theory of relativity, no signal or information can travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum. The maximum speed of information transfer is c = 3 10^8 m/s . The distance between the yogi and the guru is d = 1000 km = 10^6 m . The minimum possible time interval is the time taken by light to travel this distance. t = d c t = 10^6 3 10^8 = 1 300 s