Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: vorticon on April 12, 2004, 03:38:30 PM
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to us light takes 4 years to get from alpha centuri...and according to the einstein relativity thingy the light experiences time different from us...so how long does light think the trip takes?
by the same thing why would astronauts return by our measurments 30 years or so later after a trip at light speed to alpha centuri if the measurment of 4 years is made from our perspective and not the lights? wouldent it be 8 years round trip to us and only 1 or 2 to them?
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time stands still for the photon. From the photon perspective an act of transmission by the source nad the act of absorption by the destination happen simultaneously.
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Sounds like a conspiracy to me. Is it coincidence that "Capricorn One" was on last week? I think not! :eek:
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"source nad"
Is that what you call the one that hangs lower than the other?
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Typically we see this process as a source emitting a photon for no apparent reason and in a random direction. The photon then travels for a while (a picosecond or light years), and then it happens to run into some other particle which absorbs it.
In this view the act of transmission is indpendent form the act of absorption. It is possible that photon will travel forever, round and round the Universe never bumping into anything.
Feynman and Wheeler proposed a different model. The transmission of a photon will never happen unless there is a receiver ready to absorb it. They see it not as a transmittion/absorption sequence, but as an exchange instead.
"Somehow" (spooky action at a distance as termed by Einstein), both particles that exchange a photon, know about each other. The source emits a retarded (traveling forward in time) wave, The absorber sends an advanced wave (traveling back in time). What we see is a superposition of the two.
The consenquence of this theory is that every photon will be absorbed eventually (would not be emitted otherwise).
Just think of it, some quasar emits a photon 10 billions years ago, "knowing" that you'll be born 10 billion years later to see (absorb it with a particle in your eye). The photon is a "bridge" between your eye today and a quasar 10 billion years ago.
Spooky, huh?
Now, ask me about the meaning of life...
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Originally posted by FUNKED1
"source nad"
Is that what you call the one that hangs lower than the other?
Yeah, the higher hanging one emits, and the stuff drips down to the lower hanging one...
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Originally posted by mietla
Now, ask me about the meaning of life...
Easy one, to die with the most toys.
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Originally posted by AKIron
Easy one, to die with the most toys.
You talked to Dalay Lama too?...
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I tried but he kept telling me to "go away Homer". My name's not Homer. :confused:
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If they traveled at the speed of light (impossiable) time would stop for them. They would only age during the time they were at their destination. Not on the outward or return trip.
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wow.... all this stuff was much simpler to understand when I was smoking pot
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Light can't think so the question is moot.
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Originally posted by mosgood
wow.... all this stuff was much simpler to understand when I was smoking pot
You can always start again, if you feel hunger for knowledge
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Originally posted by FUNKED1
"source nad"
Is that what you call the one that hangs lower than the other?
:lol
:lol
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This is the correct answer, AND as you pass the moon you will see it from all sides at the same time, so i heard.
So, In theory, IF you were to past Ripsnort doing the speed of light, the harmonal warpage would make his earhair LOOK as if he had a full head of hair. And his Beemer would look like a cheap Daewood.
NUTTZ
Originally posted by Otto
If they traveled at the speed of light (impossiable) time would stop for them. They would only age during the time they were at their destination. Not on the outward or return trip.
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A really stupid question, requiring a dumbed down answer.
Does light ever disolve into nothingness? Can it get absorbed and dissipate? Or mutate into some other kind of energy?
Or does it merely reflect and go on in a different direction, existing as light forever?
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:confused:
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Why does the intensity of light dissipate with distance?
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Originally posted by Nash
A really stupid question, requiring a dumbed down answer.
Does light ever disolve into nothingness? Can it get absorbed and dissipate? Or mutate into some other kind of energy?
Or does it merely reflect and go on in a different direction, existing as light forever?
Plants eat it.
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Okay enough with the vaguery... (is that even a word?)
I probably won't understand even the most simplistic of answers, let alone this stuff.
But I thought of this question yesterday for some really odd reason, and thought about it again today. And alas, this post shows up. It behooves me to take advantage of it. :)
Pretend I'm half brain dead - not far from the truth.
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Time doesn't stand still.
Time doesn't change.
It's a constant measurement that has no effect on anything besides the ability to measure it.
Everything is somewhere in the universe at one point in time.
If light were cognitive, it would see that it travels a given distance over a certain given time.
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Evey time I think of this physics stuff, my brain wants to explode.
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what mietla said.
its similar to the Ansible theory. :)
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Isn't "time" just a way of keeping everything from happening at once?
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Originally posted by Nash
A really stupid question, requiring a dumbed down answer.
Does light ever disolve into nothingness? Can it get absorbed and dissipate? Or mutate into some other kind of energy?
Or does it merely reflect and go on in a different direction, existing as light forever?
Light can be 'bent' when it passes a large Mass like a star but it dosen't slow down as far as I know.
Does is it go on forever? What happens when it reaches the end of the Univervise? All good questions that I'm clueless to answer....:eek:
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Einstein is wrong - Time is something that is perceived, not something that can be measured with the exception of temporal distance (i.e. something happened two weeks ago - temporal distance). Time is universally constant regardless of the speed of the perceiver.
Let me put it this way, if time stopped at the speed of light, we'd never see sunlight, or starlight, or moonlight, or anything having anything to do with light, because it would never move. Remember, distance = rate X time. If time is 0, then rate is meaningless, and distance would equal 0 then as well.
Unfortunately, since humanity will never reach the speed of light in any significant sense, this will all just remain a theory.
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Originally posted by lasersailor184
Time doesn't stand still.
Time doesn't change.
It's a constant measurement that has no effect on anything besides the ability to measure it.
Everything is somewhere in the universe at one point in time.
If light were cognitive, it would see that it travels a given distance over a certain given time.
No I don't think in relativity time is a constant, neither is space. They've actaully proved this too. I think the theory goes that a faster an object goes the slower it ages relative to the slower objects. So they took 2 identical clocks set to the exact same time and put one in a plane and left the other on the ground. When the clock returned the one that was left on the ground was ahead of the one that took the flight. They say they have to use this in satalite navagation and stuff. This stuff gives me a headache though. And I could be comepletely full of crap too so you never know.
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Originally posted by Udie
And I could be comepletely full of crap too so you never know.
Nuthin changes then.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/209_1081438631_swoop.gif)
:D Heya bud!
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Time is the fire in which we burn. ;)
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Originally posted by Otto
Does is it go on forever?
According to Feynamn and Wheeler, no. The emitting particle and the photon "knew" the absorbing particle at the time of the emission. If you limit yourself to the 3d space only, you have points in space separated by distance in space. In a 4d space-time, you have events separated by a distance in space-time (which includes both time and space constituents). The photon simply connects two events in space-time. To the photon, both the emission and tabroption happened at once.
What happens when it reaches the end of the Univervise? All good questions that I'm clueless to answer....:eek:
It will never reach the "end of the Universe".
If the Universe is open, since the photon is a part of the Universe when if reaches the "border" of the Universe, the Universe is expanded by this photon. The definition of Universe = all matter, energy, space, and time there is. Since photon has energy, if you place it "outside" the known, Universe, by definition you've expanded the Universe.
If the UNiverse is closed, it will behave like a 3d surface of the sphere in a 3d space. If you start flying in a particular direction above the surface of the Earth, because of the Earth curvature you'll eventually end up in the place you started from. Same thing with the closed Universe, but in 3d.
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Originally posted by MrCoffee
Why does the intensity of light dissipate with distance?
because it is emitted radially (or at least has a radial component). As a result the photons emitted at the particular time interval have to "cover" more spherical surface.
Since light intensity is nothing more than a density of photons, the intensity of the light beam goes down.
Laser light which produces a light bean by far more parallel any any other source, will diverge slower, but still, it will diverge and lose intensity with distance.
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Time is an invention of humanity, as is everything else we know.
Therefore, using time, or anything else, to explain anything only explains things by what we know and not what by how it all works.
The answer to everything lay in booze.
-SW
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hehe :)
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Udie, I thought that happened because the forces on the clock slowed it down in some parts.
However, time is an imaginary measurement, just like feet, meters, inches. You can't actually hold a meter. You can hold a meter stick which tells you how long it is. The same with time. Time doesn't actually exist. It's just a constant imaginary measurement.
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assume for a second you could travel faster than light .....
you'd be able to see yourself before you left.... once you stoped ...
it would stand to reason, that while in trasit at faster than light speeds, everything behind you should be dark
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But if you look forward, you'd see what has happened because you're intercepting leaving light waves.
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Originally posted by lasersailor184
Udie, I thought that happened because the forces on the clock slowed it down in some parts.
However, time is an imaginary measurement, just like feet, meters, inches. You can't actually hold a meter. You can hold a meter stick which tells you how long it is. The same with time. Time doesn't actually exist. It's just a constant imaginary measurement.
honestly I don't have a complete understanding of it. Gravity affects time also. I listen to Steven Hawking's " A brief history of time" a couple of times a week. I have an mp3 of it. But it cuts out right in the middle of the black hole part of the book which deals with this. The basic gist of it though is that time and space are both relative. Here's an example from the book about space being relative....
You have a guy on a train moving down the tracks. He bounces a ball on the floor of the train and then catches it. To him the ball went straight down and straight back up. But to an observer on the ground the ball traveled a 100 feet before it hit the ground and then another 100 feet before the guy caught it.
I have a better understanding of space relativity than time relativity, that one blows the mind. But in the book he talks about how they've proved the theory (that clock example above is one proof) Evidently it's a measurable effect and a constant with relation to speed. The faster to the speed of light the slower your time relative to an object that is slower. Relativity is the key I think. To the person going the speed of light nothing would be diferent WRT time.
Nothing with mass can go the speed of light though. The book says that the faster an object goes the more it's mass increases (don't ask me why!!!) thus requiring more energy to make it increase in speed even more. By the time the object is close to the speed of light it's mass is so large that it would take an infinite amount of energy to make it accelerate to the speed of light. Photons don't have mass right? They're just packets of energy right? And please don't go into the particle vs. wave thing, that one really give me a brain ache!
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Originally posted by mietla
Just think of it, some quasar emits a photon 10 billions years ago, "knowing" that you'll be born 10 billion years later to see (absorb it with a particle in your eye).
Man, daylight savings time must really screw with their little photon brains.
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The speed of light in vacuum is exactly 299,792,458 m/s (metres per second)
wow, look at the big brain on ken. ha ha
The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second.
damn, im starting to shake....good coffee
When people refer to the speed of light, they refer to the definition above - the speed of light in a vacuum.
The speed of light is normally rounded to 300 000 kilometers per second or 186 000 miles per second.
The speed of light depends on the material that the light moves through - for example: light moves slower in water, glass and through the atmosphere than in a vacuum. The ratio whereby light is slowed down is called the refractive index of that medium.
In general, the difference in the speed of light in other mediums is ignored.
:aok
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Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
The answer to everything lay in booze.
-SW
A excellent analogy. Both booze and time can go backwards, and if you read about lives of the scientist, many of them used booze as a medium for deeper understanding of time.
Just like time slows down with acceleration, so it does with alcohol level.
Einsten has proven that force generated by acceleration and forces generated by gravity are indistinguishable. He united gravity with Newtonian dynamics, so to speak.
The humanity still waits for a genius, who will prove that time slowing while drinking (or stopping while you passed out) is it fact the same phenomenon, and that passing out is in fact equivalent to travel at light speed.
The fact that you usually do not remember anything in a morning, and the fact that women who looked young last night, suddenly aged by the morning is a very strong indication that the theory is correct, but we need a proof.
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At the very, very least 80 proof. Preferably more.
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Originally posted by Manedew
assume for a second you could travel faster than light .....
you'd be able to see yourself before you left.... once you stoped ...
it would stand to reason, that while in trasit at faster than light speeds, everything behind you should be dark
Then traveling at the speed of light with a flashlight in your hand would be a moot point. Could you shine it backwards to see where you been???? Or would that be some sort of Physic masturbation??
NUTTZ
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As I get older, times seems to go faster. It seems the time period between 1975 and 1985 took a very long time. The years 85-95 seemed to go by a little quicker, and 95-present seems to have gone by in the blink of an eye. Am I accelerating or decelerating? OW! *brain to sixpence* what the hell are you reading?
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Originally posted by Otto
If they traveled at the speed of light (impossiable) time would stop for them. They would only age during the time they were at their destination. Not on the outward or return trip.
...course we're all talking out of our tulips here since none of us have taken our spits into dives in the quest to breech c (speed of light).
But if a journey to Alpha Centauri takes four light years the crew would age (relative to themselves 4 years.) Now what that translates to in earth years I don't know.
Someone correct me please.
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Time does seem to go faster as you get older. I think it's a matter of perspective. When you're ten, a year is one tenth of your life, When you're 50, a year is only one fiftieth.
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Originally posted by Adogg
...course we're all talking out of our tulips here since none of us have taken our spits into dives in the quest to breech c (speed of light).
But if a journey to Alpha Centauri takes four light years the crew would age (relative to themselves 4 years.) Now what that translates to in earth years I don't know.
Someone correct me please.
No correction necessary. You are right. You are talking out of your ass. :)
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Just kidding. You are correct. the astronauts would age slower that those left on Earth. Coming back, they would find themselves "in their own future".
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Originally posted by mietla
No correction necessary. You are right. You are talking out of your ass. :)
Thought so. I'll have to remember that next time I take my dentures out.
:D
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Pretend you're looking at an open 'Ledger' with a page on each side. Both are joined in the middle. The page on the left is 'Space'. The one on the right 'Time' (A crude example of Space-Time) Since the moment you came into existence you have been traveling at the SOL (670,000,000 mph) on one, or both of those pages. Right now you're reading this on a CRT and most likely have zero speed through Space. That means your traveling at 'full speed' through Time. The total speed of both pages MUST equal the SOL at all times.
Now, if you were to take your car out on the freeway and get up to 70 mph on the Space page you'll reduce your speed to 669,999,930 mph on the Time page. For you, 'Time' slows down for the duration of your trip. (This has been proven many time with Atomic clocks. One on an Airliner and one on the ground)
Basically, the faster you go through Space, the slower you go through Time.
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gravity can distort time too. I can't even begin to explain how though. It's alegedly happens at black holes though. But I have a problem with singularities. I dont see how the occlusion principle can be over come. I fail to understand how the mass of a star can be compacted into an infinitely small point in space. Nuetron starts and white dwarfs I can accept but not a singularity, all the rules break down at this point.
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I dont think light thinks at all.
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why do you care?
what difference does it make?
as long as it keeps working now like it did before, I'm happy
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Originally posted by Saurdaukar
I dont think light thinks at all.
yeah, because you are dim :D
Sorry, could not help it.
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OK here's a question....
How does light travel at all? Is there a force at work to propell it or attract it?
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hmm...let me rephrase the question because most of what was said is beyond creepy...
if a ship traveld to alpha centuri and back at the speed of light, because the 4 years there is 4 years earth time, said ship should arrive back in earth time 8 years later...but how much time would the crew experience it as and why do people keep saying they would arrive back 20+ earth years later...
maybe i should just send this to discover magazine...they seem to be rather good at dumning answers down to a understandable level
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Lol, Hawking and Einstein are wrong!
Time is just a constant measurement. It doesn't matter how you percieve it. 1 meter from 2 feet away looks a lot larger then 1 meter from 100 feet away. Doesn't change the fact that it's still 1 meter.
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How does light travel at all? Is there a force at work to propell it or attract it?
Conservation of energy. Something has to cause it to be there. Once it is there, it has kinetic energy.
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Hey mietla... can you take a crack at getting what lasersailor just said through my thick skull please?
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To alpha and back at light speed, would happen instantly and you would have not travled any distance from your perspective of light speed.I.E. Alpha and earth would apear to be at the exact same point in space along with everything else. Now if you stoped when you got to alpha,and took a smoke break, the universe would sundenly expand as you slowed down.
But the real trick would be knowing when to stop since time is not advancing and you percieve no movement, in fact asking the question when to stop even becomes difficult.
It sorta makes the idea of photon emiter and reciever seem very likly in my mind.
HiTech
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So does that mean you really aren't "moving" through space but just appearing at the destination?
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That is correct mosgood, because the term moving i.e. (speed) implies a distance over some time interval. We have not gone any distance and no time has elasped.
HiTech
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So why do I hear ppl say that the light you see from a star today, happened xmillion years ago? Does it just take that long for the light particle to appear ??
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The speed of light is way over modeled. Its just another example of the total bias towards Einstien and all his uber theories.
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Originally posted by AdmRose
Einstein is wrong - Time is something that is perceived, not something that can be measured with the exception of temporal distance (i.e. something happened two weeks ago - temporal distance). Time is universally constant regardless of the speed of the perceiver.
Let me put it this way, if time stopped at the speed of light, we'd never see sunlight, or starlight, or moonlight, or anything having anything to do with light, because it would never move. Remember, distance = rate X time. If time is 0, then rate is meaningless, and distance would equal 0 then as well.
Unfortunately, since humanity will never reach the speed of light in any significant sense, this will all just remain a theory.
Oboy you knoe something we dont, speed of light is still 300000/m pr sec.
That cannot be resolved any other way. you might be knowing somthing anyone else dont.
As you said time is meaningless if time did not existed but time do exist and there youre wrong. :)
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Originally posted by mosgood
So does that mean you really aren't "moving" through space but just appearing at the destination?
It' relative and depends on a frame of reference.
Say you are on the ground and watch a two ship flight. They fly out, go through the waypoints and land somewhere else.
The leader of the flight obviously moved some distance, hasn't he? He was here, and now he is over there.
But, if you are his wingman, how far did he moved? Hasn't moved at all. You took off 5 meters apart and now you are still 5 meters apart.
Same with a photon. If you observe it, you yourself being stationary, it looks different than it would if you were a photon's wingman, (you moving with a speed of light).
In addittion, I said stationary in order to make it easier to notice a difference. I reality there is not stationary frame of reference, but it does not change the picture. The point is that different observers in different frames of reference will see the same phenomenon differently.
Events that are simultaneous in one frame of reference, may not be in another.
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Remember, perception doesn't change reality.
If you were to freeze time, you can analyze everything as being somewhere. Including light. Assuming that you'd be able to see it (and you yourself were not frozen in time) you could pin point the location of light.
Now jump ahead 1 second and freeze time again. That same light beam will be 3x10^(6) m away in the direction it was pointing. This is known as velocity.
Now, assume that you were the light beam. You are moving at the same speed as other light beams. Just because you aren't perceiving anything to change, doesn't alter the fact that after 1 second, you are 300k meters away in the direction you are pointed.
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I think I understand now that light is made up of photons.
Does a photon exist forever? If not, what happens to it?
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Mass energy is conserved always.
Light has kinetic energy. If it hits something of a dark color, some of the light reflects, but some of the light converts kinetic energy into Heat energy.
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Thanks laser.
Unfortunately it raises yet another dumb question.
My kitchen is around the corner from where I sit. It's mostly white.
The walls of the rooms are all white.
If some of those photons reflect, why can't I at least partially see my kitchen from where I sit?
It's stupid, I know....
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Cool...
So one photon that may contain information about a small part of the handle of my refridgerator door comes back to me, but it just looks like light in general since it was just a tiny peice of the puzzle.
Another photon with information about a portion of my stove has reflected off in a different direction and flew out my window.
Do I have it right?
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A try at an answer...
Due to the phenomenon of time dilation, time slows as one approaches the speed of light. As a photon is travelling the speed of light, time does not pass for a photon: everything happens simultaneously.
So from the reference of the photon, the photon would have to leave the surface of the sun bounce of the bikini babe and hit my retina simultaneously, as by definition time cannot pass in its frame of reference.
So the photon would percieve itself on the surface of the sun, on the babe and in my eye at the same time while I would realize about eight minutes to achieve the same journey.
As it is started and finished simultaneously, it would therefore not be travelling at any speed as it would already be finished with the trip.
I think this would be an explanation for the related light speed length dilation phenomenon as well.
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Good example!
So all of these photons get reflected in all sorts of different directions that they become, like, ambient light.... diffused.
The only final thing I'm curious about is the reflected photons themselves. The photon that got bounced off my refridgerator handle, what eventually happens to it?
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Originally posted by NUTTZ
Then traveling at the speed of light with a flashlight in your hand would be a moot point. Could you shine it backwards to see where you been???? Or would that be some sort of Physic masturbation??
NUTTZ
If you were in a spaceship traveling near the speed of light and you flicked your flash light on. You would be able to see its light reflect upon some surface within your local space/time which would be everything within your spaceship that is traveling near the speed of light. This is because time slows down for the occupants of the vessel. An observer on earth would not somehow able to observe the spaceship at that perfect instant in absolute time because if he could that would be breaking the rules of time/covariance.
Heres an analogy. Its like standing in one room and looking into another room when the room has walls. In this case the walls represent time. Everytime you go into the other room time slows down in your room and speeds up in the original room so if you return to the original room, much more time has passed. The sum of all of the rooms is the perspective of all of the moments in time. Its just an analogy to my first paragraph, how I view it.
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Originally posted by Nash
I think I understand now that light is made up of photons.
Does a photon exist forever? If not, what happens to it?
They did some test (according to Hawking's book) and determined that a photon last for something like 10 trillion million million years or some nonsense. And thank y'all for not getting in to the whole particle/wave thing. That's where I lose it bigtime on this physics stuff.
Now let's take this to a new level and get small. Quatum mechanics!!!!! :eek: How do you see something that's smaller than a light wave?!?!?! :eek: quarks! Blueons! Spin 1, Spin 2 and Spin 1/2 particles!! :eek: :eek:
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Originally posted by Nash
Good example!
So all of these photons get reflected in all sorts of different directions that they become, like, ambient light.... diffused.
The only final thing I'm curious about is the reflected photons themselves. The photon that got bounced off my refridgerator handle, what eventually happens to it?
I'd imagine it would keep on reflecting/refracting off of stuff until it hit something black and was absorbed and converted into heat energy.
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Its like trying to describe something from multiple time dimesions and perspectives. However if someone pointed a flashlight from the back of the spaceship at earth, you would see it as a doppler shift in light depending on how fast the spaceship is traveling near the speed of light.
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Originally posted by Udie
Now let's take this to a new level and get small. Quatum mechanics!!!!! :eek: How do you see something that's smaller than a light wave?!?!?! :eek: quarks! Blueons! Spin 1, Spin 2 and Spin 1/2 particles!! :eek: :eek:
Udie.
According to Max Plank, the smallest anything can be in our Universe is 10(-33) centimeters. (AKA the Plank Length). An Electron is something line 10(-17) cm. So the Plank Length is sixteen orders of magnitude smaller than the largest know particle. The 'strings' in String Theory are supposed to be around 10(-30) cm.
Why can't anything be smaller than the PL? Max did a great job of explaining this but I'm not smart enough to understand it in detail. Basically, anything smaller could not be part of our Universes or in reverse effect anything in our Universe. Anything smaller than the PL could not be made of matter, could not be effected by gravity, could not have an electrical charge, could not be detected by a Photon of light, ect, ect.
No matter how advanced we became, as 'Carbon body lifeforms' we could never detect anything smaller.
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Originally posted by MrCoffee
If you were in a spaceship traveling near the speed of light and you flicked your flash light on. You would be able to see its light reflect upon some surface within your local space/time which would be everything within your spaceship that is traveling near the speed of light. This is because time slows down for the occupants of the vessel. An observer on earth would not somehow able to observe the spaceship at that perfect instant in absolute time because if he could that would be breaking the rules of time/covariance.
Huh?
Actually, if you set off the JATO's on your 68' Chevy Impala and accellerated to near light speed, then flicked on the headlights, the beams from the lights would travel out in front of you travelling away at the speed of light as measured from your frame of reference.
They would also be travelling at light speed away from someone who stayed behind at the side of the Arizona highway. The way both of you see the light travelling away at the same speed is because the time and distance change relative to the observer, but C is absolute.
The theory that your headlight beams travel away from you at C and that they travel away from the Arizona roadside at C is the reason we cannot travel faster than light speed.
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Originally posted by lasersailor184
Remember, perception doesn't change reality.
Tell that to Schrodinger's cat.
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You guys have said that time slows down as you go faster.
You haven't said why though.
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Originally posted by lasersailor184
You guys have said that time slows down as you go faster.
You haven't said why though.
What holden said does. Time changes because the speed of light is constant.
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Looks like it's about time for the "there is no spoon".
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First, no he hasn't.
Second, the speed of light is not constant. It's hard to measure but light varies some (not an incredible amount though).
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The humanity still waits for a genius, who will prove that time slowing while drinking (or stopping while you passed out) is it fact the same phenomenon, and that passing out is in fact equivalent to travel at light speed.
It is a well known fact that time slows down when you are bored. This is why a kettle takes forever to boil when you are staring at it. Joseph Heller suggested in catch22 that in order to prolong your life you need to stare into the ceiling and bore yourself. You have to be careful though not to bore yourself to death...
you can go faster then light - just not in vacuum. particles entering the atmosphere at very high speeds "find themself" moving faster then the light and creating a "light shockwave" (aka Cherenkov Radiation).
Bozon
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Originally posted by lasersailor184
First, no he hasn't.
Yes I have...
Experiments have shown that C is not additive. C is relative to all observers, and in order for that to occur, time frames must alter for each of those observers.
Second, the speed of light is not constant. It's hard to measure but light varies some (not an incredible amount though). [/QUOTE]
About as much as our ability to measure it maybe?
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Remember, just because we haven't found anything that goes faster then the speed of light, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Plus you're wrong about the photon on the sun, the babe and in your eye.
Nothing can exist in more then one point in space at one time. The photon won't percieve being in the 3 places at the same time because it travels with a velocity. While it might not seem like it's moving, it won't realize it's on the bikini until 8 minutes after it realizes it's on the surface of the sun.
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Anyone ever notice how speed of light problems are a lot light describing lag issues in AH? It all depends on your observation point, and hence there is more then one reality.
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Originally posted by hitech
To alpha and back at light speed, would happen instantly and you would have not travled any distance from your perspective of light speed.I.E. Alpha and earth would apear to be at the exact same point in space along with everything else. Now if you stoped when you got to alpha,and took a smoke break, the universe would sundenly expand as you slowed down.
But the real trick would be knowing when to stop since time is not advancing and you percieve no movement, in fact asking the question when to stop even becomes difficult.
It sorta makes the idea of photon emiter and reciever seem very likly in my mind.
HiTech
Interesting. Think about it in terms of God and it could make sense that he could be everywhere at once and eternal (from his perspective) if he where always "traveling" at the speed of light.
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Originally posted by lasersailor184
First, no he hasn't.
Second, the speed of light is not constant. It's hard to measure but light varies some (not an incredible amount though).
what are you talking about. You can slow it down orders of magnitude. Just shine it through a glass to see 1.4 times slower.
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Originally posted by lasersailor184
Remember, just because we haven't found anything that goes faster then the speed of light, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Super luminal velocity in not excluded by relativity theory, the transition through C is. If you can generate a superluminal particle, it will remain super luminal, and if will take infinite energy to slow it down to C
Speed of light and a constant c have nothing to do with each other, other that light happens to travel at this speed in some circumstances.
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Originally posted by NUKE
Interesting. Think about it in terms of God and it could make sense that he could be everywhere at once and eternal (from his perspective) if he where always "traveling" at the speed of light.
There are actually theories/analogies like that, although I'm not sure how "physical" they are. The earliest of those theories started with Plato.
You can speculate/analogize all you want, but this is philosophy. Things ARE this way because I said they ARE this way, Therefore I've proven my point.
Physics takes a different approach, but no point in going there.
The Universe is like 8 mm film. If you look at it from the outside of a projector (higher dimensions), all frames of the film exist simultaneously. As a matter of fact in this view, there is no time. Someone outside the projector can see all of the frames at once, but (as the theory goes), we are stuck into 4 dimensions only, which is equivalent to being inside of the projector. Someone outside (he who can see everything at once), is playing the film. We can only see one frame at the time, and we can't rewind.
As a result we perceive
- "the past", frames we saw and remember
- "the presence" the current frame we see
- "the future" the frames we have't seen yet.
Playing the film in higher dimensions, produces perception of time in lower ones.
Obviously, the implication of this view is that
- there is no presence
- both past and future are unchangeable
- we are just passive observers and have no influence on the future.
- Everything is deterministinc
- there is no free will.
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Originally posted by mietla
- there is no free will.
My oldest son and I debate this often, much to my wife's dismay. I contend that the actors on that film had the ability to ad lib and did so.
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You are all wrong...
I'll explain as soon as I get this dang warp core fixed.
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I know that this may not be the answer that you're looking for, but the speed of light is a fundamental property of our universe.
It's just like saying 'why does gravity pull two masses together?
It just does. It's as unchanging as any other physical law, if not more so. Beyond that, the question of 'why?' isn't really something that anyone understands.
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It not that 'something' might travel faster than the SOL. What's important is that Matter (You and your Spaceship) never will. No technoligical advance is going to repeal a Law of the Univerise.
No man is ever going to travel to the 'stars' the way you travel to Europe. The distances are just too vast.
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Originally posted by hitech
Anyone ever notice how speed of light problems are a lot light describing lag issues in AH? It all depends on your observation point, and hence there is more then one reality.
Which is why it's always a good idea to be filming whenever there's a chance you'll be going light speed. As we say in AH, without film there is no proof.
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Originally posted by airguard
I know that this may not be the answer that you're looking for, but the speed of light is a fundamental property of our universe.
Exactly, c is simply a speed limit of the Universe. Light just happens to travel at this speed under certain conditions. That why c was unfortunately named Speed of Light. This name confuses the hell out of most people.
Light does not always travels at c.
Light is not the only thing that can travel at c. Neutrinos, gravitons (if they exists, gravitational field otherwise) and a boat load of other particles can reach c.
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Originally posted by Otto
No man is ever going to travel to the 'stars' the way you travel to Europe. The distances are just too vast.
Unless you find a way to warp the space, and shrink the distance.
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Originally posted by mietla
Unless you find a way to warp the space, and shrink the distance.
Easy, just add water, we all know about water and shrinkage, right?
NUTTZ
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Originally posted by NUTTZ
Easy, just add water, we all know about water and shrinkage, right?
NUTTZ
must be cold water though, ice cold works the best.
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Originally posted by mietla
Unless you find a way to warp the space, and shrink the distance.
That's ture, but if you do that you're still not traveling faster than the SOL. As you say, you've brought your destination closer to you.
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Originally posted by Holden McGroin
Actually, if you set off the JATO's on your 68' Chevy Impala and accellerated to near light speed, then flicked on the headlights, the beams from the lights would travel out in front of you travelling away at the speed of light as measured from your frame of reference.
Thats sort of what I was trying to say.
They would also be travelling at light speed away from someone who stayed behind at the side of the Arizona highway. The way both of you see the light travelling away at the same speed is because the time and distance change relative to the observer, but C is absolute.
Yes, the value of c (max speed of light) is observed as the same for both observers. If the spaceship had a target in front of it at 100 meters and the flashlight iluminated it and was observed from the ground observer, wouldnt that imply that those photons exceeded the recorded speed of the spacecraft if it was traveling at c.
The theory that your headlight beams travel away from you at C and that they travel away from the Arizona roadside at C is the reason we cannot travel faster than light speed.
I agree but thats not waht I was trying to say.
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What would happen if you could go faster than the SOL and why doesn't the Universe allow it? Basically, if you went faster than the SOL you'd go BACK in time.
Think of Time moving out from you like the ripples on a pond at the SOL. If you were to blast off through Space going ever faster you'd begin to 'catch up' with Time as it moved away from you. When you reach the SOL you're moving as fast as Time and it would stop. You and Time would be moving at the same speed.
If you went faster than the SOL you'd go past your 'present' time and reach a 'past' time. That's the big 'No, No' and why it's not allowed.
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While I don't agree with it, Einstein said you can only go forward in time.
But that's assuming that time actually exists.
Remember, it doesn't mean **** what you percieve, the light will be moving at a velocity that isn't dependent upon what you perceive the maximum speed of light is.
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Originally posted by Otto
What would happen if you could go faster than the SOL and why doesn't the Universe allow it?
Super luminal velocities are allowed. Only the transition through c is forbidden.
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Originally posted by Otto
What would happen if you could go faster than the SOL and why doesn't the Universe allow it? Basically, if you went faster than the SOL you'd go BACK in time.
Think of Time moving out from you like the ripples on a pond at the SOL. If you were to blast off through Space going ever faster you'd begin to 'catch up' with Time as it moved away from you. When you reach the SOL you're moving as fast as Time and it would stop. You and Time would be moving at the same speed.
If you went faster than the SOL you'd go past your 'present' time and reach a 'past' time. That's the big 'No, No' and why it's not allowed.
OK, now you have me confused. Why would traveling FASTER than SOL be a No-No? because you would go back in time and invert back past the point in time you were born? therfor you will " disappear", or cease to exist? Asuming this is what you ment. But wasn't it stated that Time stands still for the people traveling at the SOL? So the time AROUND them would be an earlier date Not them. So why did Einstein say you could only travel forward in time. And what would be the difference in time traveling faster than SOL? Like 1 sec at SOL = 1 billion years "outside " time?
I think I personally would rather travel forward in time than back in time anyways.
P.S. I THought SOL was 186,000 miles per sec. I saw it posted at 300,000 miles per sec. And I also though ( correct me if I'm wrong, you know you will) Einstein said SOL squared Time stops.
NUTTZ
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Originally posted by Nash
Does light ever disolve into nothingness? Can it get absorbed and dissipate? Or mutate into some other kind of energy?
The black holes of this universe are thought to be the most powerful force in existence.... and yes, more powerful then light...
BTW Nash, how are you feeling?
FYI, we are burying my brother this spring... time to put it beyond us.
Hope your journey is going well.
Keep up the good work my friend. I wish you the best
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Originally posted by lasersailor184
Remember, just because we haven't found anything that goes faster then the speed of light, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Plus you're wrong about the photon on the sun, the babe and in your eye.
Nothing can exist in more then one point in space at one time. The photon won't percieve being in the 3 places at the same time because it travels with a velocity.
But time does not pass for a photon. Therefore, all things happen simultaneously for the photon. Therfore, from the time reference of the photon, which is simultaneaty (sp) it is in two places at the same time.
While it might not seem like it's moving, it won't realize it's on the bikini until 8 minutes after it realizes it's on the surface of the sun. [/B]
If memory serves me in the quantum world of Feynmen, the photon travels all possible paths to get to where it is going (and of course it is already there) so that means it is everywhere simultaneously.
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I know nothing of the subject, and I probably won't understand the answer to the question i'm going to ask, but I was told that matter emits light? If that is so, is the light that emits from ourselves travel out as time? So if we traveled at the speed of light we would not age? Or not move in time? I'm lost on what you guys are talking about so I thought I would ask and add to my confusion.
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Some matter emits light, not all.
It is a strong theory that most of the matter in the universe is dark matter, invisible to any of our detection, and different from objects which do not emit light such as planets. Only a portion of matter achieves star status and begins to shine.
The faster one travels, the slower the time passes. If we were to travel around the universe at near light speed we age only a few years and return to an earth long after our civilization is gone, perhaps long after all life on Earth has died out.
If we were to travel at the speed of light, time would not pass for our frame of reference. Outside our frame, it would pass normally relative to observers watching us pass by.
However theory holds that we cannot travel at the speed of light. No matter how fast we go, we can always shine a light out in front of us that travels away from us at the speed of light.
That same beam observed by a stationary observer we just passed would be travelling at C according to him. So we must necessarily be travelling slower than our own headlight beams which according to the stationary observer are travelling at C.
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Guys,
Obviously those are very advanced topics and there is very few people in this world who really understand it. Many can manipulate the mathematics of it, but a clear understanding if difficult.
If you are genuinely interested in this stuff, there is a wonderfull little book written by R.P.Feynman. He was not only one of the greatest physicists ever, but also a great teacher. His very unique skill was the ability to teach complex things and explain them in a way that anyone can understand.
The book is titled "QED. A Strange theory of light and matter". It's a pretty small book and it explains a plethora of phemomena. From light reflection, refraction, diffraction and interference, throught the optics of a lens, to the elementary particles, quarks and Quantum Chromo Dynamics (QCD).
All that using a single "recipe" of QED. Even Pauli's exclusion principle and Heisenberg's uncertaintity principle cease to be an arbitrary, capricious weird and unintuitive laws, they simply follow as a consequence of QED principles.
What is most amazing though, is that the book is written in such a way that almost anyone can comprehend it, and after reading it being struck with ...
"Of course, why didn't I discover it. It was in plain sight".
Another entry level books
"The fourth dimension" - Rudy Rucker (not really physics, but a great introdunction to n-dimensional thinking)
"In search of Schodinger's Cat" - John Gribbin.
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"6 Easy Pieces", "6 Not So Easy Pieces", and for fun, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" are also excellent reads, and for those truely ambitious, "Feynman: Lectures on Physics" three volumes of mind benders.
But if you are going to read about special and general relativity, Albert himself wrote an explanation in layman's terms called "Relativity: The Special and General Theory". It is a relatively easy read (smirk)
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Another awesome book by Feynman is "The lost lecture". It is a CD with actual recording of Feynman's lecture (at CalTech), discovered in his office after his death. The CD comes with a transcript, and notes.
The short story is, that he finished one of his lectures early, and having an exra hour, he just popped with this "extra" topic to keep the audience busy.
The topic is pretty simple "Orbits of the Planets". Feynman is proving that all the allowed orbits in a gravitational field have to be conic sections (elipse, parabola or hyperbola).
Seems simple, anyone with any knowlege of calculus and Newton's laws can do it, but...
Feyman is "virtually" moving 350 years to the time of Kepler. All he uses in his proof is Keplers laws (which are not really laws, just observations based on Tycho de Brahe data), and Euclidian geometry. Nothing more.
Now, try that for a brain teaser...
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Here is a question for you guys:
Consider human "A" and Human "B" each had a lifespan of 1 million heartbeats, each heart beating at the exact same rate.
Human A is traveling at the speed of light while human B is on Earth as normal.
Which person would live "longer" ? Time is measured by motion, yet both A and B should live the exact same "period" relative to their heartbeats..... is that correct?
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The basic principle of relativity is, that (unless you are accelerating) it is impossible for you to detect whether you are moving or not. This means, that even other observers perceive your time as slowing down, you can't detect it. For you the time goes by as it always has.
It is not the measurement issue, it is the spacetime dilation issue. It is undetectable in principle.
The instrument you use to measure time is irrelevant, heartbeat, grandfather's clock, atomic processes, everything will slow down in sync.
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One of the truely bizarre consequenses, is that if I am travelling with a constant velocity through interstellar space and pass by you who is stationary, it is just as valid for you to believe you are the one with high velocity and I am standing still.
Both observers see the time in their frame of reference as normal, and the time in the other frame slowed. And both are fundamentally correct.
As Albert said, "It's all how you look at it."
April 19 Vandenberg AFB a Delta launches with 'Gravity Probe B' to test the General Theory.
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Holden, so far you've only said that a photon doesn't experience time.
You haven't said why or how...
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Originally posted by Bodhi
BTW Nash, how are you feeling?
FYI, we are burying my brother this spring... time to put it beyond us.
Hope your journey is going well.
Keep up the good work my friend. I wish you the best
Thanks Bodhi. I'm doing just swimmingly, living the life of a normie, but actually enjoying it this time around.
It's very sad about your brother. Though I'm happy to hear that you're able to put it behind you.
I wouldn't have said something like this before my own little ordeal, but I'm more convinced than ever that your brother lives on. Somehow, and somewhere. Threads like this just make me more convinced of it.
Thanks bud.
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If indeed space/time is curved as some have supposed, it would seem to me that you need only a powerful/sensitive enough "telescope" to be able to see any and every point in time there has ever been.
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Originally posted by AKIron
If indeed space/time is curved as some have supposed, it would seem to me that you need only a powerful/sensitive enough "telescope" to be able to see any and every point in time there has ever been.
Sure. Optical systems have well defined resolution barrier, so do any other systems bases on other principles.
But if you could design a system with a resolution high enough for the current radius of the Universe curvature, you could see a fat butt of someone looking into a fancy telescope away from you.
And that would be .... YOU.
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Originally posted by Holden McGroin
One of the truely bizarre consequenses, is that if I am travelling with a constant velocity through interstellar space and pass by you who is stationary, it is just as valid for you to believe you are the one with high velocity and I am standing still.
I can understand that completely, however what does one measure stationary by? What actually is stationary? It's all relative to something else.
I love the kind of thinking this type of debate brings forward.
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that is the great thing, we all do!
Bodhi/Nash
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Originally posted by mietla
Sure. Optical systems have well defined resolution barrier, so do any other systems bases on other principles.
But if you could design a system with a resolution high enough for the current radius of the Universe curvature, you could see a fat butt of someone looking into a fancy telescope away from you.
And that would be .... YOU.
Hehe, well, I'd have to stand there and look for a looong time before seeing myself looking at my own fat ass. Wondering how widely dispersed photons become after a few trips around the block. How many would it take to define an image we might recognize?
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Just realized that perhaps I could instantly see myself at the far side of the universe if I had the optics for it. Time being curved along with space and all.
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Originally posted by NUKE
I can understand that completely, however what does one measure stationary by? What actually is stationary? It's all relative to something else.
I love the kind of thinking this type of debate brings forward.
You got it dude! No one can, You can have a gazzillion of moving dudes and as long as none of them accelerates (changes the velocity tangentially or radially), NONE OF THEM will be able to tell who is moving and who is at rest.
Every one of them will perceive himself at rest, and the other dudes flying by.
That is a principle of Special Relativity.
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Wasn't there a test using an atomic clock at a fixed point, and an atomic clock on an airplane that flew around the world? I remember hearing about it, and I remember that the plane's clock was a few seconds behind the fixed point's clock.
-SW
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Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
Wasn't there a test using an atomic clock at a fixed point, and an atomic clock on an airplane that flew around the world? I remember hearing about it, and I remember that the plane's clock was a few seconds behind the fixed point's clock.
-SW
yes, was true.
I don't know if I buy into all the space/time theory stuff though.
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There was a test using the method you described. I think the difference was only millionths of a second but measureable nonetheless.
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Thanks for the confirmation, I had only heard about it so wasn't sure on the exact details. Its interesting to say the least, its probable something could have interfered with the test (air density/pressure, temperature)
One thing that is interesting, to me anyway, is that if you head east on the equator at 1500mph (think thats it) - you don't actually move in relation to the point you started at respective to the universe. Heading west, OTOH, and you travel in a circle twice as fast.
-SW
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Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
One thing that is interesting, to me anyway, is that if you head east on the equator at 1500mph (think thats it) - you don't actually move in relation to the point you started at respective to the universe. Heading west, OTOH, and you travel in a circle twice as fast.
-SW
Perspective of the universe? Nah.
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I just looked that up. Actually it was a test done in the 70's where an atomic clock was flown at high altitude for 50 hours. It was then compared with a clock on the ground and there found to be a difference of a few hundred nano seconds. The same article states that on Earth a clock will run approx 20 milliseconds slower per year than a clock in space. This was a test of General Relativity rather than Special though. Mass warps space/time.
Btw, have there been actual tests to prove that matter/mass does the warping rather than perhaps warps in space/time simply collecting matter?
Now that I think about it, it's obvious that mass has this intrinsic quality. Surely we've observed celestial objects phsically interact.
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Originally posted by NUKE
yes, was true.
I don't know if I buy into all the space/time theory stuff though.
Think again.
Since it was published in 1905, the Special Relativity Theory not only explained a boat load of the contemporary weird and totally bogus (at the time) phenomena like utterly "failed" attempt by Michealson and Morley to measure the speed of light, but it made another boat load of "ridiculous" predictions for future experiments. Einstein's not only predicted that a certain star behind the Sun will appear late after a Sun Eclipse, but he calculate by how much. Guess who was wrong and who was right.
Since 1905, there was tons (let's say more than one) experiments to test (confirm/disprove) SRT, all of them confirm it.
SRT and QED are probably the two most solid foundations of physics.
Just prove them wrong, and you are an instant Nobel price winner.
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Addendum to previous post. The star appeared early not late. The light bends around mass (the Sun in this case), thus an early "apparent" arrival.
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Originally posted by mietla
Think again.
Einstein's not only predicted that a certain star behind the Sun will appear late after a Sun Eclipse, but he calculate by how much. Guess who was wrong and who was right.
Since 1905, there was tons (let's say more than one) experiments to test (confirm/disprove) SRT, all of them confirm it.
SRT and QED are probably the two most solid foundations of physics.
Just prove them wrong, and you are an instant Nobel price winner.
Think again about what? That I don't buy all the space/time theory stuff? When Einstein proved that a star's light could be visible from behind an eclipse, it proved that light was effected by gravity I thought.
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I think Einstein was saying that gravity is curved space, so the shortest distance between point a and b wasn't a straight line hence light appeared to curve.
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Originally posted by AKIron
I think Einstein was saying that gravity is curved space, so the shortest distance between point a and b wasn't a straight line hence light appeared to curve.
with the star visible from behind the sun during an eclipse, he proved that gravity could bend the light around the sun.
edit: which doesn't make sense, gravity "pushed" the star's light around the sun instead of "pulling" it into the sun or otherwise dispersing it?
edit again: I can see how it could be so after thinking a few seconds :) Light was like an airstream flowing around a ball in an air tunnel.
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Here's something I just found that may help to visualize.
"Space-Time Continuum
It may seem like a gimmick, but the picture illustrates one of the most profound elements in Einstein’s theory. Einstein saw time and space as a fabric, sort of like the taut surface of a trampoline.
If you put a bowling ball on a trampoline, it will distort the surface. And then if you roll a golf ball past the bowling ball, its course will be curved because of the indentation in the surface of the trampoline.
Similarly, the pathway followed by light from a distant object is distorted by the presence of mass, such as a galaxy of billions of stars. The light will curve because the “fabric” through which it travels is warped by the mass."
Look at this way. From the perspective of the golf ball it is just moving on it's merry way being neither pushed nor pulled along. When it encounters the curve it doesn't perceive an additional force but continues in what it perceived to be a straight line.
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Originally posted by NUKE
Think again about what? That I don't buy all the space/time theory stuff? When Einstein proved that a star's light could be visible from behind an eclipse, it proved that light was effected by gravity I thought.
Really, read Einstein and Feynman. After you are done, you'll have an "epiphany",
"Wow, this is so obvious and common sensical, how was it that I could ever think any other way."
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Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe" is an excellent book for the layman imo and gave me a much better understanding of some of these difficult concepts.
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Originally posted by AKIron
I think Einstein was saying that gravity is curved space, so the shortest distance between point a and b wasn't a straight line hence light appeared to curve.
Correct, light is following the straight line in its frame of reference which may appear curved in other observer's frame of reference.
Remember, there is no such thing as an object trajectory. For a kid boucing the ball of off the floor of the moving train the ball moves in a straight line up and down.
For the observer on the ground, the ball moves in a series of parabolas.
Both of them can PROVE that each one of them is right, and both of them will be right (in their frames of reference of course)
So, what is the REAL trajectory of the ball, huh?
SRT is really simple, you just have to forget V = V1 + V2 and accept a Lorentz transformation instead. A simple addition is an extremely good approximation (that's why no man have noticed any discrepancy for thousands of years of civilisation), but if you get to really high velocities, it shows very clearly.
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Originally posted by lasersailor184
Holden, so far you've only said that a photon doesn't experience time.
You haven't said why or how...
Experiments in the late 19th century were looking for the great initial reference frame to which ether was connected.
They measured the speed of light from a fixed star whose light track was tangent to our solar orbit, and compared the speed to a measurement taken six months earlier. The speed of our orbit known and the speed of our movement through the ether could have been detected by the difference in the two light speeds.
Strange to the observers, the speed was identical regardless of the orbital velocity of the Earth. The speed of light was constant.
If the speed of light is constant and not additive to the speed of the observer, then something strange must be happening. The two componants of the ratio making up our concept of speed must be changing in relation to the speed of the obsrever, and so time and distance paralell to the velocity need to change in order to keep the speed ratio the apparent constant that it is.
H.A. Lorentz figured a way to quantify the apparent slowing of time inside a speeding ship: (apparent to the outside observer anyway)
(http://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/equations/timedial.gif)
This equation, experimentally quantified, shows that as v=c, the time dilation reaches infinity.
That means that the entire lifetime of a photon is experienced simultaneously. Time does not pass on a photon.
Length also changes by the formula: (http://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/equations/length.gif)
That's the how, as for the why as a theologian.
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This is the most entertaining debate that i have read in the O Club so far this month.
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Originally posted by AKIron
Here's something I just found that may help to visualize.
"Space-Time Continuum
It may seem like a gimmick, but the picture illustrates one of the most profound elements in Einstein’s theory. Einstein saw time and space as a fabric, sort of like the taut surface of a trampoline.
If you put a bowling ball on a trampoline, it will distort the surface. And then if you roll a golf ball past the bowling ball, its course will be curved because of the indentation in the surface of the trampoline.
Similarly, the pathway followed by light from a distant object is distorted by the presence of mass, such as a galaxy of billions of stars. The light will curve because the “fabric” through which it travels is warped by the mass."
Look at this way. From the perspective of the golf ball it is just moving on it's merry way being neither pushed nor pulled along. When it encounters the curve it doesn't perceive an additional force but continues in what it perceived to be a straight line.
Bingo, what you've just described is a 2 dimensional space (the initially flat trampoline which being horizontal, does not "know" up-down dimension) curved into a third dimension, up-down.
The ants living on a trampoline and confined to its surface, will not be able to perceive the up-down dimension. All they will see is a large bowling ball "magically" causing the golf ball to go round and round in orbit.
Unless the ants make a mental jump and realise, ...wait a minute... maybe we are really on a flat 2 dimensional surface curved in a 3-rd dimension (which we never saw or experienced), they will alway see this phenomenon as a strange attraction between a bowling ball and a golf ball. They can measure it and create a law that the force between the balls is proportional to both masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them, but they will never have a clue why.
Which is exactly where we are, We know F = G* m * M / R^2, but we have no clue why (except of the antropomorphic principle which is a philosophical cop out anyway).
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Originally posted by mietla
Which is exactly where we are, We know F = G* m * M / R^2, but we have no clue why (except of the antropomorphic principle which is a philosophical cop out anyway).
And here we are back at "free will" and philosophy. Is it the mass that warps space or the warps in space that collect mass. I would think that since I can act upon an object of mass and still observe it's inherent gravitational force that the gravitational force is inherent in the mass. But what if I am mistaken about actually enacting a change in the mass? What if the movement of my hand was caused by the fluctuation in space/time and I only perceived it to be my will? Hehe, I'd probably understand this better with a bit of scotch. ;)
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Originally posted by AKIron
I'd probably understand this better with a bit of scotch. ;)
I'm an inch of Scotch in front of you :)
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Discussion of existentialism is two threads over.
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There'll be a gravity probe launched on the 19th.
http://einstein.stanford.edu/index.html
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what a lot of people here are confusing are two different theories with bad names for them:
1. Special relativity
2. General relativity
The names are bad because the 1st one is not a special case of the 2nd.
"Special relativity" is a later name given to Einstein's theory from 1905 which explained Maxwell's equations (electro-magnetism). I think the paper was called "on the electrodynamics of moving bodies" or something like that. It was known that they were invariant to Lorentz transformation, but only einstein understood what it ment.
This theory explained the magnetic field (or actually the magnetic force on a moving charge) as a deformed electric field due to the fact that the fields expands in a finit speed - SOL.
You can get maxwell's equations from only the electric field and assuming that light( the field) expands in a finit and constant speed in every frame of reference.
"General relativity" was published about 10 years later (1916?) and deals with explaining gravity. It actually doesn't use a "gravity force" but warp space-time instead. this is the same space-time from the 1st theory and the confusion comes from here.
This is a MUCH more complicated theory with difficult equations. Even Einstein needed the help of some top mathematicians to work it out.
The famous Eclips experiment was to test this theory (if the space is curved around a mass, even massless photon will bend around the mass, regardless of "gravity")
Bozon
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Originally posted by lasersailor184
Remember, just because we haven't found anything that goes faster then the speed of light, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Neutrino's have been observed to travel faster than the speed of light.
And to hitech, There are as many reality's as there are observers.
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Originally posted by Griego
Originally posted by lasersailor184
Neutrino's have been observed to travel faster than the speed of light.
And to hitech, There are as many reality's as there are observers.
The neutrinos travel faster then the light - not faster then the speed of light. It's the light that was slowed down due to interaction with matter.
There is only one reality. your perception of reality might be different from another's, but it's the same reality (when you close your eyes, does the world disappear?)
Bozon
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When you turn on your speakers your ears registers wavelenghts, which you will "hear" as a sound. If you could turn up the speakers resonance (the back and forth motion) dramatically, you would lose the "sound" and your TV + other remote controlled home devices would go wild. Kicking slightly more hertzes in the poor loudspeaker, your eye sensors would start to register the previous source of sound, the speaker would start to "glow". Next step would be rapid fainting of the light towards dark red and it would began to emit infrared, which you can feel on your skin as an heat. Even further down the road would be x-rays and similar nasty stuff.
This is my grasp of this issue, light is just an loose term for resonance exchange between atoms in certain hertzes (which eventually boils down to electromagnetism). As is sound or heat. In an vacuum they all travel at the speed constant c (which is called the speed of light, do not take literally).
So when "light" reflects from any surface (mirror, white paint, green paint, no difference), there is no actual photons bouncing off, but just the surface of the reflective source emitting the wavelenghts it is receiving. The more efficent it is at this job (= the less it heats up), the more reflective it will appear.
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Originally posted by Tuomio
... light is just an loose term for resonance exchange between atoms in certain hertzes..
No atoms to exchange resonances in the vacuum of deep space, yet light travels.
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no tuomio...sound is one sort of wave (similar to water waves) and needs a medium...light is like radio waves...it requires no medium to travel...
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Not the ole "Which came first, the particle or the wave?" debate.
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look damnit I wasn't kidding when I said don't get in to the particle/wave thing! :mad:
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I agree with Udie: getting into an involved discussion of wave particle duality would be cumbersome on this BBS and would necessarily require the discussion of DeBroglie and the development of his formula for the wavelength of particles, i.e. wavelength = h/p.
Since in the macroscopic world momentum, p, tends to be large (even when particles have the smallest of velocities) DeBroglie wavelengths of large objects are minute and impossible to measure, but for atomic particles or smaller a noticeable property can be calculated.
The wavelength cannot be seen by simple observation. For a particle to display this property it must be treated as a wave, and therefore an experiment such as Young's double slit must be conducted using it. So therefore discussion on this BBS could be burdensome.
A discussion would then inevitably lead to the discussion of several unified theories of interaction that have been proposed in theoretical physics to explain the known particles and forces. The two most commonly accepted are the theories of multidimensional hyperspace (strings and superstrings) and the Standard Model.
Multidimensional theories require the acceptance of more than four dimensions, involve a great deal of computation, and do not yet predict an adequate way to manipulate our environment. The Standard Model requires a plethora of particles, appears to require more each day, and does not yet effectively address gravitation.
So for all these reasons, deferring from discussion of wave particle duality may be a reasonable course of action.
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Originally posted by Udie
look damnit I wasn't kidding when I said don't get in to the particle/wave thing! :mad:
It's natural NOT to understand it.
The reason is that we do not have a macroscopic, everyday analogy for it, that's why you can't imagine a particle that spreads like a wave.
So, is light a wave or a particle? it's neither or both, define it how you please, It simply not like anything you know from daily life.
How do we treat it then, as a wave or as a particle?
quantum mechanics solves it this way:
When dealing with the kinematics, I mean the movement of the "particle", or it's location as function of time, we treat it as a wave. The example is the light going through a pair of slits and giving an interference pattern on a screen (a point particle would pass only though one of the holes and cannot interfere with itself).
When we deal with interaction with the "particle", we consider it to be one "bandle" of energy/momentum. The common example is the photo-electric effect, where a photon absorbed in matter, can only give a certain amount of evergy typical of it's "color".
and here is the connection - the amount of energy in the particle (or color) is determined by it's wave frequency (and vice versa).
Bozon
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Schroedinger comes home from work and meets his wife at the door.
Mrs. Schroedinger says, 'What the hell did you do to the cat? It looks half dead!'
Later over dinner, Schroedinger muses to his wife, 'I just don't know what is wrong with Heisenberg. He seems so sure of himself lately.'
Meanwhile, Heisenberg is stopped by the police for speeding.
The traffic cop asks him, "Do you know how fast
you were going?" Heisenberg replies, "No, but I know exactly where I am".
Ravs.
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So, I guess the question isn't "if a tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to hear it, will it make a sound?" but rather "if a tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to hear it, did it really fall?"
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Quantam theory can predict the odds that the tree fell and Schroedinger says the tree is both standing and fallen
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And a particle physicist might ask whether there was ever a tree there at all.
Quantum Theory made my brain ache. One of our teachers told us this old physicist's motto:
To understand something means to derive it from quantum mechanics, which nobody understands.
Ravs
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So, regarding the spoon, maybe there is and maybe there isn't. ;)
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precisely ;)
or is that imprecisely? :eek:
Ravs
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I'm pretty certain that Schroedinger's cat is dead by now.
Bozon