Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: AKIron on August 15, 2003, 09:52:42 AM
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Some of the recent discussions here resparked my interest in physics and so I've been doing a bit of reading. One subject has really acquired my interest, photons. Lemme see if I got this right. Photons always travel at the speed of light. Which means that they never age and therefore time does not pass from their perspective. Yet they are continually changing their position in the Universe. How is this perceived from their perspective? Also, since space/time is curved and a particular photon will never cease to exist can it be said that from their perspective there is no space or that they simultaneously exist at every point in space? This stuff blows my mind.
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Step slowly away from the bong.
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hehe :D
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Originally posted by AKIron
Photons always travel at the speed of light. Which means that they never age and therefore time does not pass from their perspective.
Has it been accepted that light does not age? Are we not seeing the stars as they existed in the past, rather than the present, given the temporal characteristics of lightspeed and distance?
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The light we see from the stars left them a long time ago and is still traveling towards us. So what we are seeing are events in the past.
An interesting conception is the Hubbell Tele. It looks into the past, as the universe is expanding and every object is moving away from every other object then at the edge of the Universe you are seeing the creation of space or TIME 0. The oldest objects are at the edge. Quasars and old galaxies, so to see the edge of the universe is to see the beginning/creation of time.
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Originally posted by gofaster
Has it been accepted that light does not age? Are we not seeing the stars as they existed in the past, rather than the present, given the temporal characteristics of lightspeed and distance?
The stars that have existed in the past from our frame of reference give off or reflect individual photons. They themselves 'age', but each individual photon does not. The speed of light = c in all frames of reference. You're not seeing individual photons aging... there are many many photons entering your eye at different times from your frame of ref.
Since time does not pass for an individual photon traveling at the speed of light (relative to us), distance is also irrelavent. d = r/t. d = 3.00x10^8 (m/s) / 0 sec. d = 0 m.
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I was gonna jump in, but then I saw strange mathly symbols. The theoritical aspect is very interesting... but the numbers are too much for me... Superstring once forced my left eyeball to pop out.
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Originally posted by Saurdaukar
Superstring once forced my left eyeball to pop out.
hehe, know the feeling.
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If you're a photon, your perspective would be irrelevant.
If you think about it, since no time passes for them being at lightspeed, the moment they burst into existence = the moment they cease to exist.
aka, a billion years ago mr photon was created in a star, travelled a gazzillion kilometers and smacked the rear portion of your retina and ceased to exist.
for the photon, no time passed.
so your answer is : From a photon's perspective, nothing happened because from its perspective it ceased to exist the moment it sprung into existence.
That they travelled that big of a distance without aging is another matter. From the photon's POV, it existed in all points in space that it traveled from its origin point to its termination point.
But since space-time is curved by gravity, and gravity is created by concentration of mass, and everything in the universe is in motion...
the photon travelled in a slight arc the whole way from point A to point B, (probably doing a Sine wave sort of trip as bigger mass objects pulled it to and away from them) And since nothing in nature is curved but rather a series of *very* small straight lines that make up a curve (aka, draw a biiig letter "C" on a chalkboard, then stick your face on any point of the letter "C" ..you will not see a curve but rather a straight line)...
then you could say that, if photons had any perspective they could perceive (remember their lifetime from their frame of reference=0), they would not perceive space-time (since time is 0). If anything, they would perceive their existence as an instant transfer of energy and negligible mass from origin point into termination point.
clear enough?
;)
(now them faster-than light traveling particles have one hell of a trip, but thats another story!)
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I fell like i'm listening to suzanne summers
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If anything, they would perceive their existence as an instant transfer
Oh wow man, thats not enough time to even get laid once in your lifetime. Sucky :p
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hehe Weav
So, for a photon lucky enough to avoid annihilation from the beginning of the Universe until it's end, it could have traveled both everywhere and nowhere in both no time at all and eternity.
I'm beginning to think the kid was right, there ain't no spoon.
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Astro-Physics is all fun and games until a photon puts your eye out!
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I am the walrus
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Originally posted by Octavius
The stars that have existed in the past from our frame of reference give off or reflect individual photons. They themselves 'age', but each individual photon does not. The speed of light = c in all frames of reference. You're not seeing individual photons aging... there are many many photons entering your eye at different times from your frame of ref.
Since time does not pass for an individual photon traveling at the speed of light (relative to us), distance is also irrelavent. d = r/t. d = 3.00x10^8 (m/s) / 0 sec. d = 0 m.
I'm still not quite buying the non-aging of a photon, and maybe here's why:
The assumption is that Time = lightspeed. In other words, distance would be irrellevant. Yet, if we're seeing starlight travelling at light speed from a distant star, and that starlight is dated, then it would follow that the photos comprising that starlight are dated as well. Therefore, for a photon, Time = distance travelled with lightspeed being constant.
Then again, I took up a profession that focuses on writing instead of mathematics, so maybe I'm way off in my calculation.
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Ok so as a photon time would not pass. So at the moment of its creation it is both at the beginning and the end of its journey. It could see its starting point and destination at the same time no matter the distance travelled. So in a sence each individual photon is bending space time and creating a wormhole between its starting point and its destination. Instantanious transport from any point in spacetime to any other point. Now if we could just figure out how to become a photon or create the enviroment of a photon around a space craft. Hmmm.
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"A particle like a photon is never at rest and always moves at the speed of light; thus it is massless," says Dr. Michael S. Turner, chair of the Department of Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. "
I new that......
:rolleyes:
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Photons do exert force on electrons. Not sure that means they have mass. Traveling through space photons take the path of least resistance. Gravity is the curving of space, where the shortest distance between point a and point b is not a straight line. A photon takes the shortest path.
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maybe it's full of spoons ;)
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U all hypothesize that photons are particles. Are they? Sure u can explain certain characteristics when u assume that they are but they are describable as waves too. So do waves age? ;)
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Originally posted by Duedel
So do waves age?
Yes. Any surfer can tell you that. :cool:
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nothing ages it just changes
nothing is created or destroyed it is always there in just another form
that includes us and our soul
"Let there be Light"
funny- you can believe a photo has these properties but not its Creator
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Originally posted by Eagler
nothing ages it just changes
nothing is created or destroyed it is always there in just another form
that includes us and our soul
"Let there be Light"
funny- you can believe a photo has these properties but not its Creator
One has a mathmatical backup... the other doesn't.
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I don't have any soul, this can be proven by my complete inability to dance.
-SW
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Wow! This stuff is the nitty gritty of reality... we may never know how things behave at that level. I read somewhere that that it is possible to shoot particles faster than the speed of light, in effect arriving at their destination before it departs. :eek:
I have to add that I don't believe we can mathmatically describe physics at that level ... that is where God comes in I guess.
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Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
I don't have any soul, this can be proven by my complete inability to dance.
-SW
hehe, I have soul, just no rhythm. Bet those pesky photons are to blame.
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Originally posted by Gunthr
Wow! This stuff is the nitty gritty of reality... we may never know how things behave at that level. I read somewhere that that it is possible to shoot particles faster than the speed of light...
If that's true then either (a) Time does not move at the speed of light or (b) Time is not an absolute limit or (c) both of the above.
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=======from Tardblog.Com========
Angelo was walking towards the coat room today, when he clipped one of the classroom tables with his hip. Feeling slighted, he cursed at the table and swung his leg to kick the corner he'd bumped into. He missed the table leg by inches and sent his foot smashing into the underside of the table. He screamed and bent down to grab his toes, banging his head against the topside of the table.
At this point Angelo started crying, fell on his butt, and started trying to take his shoe off. He leaned forward to untie his shoe and hit his forehead against the edge of the table. After this he just curled up into a ball. I have never seen a tard lose a fight with an inanimate object quite as badly as this.
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"As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
I wish, I wish
he’d stay away."
Hughes Mearns
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There was an experiment a machine the used particals of some type to send a message over a small distance. The receiver used this message to turn on lights on the other end. Now I dont know all the tech on this just saw it on discovery. But they where able to make the lights turn on before the message was sent. Just by nano seconds but a messurable time. Hence they made the particals move faster than light I:E: time.
The speed of sound was a barrier thought never to be broken it fell non the less. Over the coarse of history many many many absolute barriers have been proposed and surpassed. Given the time and the tech the speed of light will be broken too. We just dont know how to do it yet.
Much time has been spent on the study of our brains. A organ of our body. So in a sense this organ is trying to understand itself. Since our bodys and brains are made up of matter from the universe. So in a sense the universe is trying to understand itself.
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Originally posted by Gunthr
Wow! This stuff is the nitty gritty of reality... we may never know how things behave at that level. I read somewhere that that it is possible to shoot particles faster than the speed of light, in effect arriving at their destination before it departs. :eek:
in a vacuum? i can walk to the fridge for a beer faster than light can move in a bose-einstein condensate :)
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i walked outside today and waves of photons attacked me, fortunately, i was wearing my photon shields and was unharmed.
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I said negligible mass, not massless ;)
If a photon manages to avoid termination with an object until the end of the universe (which means it will collide with something and terminate) then from its perspective, it just existed in more points in space during its 0 lifetime.
any particle has mass, and it is affected by gravity, this is proven by black holes sucking up anything, including photons of light.
what would *really* be interesting is to imagine what a tachyon's (which travels faster than light) perspective is... we believe time slows down to infinity when at light speed..but then how or what do these Faster than light particles ride on? they move through spacetime, but unlike at-lightspeed photons, the tachyon has gone beyond that... so what do these particles 'time' at? do they go against time (like that experiment having message arriving before it was sent)?
if they do, then they actually would terminate before being sprung into existence, going from point B to point A, but from our reference, we can only detect them at their termination point as they collide with our instruments.
spooky stuff.