|
The user's response to the question only reinforces the point I am trying to make:
Quote: So formally one can still talk about the photon having a relativistic (or effective) mass $m = E/c^2$. But this concept of mass runs in all kinds of problems so its usage is discouraged.
Here is an example of the lengths that science will go to avoid the fact that the way they may be looking at physics isn't quite right. Two different ways of examining the exact same thing are available but one is accepted and the other is avoided because it causes trouble. By causing trouble, I more suspect it means that if it is accepted as priciple their life's work will be invalidated.
To me, it smells of hypocrisy. Here is light which, by saying is a massless particle, breaks their own fundamentals so instead of admitting that a photon has an infinitesimally small mass, they just call it zero and tell the rest of us to drink the cool-aid so that they don't have to go back and perform decades of rework.
Don't get me wrong here. I am not attacking you or the information you have provided. I don't think we are discussing the same thing. You have been providing the results of research while I am trying to examine the thought process that led to those results to determine if the human element has led us to a misunderstanding of the results or that our very base assumptions of physics are fundamentally incorrect. To me, physics has hit a brick wall of sorts which has led me to question everything I have been taught.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
|
|
|
|
|
I'm not sure what you mean. It's not infinitesimally small, it's zero. The equation measures rest mass. They are saying if you change the definition you can use it the other way but you've changed the definition into something that makes a mess of things, not because the equation is correct and we just don't understand it, but because if you use that definition of mass then now you have to carry the second part of the equation that you left out into EVERYTHING ELSE to make it work. And the second part of that equation is messy.
There's no conspiracy here.
|
|
|
|
|
I'm not calling a conspiracy. Recent discoveries have led me to a questioning of fundamentals. Take the EM Drive for instance. The experiment has repeatedly shown that the drive is creating thrust from electromagnetic energy in a vacuum but that shouldn't be possible. I really goes against convention. The EM Drive is basically saying that a vacuum is not empty and there is something there for the EM Drive to push against. Since we might have gotten the concept of what's in the space around us wrong, what else have we gotten wrong?
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
|
|
|
|
|
I completely agree, all I'm saying is that faster than light travel doesn't make sense because speed of light travel is actually INSTANT. So, you are going to have to define what you mean by faster than light travel, because I don't know how you can get somewhere faster than instant.
|
|
|
|
|
True, there is no shorter distance then zero. To me, FTL is traveling in excess of 300,000 km/s.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
|
|
|
|
|
Yeah but....you are. You are travelling infinitely fast from your perspective. If you are travelling at the speed of light, your rocket ship can instantly arrive anywhere in the universe INSTANTLY. I think that's what you are missing about the whole relativity thing.
Pick the further thing in the universe you can think of. If you get your ship up to 99.99999% the speed of light, you will literally get there in a second.
|
|
|
|
|
Would you mean instantly from my point of reference or from an observer's point of reference?
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
|
|
|
|
|
Mike Marynowski wrote: Pick the further thing in the universe you can think of. If you get your ship up to 99.99999% the speed of light, you will literally get there in a second.
So, if you go slower than light, you travel further than light itself travels in a second?
I'm going to re-read this thread later on again, I must have missed some things 
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
|
|
|
|
|
Haha...the closer to the speed of light you go, the slower time becomes in your frame of reference. Very close to speed of light travel will get you anywhere in the universe instantly from your perspective because of time dilation. The faster you go from Earth to say Planet X, the more "slow motion" you look to someone observing you from Earth or Planet X, and the more sped up everything on Earth and Planet X looks to you. When you move at the speed of light relative to something, from your perspective you get there instantly, and that thing ages the amount of light-time away it is.
|
|
|
|
|
I get how time may appear relative, but not how that means you move instantly.
Mike Marynowski wrote: When you move at the speed of light relative to something, from your perspective you get there instantly, and that thing ages the amount of light-time away it is.
So, accelerating to lightspeed means time stands still from your own point of view?
I kinda doubt that 
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
|
|
|
|
|
|
Thanks - but the explanation isn't for me; I'd refute it, where most people seem to agree that it is correct
"So, when we move, at whatever speed, time slows down relative to a stationary observer."
..means it doesn't slow down for you if you move at that speed. So, again, I do not see how a photon travels instantly; not even from it's own perspective.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
|
|
|
|
|
I don't know what you mean by your first line.
When they say "it doesn't slow down for you" they are clarifying that it means that it's not like your spaceship will be moving in slow motion around you, it slows down from the reference frame of someone looking at you from where you left. That said, it does *appear* to you like you are travelling faster than 300,000km/s if you accelerated close to the speed of light towards an object because time will be moving very slow for you. If you take the trip distance as measured from a stationary point, divided by the time measured on a time taking device on your ship, it will certainly work out to considerably faster than the speed of light.
Relativity is fascinating and kind of awesome. You need to rethink how you look at everything for it to make sense.
|
|
|
|
|
Remember that there is also length contraction at close to the speed of light...so time slows, and length contracts to close to 0 as well. So the distance you have to cover when you are moving that fast, relative to your frame of reference, has now decreased to almost 0 as well. Perhaps that's an easier way of thinking about it from the perspective of the traveler.
|
|
|
|
|
|
This is what most people that complain about the speed of light as a limit don't fully comprehend. It's not a speed limit, so much as it is the universe's infinity. It takes infinite energy to get there for a massful object because IT IS infinity from the perspective of that object. An outside observer watching their friend fly off in a spaceship at close to the speed of light will see a completely frozen person moving at 300,000km/s. The person in the space ship will see everything around them aging millions of years in an instant. From their perspective, they can travel millions of light years in an instant at that speed and no laws regarding faster-than-light information travel are being broken because of relativity - the object they are moving towards is aging fast enough that the information technically still took millions of years to get there.
So the good news is that it could be possible for us to reach the furthest stars if we want to, as long as we are willing to leave behind an earth that will age millions of years when we arrive there.
|
|
|
|
|
Allow me to clarify for a second.
You see an awesome star you want to visit. You look into the night sky, and you see a supernova exploding. You want front row seats to this event, so you jump into your speed of light ship to go look at it.
You get there instantly, i.e. you have aged say 1 second, but when the ship stops at its destination you will have found that the supernova is gone. But how? You got there instantly!
Well that's simple...it's because the light you were looking at from Earth was 20 billion light years old, so the star actually exploded 20 billion years ago. You got there instantly, but "instantly" near the star is 20 billion years later than the light you are seeing from earth.
So if you don't believe in time travel, this is the fastest you can go. If the star exploded 20 billion years ago and it's now dead, you can't get to the star as it was 20 billion years ago. You can begin your journey now at infinite speed from your perspective and see how it looks NOW, 20 years after that supernova explosion that the light just got to you from.
If you have an alternate proposition, such as multiverse theory, then I'm all game, it's possible. But you can't have no time travel and faster than light travel, it just doesn't make sense. If you explain a theory of how that would work where I can picture it working then I'm all for it being possible, but as you've laid it out, it won't work.
|
|
|
|
|
I get what you are say, of course the star won't be there, you're 20 billion years too late. I get that. I guess what my brain isn't getting the jump from faster than light to instantaneous travel. To me faster than light is just that, traveling faster than 300,000 km/s (I'm ignoring the limitations on speed here).
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
|
|
|
|
|
Well then you're in luck - get up to close to the speed of light and you will get there instantly. If someone on earth is looking at you as you make your journey then it will look like you are moving at the 300,000km/s, but at that speed space in front of you is compressed so much that you get there instantly, and space behind you expands so much that 20 billion years will have passed on earth. Hence why "everything is relative" - there is no "absolute" frame of reference in the universe, everything changes in relation to everything else.
|
|
|
|
|
As interesting as this discussion has been, it's almost quitting time here so I'm off to enjoy the weekend. Have a pleasant evening.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
|
|
|
|
|
You too!
I should correct a previous statement - I meant to say time is compressed/expanded in front/behind you not space. That's what they are talking about when they refer to "time dilation" in relativity.
|
|
|
|
|
It's also important to note that for a given particle, ALL the parts of that equation are constants. A photon never changes the amount of energy it has - it gets absorbed and ceases to exist and then a new photon with more or less energy is emitted, but the energy lost in that transition is what adds or removes mass in the proportion identified in the e=mc^2 equation.
So, that equation has very little to do with our ability to move faster. M is mass in a restful frame of reference. It has nothing to do with your speed or energy in a moving frame of reference. All that equation is saying is that if you absorb e energy, something has to gain e/c^2 mass. Likewise, if something loses m mass, you have to emit mc^2 energy. It goes both ways and gets applied both ways. It isn't an interaction, it's the static state of a particle during it's lifetime from the perspective of rest mass / rest energy.
Adding kinetic energy to a particle to move it doesn't change it's parameters of e, m, or c from its frame of reference.
[EDIT: sorry fixed my equations had it all mixed up]
modified 10-Feb-17 12:59pm.
|
|
|
|
|
Foothill wrote: It's just a personal belief but I don't think that time travel is possible.
I surely hope so. Imagine children of the future having to learn 25 alternative histories that all happened.
Foothill wrote: I don't know where this time travel tangent arose but, while it makes for some very interesting stories, isn't really possible in my eyes.
It comes from multiple places, including the idea that time-space warps around a black hole. Hollywood has a need for time-travel to be possible.
Foothill wrote: In the theory, everything that has energy has mass and I tend to think of C as a universal drag coefficient. By lowering the amount of drag, particles would, in theory, lose mass and could travel faster. Even light would travel faster.
..which might be also a better explanation than the hyperexpansion of the early universe. If the velocity (or drag, depending on your viewpoint) can vary, then there is no longer a need for a rapid expansion.
Foothill wrote: By lowering the amount of drag, particles would, in theory, lose mass and could travel faster.
Yeah, same sentence quoted twice, but just wondering; how much "particles" are there in a human that has no mass?
Foothill wrote: The Higgs Boson (i.e. the god particle) is still just a theory.
Yes, but I haven't come up with anything better yet 
Foothill wrote: I have this written down at home but I do not have the academic credentials to get anybody in the field of physics to listen. I just tell it to people who might be interested to hear. With so little in the way of resources, I wouldn't be able to prove a word of it in a lab. It doesn't help that I'm not really very good at any mathematics above college algebra which is why I stay clear of graphics programming and security algorithm design. Sorry if some of this is academic speech as I don't know of any other way to describe it.
Are you familiar with open source? If you can describe your ideas and distribute it (in whatever form), it will be built upon by others. You can fill up any current gaps using "fairy dust", as lots of theories are incomplete.
My math-skills are at the level when I left school; junior second level education. That did not stop me from doing graphics programming, and I learned that you can do a 3D effect in a 2D environment by varying colors according to a set pattern. It was a painter that explained how to do that, not a maths-professor.
Describe what you think happens, and let someone else worry about the actual implementation. And explain it like you would to your kid - that way your audience is a bit larger than those who want to ignore it. Imagine you spending 10 years on learning something and meeting a passing travelling salesman who goes "that's all wrong actually" - I can image that it strikes them as "unlikely". And I can also imagine them being wrong 
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
|
|
|
|
|
Yea, you have to be jovial while exploring lines of thought that run counter to established beliefs.
If you want proof that time travel is impossible, thank history. Do you think for a second that if time travel were possible somebody would have already traveled back in time and assassinated Hitler in the trenches of France during WWI? We're human and I am certain some American would have done it just to prove that it could be done. 
I also don't think that black holes exist or at least not in the way that we currently think that they do. The point is that we use math to describe the universe but it doesn't work in reverse. While Hawking is a brilliant mathematician, just because you can prove something exists on paper does not mean that it exists in reality. I find it far more probable that the phenomenon that we think are black holes are really just the dead cores of the very first stars. Since black holes where accepted in mainstream physics, some people have gone to great lengths to try and prove it and thereby preventing other avenues of thought. I see them as very large bodies of normal matter with large proportions of radioactive material. The radioactivity will keep them very hot for a long time, continuously spewing radiation into space but other then that they behave like any other celestial object. Until we get close enough to one to take real-time measurements, it is still an educated guess either way.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
|
|
|
|
|
Foothill wrote: We're human and I am certain some American would have done it just to prove that it could be done.
Who said Hitler is not the result of that time-travelling?
Foothill wrote: I also don't think that black holes exist or at least not in the way that we currently think that they do. The point is that we use math to describe the universe but it doesn't work in reverse. While Hawking is a brilliant mathematician, just because you can prove something exists on paper does not mean that it exists in reality. I find it far more probable that the phenomenon that we think are black holes are really just the dead cores of the very first stars.
The simpeler explanation is the more probably one. Doesn't sound as exciting though.
Foothill wrote: I see them as very large bodies of normal matter with large proportions of radioactive material. The radioactivity will keep them very hot for a long time, continuously spewing radiation into space but other then that they behave like any other celestial object. Until we get close enough to one to take real-time measurements, it is still an educated guess either way.
In that case, I'll rather go for the romantic view that there is an entire universe inside every black hole
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
|
|
|
|
|
General 
News 
Suggestion 
Question 
Bug 
Answer 
Joke 
Praise 
Rant 
Admin 
Submit an article or tip
