Questions about physics

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ModestGamer

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Jun 30, 2010
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Perceptual Bias is likely the leading cuase of fialure in understanding the nature of the universe. When you begin to attempt to explain things in the wrong way "by using 2d exmplaes for 3d behaviors" you essentially introduce a bad perceptual bias.

essentially. You've rigged the data for failure before you have begin to collect it. that bias of a 2d explination essentially permeates the entire work of most physicists.




What is the problem with using an analogy to allow us to have a better understanding of something that may be difficult to comprehend? The brain has evolved to deal with the type of environment in which we live, that is, an environment where things move slowly, are small on a cosmic scale, and are large on a quantum scale. Just because certain phenomena can't be instantly distilled so that everyone can immediately comprehend or understand, doesn't mean that the physics is complete bullshit as you constantly seem to imply. Certain aspects of the physical world may be necessarily difficult, if not impossible, for our brains to physically comprehend.
 

Ninjahedge

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2005
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MG, it does not really ruin it, but it makes others understanding of it flawed.

It only illustrates certain isolated behaviors, not all of them.

Here's another question. You MAY have read my bit about shooting a laser when you are near the speed of light, but what happens when you shoot a laser at something traveling TOWARDS you at near the speed of light WHILE you are also travelling near the speed of light?

Besides the heavy blue shift, would that beam be perceived by all to be traveling at the speed of light?

Kind of mind-twisting when you realize that your own rules only apply to the small set of parameters that you are defined by....
 

ModestGamer

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Jun 30, 2010
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MG, it does not really ruin it, but it makes others understanding of it flawed.

It only illustrates certain isolated behaviors, not all of them.

Here's another question. You MAY have read my bit about shooting a laser when you are near the speed of light, but what happens when you shoot a laser at something traveling TOWARDS you at near the speed of light WHILE you are also travelling near the speed of light?

Besides the heavy blue shift, would that beam be perceived by all to be traveling at the speed of light?

Kind of mind-twisting when you realize that your own rules only apply to the small set of parameters that you are defined by....

The question of the speed of light is interesting in that it imparts a resistance to speed in the medium it travels in.

I would bet a large sum of money on the firing of a beam of light from a object traveling at the speed of light "as we currently define" as such.

upon initial transmission the light would travel neatly at 2x the speed of light until sufficient deceleration forced it into traveling at a speed matching your own but still ahead of you.

Light shouldn't move as slow as it does, when viewed in a universal outlook.

Light is actually pretty damned slow. why doesn't it travel instantly ?
 
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Ninjahedge

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2005
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Well, one thing is that Mass and Time start playing around when you get to that speed, so there may be a nice little dimensional problem when you get to that stage (that that speed may only be the limit for anything PHYSICAL in this realm).

You might get something akin to a sonic boom, a light shock wave for anything reflecting or eminating from the vehicle, but I can't see how that would be possible unless we found some way to omit the traveling object itself from the rules of relativity (Its mass will increase to the point that t would require an infinite amount of energy to get that last little oomph to light speed, and time would be so slow that anythnig would appear to the travelers as zipping by).

I think the exponential and inverse formulas we use to express the behavior when we get to that point are flawed. I am wondering if the amount of energy needed to get something traveling to light speed is somehow related to the energy it posesses, the whole E=mc^2 thing.... K = 1/2mv^2, which then scales up by 2 to get to mc^2.... What if the answer was as simple as the energy required was an additional 1/2mv^2?


Somehow I think there is a theoretical physicist laughing at me right now! ;)
 

SMOGZINN

Lifer
Jun 17, 2005
14,359
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If an object is moving its mass is effected, so somehow mass and velocity are intertwined.
Actually, mass, velocity, space, and time are all intertwined. Sometimes what looks to us to be an increase in mass or decrease in velocity is actually in increase in time. It gets weird when we have to start talking about space and time as things that can change as well.

The thing is, Gravity does not SEEM to be effected by speed. I do not think it HAS a speed. I also think this is somehting that would be very difficult to measure due to a couple of factors.
This exactly.

We don't have a workable theory of gravity yet, but it seems that gravity is an inherent property of matter. Therefore it moves at exactly the same speed the matter moves. The thing to remember is that no gravity is ever created or destroyed, it has all been there since the beginning of the universe as a property of the matter that has always existed, so measuring the speed of gravity is probably not even a sensible question. It would be like asking to measure the speed of the area of an item.


I'm going back to the original post to answer one of those questions:

2) On a related note, with the 'gravity is not a force' model, how do you explain the effects of gravity on objects themselves; i.e. tidal forces?
You have the wrong idea of tidal forces. Tidal forces are the pinching of objects when two objects are interacting gravitionally, but due to the inverse square law one part of the object is being acted on much more powerfully then the other side. Tidal forces from the Earth/Moon are exactly what causes the tides, the moon is littleraly pinching the Earth causing it to become more oblong along the axis of the moon's orbit.
 

ModestGamer

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Jun 30, 2010
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our measurement of time is effected by velocity. that is to say that atomic motions slows with higher velocitys. There are 2 ways to look at this. increased mass or increase resistance to conduction.

treating space as a conductor would explain alot of its bizzare property.

Well, one thing is that Mass and Time start playing around when you get to that speed, so there may be a nice little dimensional problem when you get to that stage (that that speed may only be the limit for anything PHYSICAL in this realm).

You might get something akin to a sonic boom, a light shock wave for anything reflecting or eminating from the vehicle, but I can't see how that would be possible unless we found some way to omit the traveling object itself from the rules of relativity (Its mass will increase to the point that t would require an infinite amount of energy to get that last little oomph to light speed, and time would be so slow that anythnig would appear to the travelers as zipping by).

I think the exponential and inverse formulas we use to express the behavior when we get to that point are flawed. I am wondering if the amount of energy needed to get something traveling to light speed is somehow related to the energy it posesses, the whole E=mc^2 thing.... K = 1/2mv^2, which then scales up by 2 to get to mc^2.... What if the answer was as simple as the energy required was an additional 1/2mv^2?


Somehow I think there is a theoretical physicist laughing at me right now! ;)
 

Biftheunderstudy

Senior member
Aug 15, 2006
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I got a book out from my university library a while ago on the recommendation of an acquaintance, Faster than the Speed of Light, by Joao Magueijo. I've since read the book and returned it, and I have some questions related to the content of the book. Unfortunately I can't ask this acquaintance, as he's currently quite busy, so I thought I'd put these questions out here.

1) There is one passage in the book that says:


So basically, instead of gravity being a force, its influence upon objects' movement can be explained by its topology. On the opposite page it gives a diagram showing this where there is an object orbiting a gravity well, where the object is still traveling in a straight line, but because of the orientation of the space it is traveling through, it orbits the well; it is apparently experiencing no force.

This seems intuitively fine for objects already in an orbit, but what if you just put an object into the influence of the gravity well? It would accelerate towards the well, so it should be experiencing a force. But if gravity is not providing the force, then where does it come from?

2) On a related note, with the 'gravity is not a force' model, how do you explain the effects of gravity on objects themselves; i.e. tidal forces?

3) How fast does gravity travel?

4) If you had a two-body system, with the two bodies initially separated by a vast but finite distance and initially still relative to each other, how fast would the bodies get before they collided? From my limited knowledge of relativity the mass of the bodies would increase as their velocity increases; but I also seem to recall that in a gravitational field this would be offset by the fact that gravity acts more strongly on more massive objects (so, for example, a feather and an anvil in a vacuum would fall at exactly the same acceleration). How does this work?

5) There was quite a vague statement of how general relativity predicts that the universe must have been constantly expanding since 1 second after the Big Bang; could someone expand on that?

6) What evidence is there for the constancy of the speed of light? I remember reading of an article giving observational evidence for a varying fine structure constant, alpha; what evidence is there to suggest that the speed of light in vacuum is constant across all space and has been constant for the entire history of the universe? Or is it just an assumption?

7) On a related note to the two-body question, if you had two objects individually accelerated to, say, 0.6c, and moving directly towards each other, the velocities of body A relative to body B would not be 1.2c; it would be something below c. What's the equation that you would use to calculate this? I thought maybe you used relativistic momentum; in which case the relative speed would be 0.832c; can someone verify this?

I'm starting at the OP, mostly because there has been a lot of nay saying and misleading info so far. Most of this information is easily attainable on wikipedia and is largely correct.

1.
This is a fundamental thing about GR, that what we perceive gravity is due to the warping of space-time by an energy density. There is a very good thought experiment involving flat landers that I suggest you look up, but remember that it is an analogy and you have to use your own melon to link it back to our 3+1 dimensional universe.
The short version is that objects travel in straight lines along geodesics in a curved spacetime.

2.
Tidal forces work fine in GR. To go back to the rubber sheet analogy, the far side of your object will be "higher" than the near side and is where the whole tidal interaction will arise.

3.
The current theory is that gravity should travel at c. The reason for this is that the standard model predicts that massless particles should travel at c, and gravity is thought to be mediated by the graviton.
There are theories where it travels at higher or lower than c but they are mostly fringe.
The large gravity wave detectors should be able to pin this down once they are actually able to detect one.

4.
This should be calculable, but tedious using SR. Unless the objects are very big, the answer should be very close to the work done since that is pretty much the definition.

5.
Our most direct evidence of this is the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) and the Hubble flow of galaxies. We can measure the recessional velocity of galaxies as a function of redshift to get at this number.
Look up the CMB, big bang and hubble's law for more info.

6.
Our evidence for the speed of light being a constant is mainly that, observations. There are some math proofs which show that the wave speed given Maxwell's equations must be a constant. Again wiki has an interesting article on this, turns out that you can change the value of c all you want, but the dimensionless quantity alpha has to stay the same or physics might break.
The measurement of alpha that you mentioned being different is largely disputed since the same measurement with higher sensitivity gave results consistent with the current alpha. The measurement was done a quasar.

7.
I think this has been answered correctlly using the lorentz equations.
 

Paul98

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2010
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Well, one thing is that Mass and Time start playing around when you get to that speed, so there may be a nice little dimensional problem when you get to that stage (that that speed may only be the limit for anything PHYSICAL in this realm).

You might get something akin to a sonic boom, a light shock wave for anything reflecting or eminating from the vehicle, but I can't see how that would be possible unless we found some way to omit the traveling object itself from the rules of relativity (Its mass will increase to the point that t would require an infinite amount of energy to get that last little oomph to light speed, and time would be so slow that anythnig would appear to the travelers as zipping by).

I think the exponential and inverse formulas we use to express the behavior when we get to that point are flawed. I am wondering if the amount of energy needed to get something traveling to light speed is somehow related to the energy it posesses, the whole E=mc^2 thing.... K = 1/2mv^2, which then scales up by 2 to get to mc^2.... What if the answer was as simple as the energy required was an additional 1/2mv^2?


Somehow I think there is a theoretical physicist laughing at me right now! ;)


How exactly are you going to pass the speed of light by accelerating? It's simply not possible. Lets say you left earth, you could accelerate for as long as you wanted at a constant rate and in your frame light would still move at C, and when looking from earth you would still be moving slower than C.

Or think of it like this you accelerate away from earth at a constant speed and when you hit .99c with respect to earth you drop off a rock. That rock will be moving .99c with respect to earth. But you don't slow down the acceleration on your ship, and you accelerate till you are going .99c with respect to that rock. You drop another rock off. You can keep on doing this for as long as you want. But you will never move faster than C with respect to earth. Not only that but it takes the same amount of energy to accelerate to .99c away from earth as it does to accelerate to .99c away from one of the rocks. ( well almost as you do have to use energy to escape earth's gravity. )
 

Wizlem

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Jun 2, 2010
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I think the exponential and inverse formulas we use to express the behavior when we get to that point are flawed. I am wondering if the amount of energy needed to get something traveling to light speed is somehow related to the energy it posesses, the whole E=mc^2 thing.... K = 1/2mv^2, which then scales up by 2 to get to mc^2.... What if the answer was as simple as the energy required was an additional 1/2mv^2?


Somehow I think there is a theoretical physicist laughing at me right now! ;)

I'm not sure what you are getting at exactly but it seems you have some misconceptions about E=mc^2 and kinetic energy. If you delve into this deeper you will find 1/2mv^2 is simply a very good approximation of the relativistic kinetic energy mc^2-m0c^2 when v is very small compared to c.
 

Chiropteran

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Nov 14, 2003
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What is the problem with using an analogy to allow us to have a better understanding of something that may be difficult to comprehend? The brain has evolved to deal with the type of environment in which we live, that is, an environment where things move slowly, are small on a cosmic scale, and are large on a quantum scale. Just because certain phenomena can't be instantly distilled so that everyone can immediately comprehend or understand, doesn't mean that the physics is complete bullshit as you constantly seem to imply. Certain aspects of the physical world may be necessarily difficult, if not impossible, for our brains to physically comprehend.

Not just that, but the "space as a 2d rubber sheet" is a well known analogy used in MANY physics books and isn't something I just randomly made up.
 

Ninjahedge

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2005
4,149
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I'm not sure what you are getting at exactly but it seems you have some misconceptions about E=mc^2 and kinetic energy. If you delve into this deeper you will find 1/2mv^2 is simply a very good approximation of the relativistic kinetic energy mc^2-m0c^2 when v is very small compared to c.

Not really. I know the diff between the two, but the question is this, I know that mass, time and other quantities that are known to us as constant physical properties to us slow-moving folks here on Earth, but how do they interact at the end of the scale?

Our formulas seem to curve-fit thnigs like Mass increase and Time Dialation from the data that we have accumulated so far, but we are not exactly sticking a watch and a scale on a ship traveling at 0.99c. We are trying to figure things out by, I believe, countingthe number of vibrations, or the rate of decay of a radioactive element that has been accelerated to speeds that we, as humans, cannot practically reach.

But when several of our fundamental rules have been shown to only be constants within our own narrow range of limits, what happens to others?

We say that mass increases exponentially, but does it? Is there a point where it starts behaving differently as it approches the transition point between our own physical universe and some other we have yet to develop the means to explore?

What I am asking is if there is really any way to measure the true amount of energy needed to boost something material to the speed of light when even the means of acceleration (EM pulse) might not be capable of doing so? What if it WAS, when you added it all together, another 1/2mv^2? (or, in this case, 1/2mc^2) required as additional energy to move a particle from rest to the speed of light (1/2mc^2 for kenetic energy, and 1/2mc^2 to overcome its own material energy potential? Is matter simply an energy storage? Is it "cold" light?)


Ah well, just thinkin! ;)
 

Ninjahedge

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Mar 2, 2005
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Not just that, but the "space as a 2d rubber sheet" is a well known analogy used in MANY physics books and isn't something I just randomly made up.

That is because it is a well fit analogy.

But as said by several here, "analogies", by definition, are not the real thing. They are, usually, simplifications constructed to help communicate an idea or theory.

One always has to be careful how one extends their analogy to areas that may not directly apply. The same rule sets do not (such as picking the ball OFF the rubber sheet. Hey, you can do that in the REAL world, right?)

The one that is probably the problem here would be gravitational "lag" which you would see on a rubber sheet. Roll the ball fast enough and you have a chance it will stretch the rubber sheet in a non-symmetric (front to rear) fashion. You roll it fast enough, it may even go "under" the sheet ahead of itself and be sprung back!

This anaolgy might give fuel to the idea of the absolute limit to speed, but it may erroneously point to a non-existant cause and hint at things like gravitational lag due to the kinetic and elastic properties of the sheet that do not exist, as such, with 3D time/space (as we know it)....

Suffice to say, analogies are fun, but they can cause more confusion than understanding if you are not careful with them! ;)
 

Ninjahedge

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Mar 2, 2005
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How exactly are you going to pass the speed of light by accelerating? It's simply not possible. Lets say you left earth, you could accelerate for as long as you wanted at a constant rate and in your frame light would still move at C, and when looking from earth you would still be moving slower than C.

Like I said, there may be a problem with our own analogies.

First, what method of propulsion would we use for this? Our own means of chemical and even nuclear would not work in a system where time is slowing down.

Second, we are using car-with-open-window analogies by saying we can just drop a rock out the side window and accelerate. With the mass effects, would this be a problem for gravitational attraction? In "real" time would that rock just shoot back in the window?


The real problem is simple. We are trying to use tools from our own universe as a means to propel something beyond it. Een with the most advanced material science we have today, we cannot make a slingshot powerful enough to send someone to the moon (physical slingshot). I am not even talking about the problems with air friction and the like, but just the elastic properties and outright raw strength needed in the launching apparatus AND the availability of space and materials to do so...... And that is ignoring the fact that if you want to get a human to launch, you really can't be slinging this sucker at 30G's.

We need to get the proper tools to work here. No matter how far we have been able to jam that damn phillips head, you really can't put together that Ikea Bruunklageerskaaltek without the right sized allen wrench.
 

Paul98

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Jan 31, 2010
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Not really. I know the diff between the two, but the question is this, I know that mass, time and other quantities that are known to us as constant physical properties to us slow-moving folks here on Earth, but how do they interact at the end of the scale?

Our formulas seem to curve-fit thnigs like Mass increase and Time Dialation from the data that we have accumulated so far, but we are not exactly sticking a watch and a scale on a ship traveling at 0.99c. We are trying to figure things out by, I believe, countingthe number of vibrations, or the rate of decay of a radioactive element that has been accelerated to speeds that we, as humans, cannot practically reach.

But when several of our fundamental rules have been shown to only be constants within our own narrow range of limits, what happens to others?

We say that mass increases exponentially, but does it? Is there a point where it starts behaving differently as it approches the transition point between our own physical universe and some other we have yet to develop the means to explore?

What I am asking is if there is really any way to measure the true amount of energy needed to boost something material to the speed of light when even the means of acceleration (EM pulse) might not be capable of doing so? What if it WAS, when you added it all together, another 1/2mv^2? (or, in this case, 1/2mc^2) required as additional energy to move a particle from rest to the speed of light (1/2mc^2 for kenetic energy, and 1/2mc^2 to overcome its own material energy potential? Is matter simply an energy storage? Is it "cold" light?)


Ah well, just thinkin! ;)


Please go back and read my post. If you want to talk about things at .99c look at the large hadron collider. Those particles move very close to the speed of light( when compared to the earth ).

What you seem to be thinking is that there is some absolute velocity. That you can get close to the speed of light, and that your mass increases and strange things happen. This isn't really what is going on, when they talk about mass increases the actual mass of the object doesn't change. Asking how much energy is needed to reach the speed of light doesn't make sense. Read what I had posted before. What you really need to understand is that there isn't some over all frame that you check speed against. When you really understand this and how the basics work all those questions answer themselves and everything should become clear.
 

Paul98

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Jan 31, 2010
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Like I said, there may be a problem with our own analogies.

First, what method of propulsion would we use for this? Our own means of chemical and even nuclear would not work in a system where time is slowing down.

propulsion method doesn't matter, time doesn't do anything on the space ship. This is what you aren't understanding, Time is only slowing down when you look from earth. But not only does time slow for the space craft when compared to earth. But Earth's time is slowing down when compared to the space craft.

Second, we are using car-with-open-window analogies by saying we can just drop a rock out the side window and accelerate. With the mass effects, would this be a problem for gravitational attraction? In "real" time would that rock just shoot back in the window?

The real problem is simple. We are trying to use tools from our own universe as a means to propel something beyond it. Een with the most advanced material science we have today, we cannot make a slingshot powerful enough to send someone to the moon (physical slingshot). I am not even talking about the problems with air friction and the like, but just the elastic properties and outright raw strength needed in the launching apparatus AND the availability of space and materials to do so...... And that is ignoring the fact that if you want to get a human to launch, you really can't be slinging this sucker at 30G's.

We need to get the proper tools to work here. No matter how far we have been able to jam that damn phillips head, you really can't put together that Ikea Bruunklageerskaaltek without the right sized allen wrench.

When you drop the rock out the window it will look just like the way you were accelerating from earth. As I said before we are doing this with constant acceleration. This is not an analogy, it's given the conditions I posed what would happen. When you first put the rock out the window it would just look to accelerate away from you at the same rate you are accelerating.
 
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Ninjahedge

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2005
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Paul, if time passage goes to 0 as you approach the speed of light your physical means of propulsion will not be able to accelerate you anymore. It would take an infinitesimal amount of time to get that additional boost to push you over, so anything traveling at that speed would not be able to do it by our own laws and rules.

That object would need to be propelled by something that is not travelling at that speed so it CAN impart a force on it.

Also, as for things becoming clear, I know what you are talking about in regards to a relative measure of speed, but even with the Hadron collider:

Einstein Rescues Momentum Conservation
Einstein was so sure that momentum conservation must always hold that he rescued it with a bold hypothesis: the mass of an object must depend on its speed! In fact, the mass must increase with speed in just such a way as to cancel out the lower y-direction velocity resulting from time dilation. That is to say, if an object at rest has a mass M, moving at a speed v it will have a mass . Note that this is an undetectably small effect at ordinary speeds, but as an object approaches the speed of light, the mass increases without limit!

http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/mass_increase.html

Deciding that masses of objects must depend on speed like this seems a heavy price to pay to rescue conservation of momentum! However, it is a prediction that is not difficult to check by experiment. The first confirmation came in 1908, measuring the mass of fast electrons in a vacuum tube. In fact, the electrons in an old style color TV tube are about half a percent heavier than electrons at rest, and this must be allowed for in calculating the magnetic fields used to guide them to the screen.

Just read more there to see what else theey are saying.

More info on SoL:

http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/qa_gp_sl.html

Another on Relative Mass:

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Physics-1358/Speed-light-6.htm
 

Wizlem

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Jun 2, 2010
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Our formulas seem to curve-fit thnigs like Mass increase and Time Dialation from the data that we have accumulated so far, but we are not exactly sticking a watch and a scale on a ship traveling at 0.99c. We are trying to figure things out by, I believe, countingthe number of vibrations, or the rate of decay of a radioactive element that has been accelerated to speeds that we, as humans, cannot practically reach.

The formulas used in special relativity were not curve fit on any data. The whole idea of things changing size relative to the way you are moving was postulated before einstein to fit measured results but when Einstein came along he gave 2 simple postulates which have nothing to do with making the formulas fit the data. From these 2 postulates(and conservations of energy and momentum) you get all the equations.
 

Paul98

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Jan 31, 2010
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Paul, if time passage goes to 0 as you approach the speed of light your physical means of propulsion will not be able to accelerate you anymore. It would take an infinitesimal amount of time to get that additional boost to push you over, so anything traveling at that speed would not be able to do it by our own laws and rules.

The speed of light compared to what?

On the ship there is no difference noticed, it doesn't take any more energy for the ship to continue accelerating at a constant speed when you are on the ship. It's when you compare this to an outside frame of reference that that they see you accelerating slower and slower. Yet on the ship they notice no change in acceleration. So I can use the exact same propulsion I was using at the start of the trip, and it will work exactly the same way it did when I started. It's only on earth that they see things slowing down.

Here are a couple things that you might find interesting. If you are on earth and I am on a space ship we are moving away from each other at .999c. To me everything on earth is moving really slow. To you everything on my ship is moving really slow. Yet to you on earth everything is moving normally, and to me everything on my ship is moving normally.

http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/mass_increase.html

Einstein Rescues Momentum Conservation
Einstein was so sure that momentum conservation must always hold that he rescued it with a bold hypothesis: the mass of an object must depend on its speed! In fact, the mass must increase with speed in just such a way as to cancel out the lower y-direction velocity resulting from time dilation. That is to say, if an object at rest has a mass M, moving at a speed v it will have a mass . Note that this is an undetectably small effect at ordinary speeds, but as an object approaches the speed of light, the mass increases without limit!

Once again there are two types of mass, there is the rest mass which doesn't change from any frame of reference. And there is relative mass. So the earth sees the object gain more and more mass due to the addition of velocity. Thus from the earth it sees there needs to be more and more energy to continue to try and accelerate the object. It's basicly how the formula is used. Such as if you look from different frames of reference the relative mass will be different for each of them depending on your speed compared to them.


If you want to get some real answers head over here

http://www.physicsforums.com/

Go to the Special & General Relativity section, and do a search for the questions you have or just make a new post. All the problems you are having will be answered.
 

Ninjahedge

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Mar 2, 2005
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Einsteins formulas fit the curves.

Whether he fit them TO it or they fit IT, they fit each other.

Now, what happens when we get close enough to light, in first person experience, that we can actually plot points?

Like the scientists postulating about the elimination of certain physical laws as the temperature increases, there may be tiny factors that do not come into play until you get close to the speed of light.....


Perspective change. Is it possible that we view the object getting a greater relative mass NOT because of mass itself, but because of time? Is it possible that the force we are applying is also effected by the time dilation?

I know, it is SUPPOSED to be stationary emission source, but do the forces of EM vary in relation to the object they are applied to, not the object they are coming from? Is our perceived increase in mass NOT an increase in mass, but more of a dilution of Energies that are measured by Force x Time?

If that was the case, then maybe Gravity does not change for a particle, just the application of it and its perception in a distortion of Time...
 
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Ninjahedge

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(PS, Paul, I am not trying to refute you on anything here. Please do not misunderstand me. I know that some forums can be quite confrontational on some topics.....)
 

ModestGamer

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You guys are so obsessed with the model of the oberserver your missing the forest for the tree's. the observer is irrelevant, what is of note is atomoic motion being affected by kinetic energy.
 

Paul98

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(PS, Paul, I am not trying to refute you on anything here. Please do not misunderstand me. I know that some forums can be quite confrontational on some topics.....)

I am trying to help you understand what is going on and how things work. You are making the same mistakes that many people do when first trying to learn relativity.
 

Wizlem

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I think the thing thats hard to grasp is you don't change at all, the universe changes around you. Even electric fields start to turn into magnetic fields. On top of that, if you imagine going the speed of light and then someone starts chasing you, are you still going the speed of light once they've made a little progress? To them you wouldn't be or would you? And then you go right into a black hole only you find that it's a long way to the center once you think you are already there.