The Space thread

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
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I'm a little stupid myself. I'd be lying if I said I understood everything, but I understand enough to get something from it, and I'm hoping my understanding increases with exposure. A lot of it is a real mindfuck though. It's so far removed from the experiences of daily life.
 
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SteveGrabowski

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Oct 20, 2014
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My favorite book on spacetime


It's not very hard mathematically; you'll occasionally have to use high school calculus, but it's mostly high school algebra. But it's both genuinely readable while being rigorous and if you do the problems at the end of each chapter you'll not only learn the basics of special relativity but instead truly master it. Once you go to large reference frames where spacetime curves and you have gravity you get general relativity which is quite a pain mathematically but special relativity isn't too bad. As long as you remember some basic high school physics (conservation of momentum and conservation of energy) and high school algebra such as the law of cosines that shows up a couple of times you'll understand really cool things like the doppler shift of light and the twin paradox.

One thing I really like about this book is it measures time in units of distance (e.g. the distance light travels in that time) which means you're effectively setting the speed of light to c=1 so not obscuring all your equations with all these factors of c. It's explained why it makes sense to do this in a pretty cool way in analogy with two groups of land surveyors, one who finds north via a compass in the daytime and one who surveys at night and finds north via the north star.

I haven't read the second edition but have heard the first was much better so I bought it instead back in the day when I first wanted to learn this material.

Before I started working remote used to take this book and just do problems from it for fun in my downtime when I wasn't busy at work until I pretty much finished the book lol.
 
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SteveGrabowski

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Wow I am not smart enough to watch this series lol

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Handwavey physics videos make me tune out too. The natural language of a lot of physics is math and it's really hard to understand it independent of the math. Quantum mechanics is a bunch of linear algeba and partial differential equations with some probability too and then general relativity is a bunch of differential geometry and good luck making sense of either without the math.
 
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thestrangebrew1

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Dec 7, 2011
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I'm till trying to understand time dilation. Can't wrap my head around it. I mean, I can sort of picture it, but it doesn't compute for some reason lol
 

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
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Handwavey physics videos make me tune out too. The natural language of a lot of physics is math and it's really hard to understand it independent of the math. Quantum mechanics is a bunch of linear algeba and partial differential equations with some probability too and then general relativity is a bunch of differential geometry and good luck making sense of either without the math.

I have math dyslexia, I have to use a calculator to do a simple tip LOL
 

herm0016

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Feb 26, 2005
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I make space plumbing at work. specifically, Waveguides, antennas, and ground station hardware for lots of commercial and government programs. some of the coolest stuff is for the deepspace network ground stations which have to handle a ridiculous amount of power on TX and a minuscule amount on RX. waveguides with cryocooling, built of solid copper.
 

[DHT]Osiris

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Dec 15, 2015
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I'm till trying to understand time dilation. Can't wrap my head around it. I mean, I can sort of picture it, but it doesn't compute for some reason lol
Because it's inconsistent with our system of logic. One of those results of mathematics that you have to accept as reality because it's observable.

Near high gravity objects or near the speed of light (for similar reasons) time moves slower for you than someone not near those things/going that fast. If they could 'see' you, you'd be moving exceedingly fast, and to you everyone else would move exceedingly slowly. The effect becomes more dramatic the closer/faster you go.
 
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nakedfrog

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Apr 3, 2001
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I make space plumbing at work. specifically, Waveguides, antennas, and ground station hardware for lots of commercial and government programs. some of the coolest stuff is for the deepspace network ground stations which have to handle a ridiculous amount of power on TX and a minuscule amount on RX. waveguides with cryocooling, built of solid copper.
I was satcom in the military, ended up at a terrestrial satellite dish site so I knew a bit about this stuff... thirty years ago :p
 

SteveGrabowski

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Oct 20, 2014
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I do not know how much of this is true but when people want to go into space. It is interesting to watch.


That first video uses a kind of annoying form of the Lorentz transformation

x' = γ(x - vt)
t' = γ(t - vx/c^2)

with γ=1/(1-v^2/c^2)^(1/2)

It's more clear to take β=v/c and write
ct' = γ(c t - β x)
x' = γ(x - β ct)

to get everything in units of distance. Or even better just make time measured in meters so that the speed of light is
c = (1 meter)/(1 meter [of light travel time]) = 1

and it becomes

t' = γ(t - β x)
x' = γ(x - β t)
with γ=1/(1 - β^2)^(1/2)

and you really see the symmetry. Although the easiest way to use the Lorentz transformations is to write the speed β = tanh θ for the primed frame relative to the unprimed frame so that we get

t' = t cosh θ - x sinh θ
x' = x cosh θ - t sinh θ

which really makes clear the hyperbolic geometry of spacetime while also giving an easier way to do calculations most of the time. Makes it look almost like the hyperbolic geometry version of a rotation in Euclidean geometry and encodes information about the spacetime interval (the spacetime analog to distance in Euclidean geometry) in it.

Anyways, that first video isn't a paradox any more than Zeno's Paradox, which essentially argues that 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + ... = ∞ when really 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + ... = 1 and that Lorentz transformation above makes all the crazy stuff in special relativity make sense.

What's really cool is you can use special relativity to mathematically prove that a wire carrying a current absolutely must induce a magnetic field without having to know any theory whatsoever about magnetism. You can mathematically derive it just using the laws of electrostatics (eg electric fields from charged particles at rest) and the Lorentz transformation. Purcell's awesome Electricity & Magnetism book shows it and it's one of the most incredible things I have ever read.

Einstein's original paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" is a pretty cool read and even derives the doppler effect for light. Then his next paper is like two or three pages long and he derives the rest energy E=mc^2 from the doppler effect.
 
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SteveGrabowski

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I have math dyslexia, I have to use a calculator to do a simple tip LOL
What's the opposite of that? Like having dyslexia for anything not math? I must have that, all my gen ed requirements in school were like pulling teeth. Just wanted to hang myself reading Chaucer in my required writing class lol.
 

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
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What's the opposite of that? Like having dyslexia for anything not math? I must have that, all my gen ed requirements in school were like pulling teeth. Just wanted to hang myself reading Chaucer in my required writing class lol.

I made it halfway through college in advanced programming before switching to computer administration due to math comprehension issies. Vibe-coding and game engines like Unreal & Unity have totally changed the landscape, however! I can build an app in ChatGPT, skin it in ChatGPT, and have something fairly operation in pretty short order these days!

Not everyone has a physical reaction to it, but I get a FAHN response (FAtigue, Headache, Nausea). Doing math literally makes me angry lol:


I have Executive Dysfunction due to Inattentive ADHD, does any of this sound familiar from your experience?


It took me 14 years to finish my 2-year degree. I can do my job at work just fine, but school is just a real bear for me!
 
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Muse

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Jul 11, 2001
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I made it halfway through college in advanced programming before switching to computer administration due to math comprehension issies. Vibe-coding and game engines like Unreal & Unity have totally changed the landscape, however! I can build an app in ChatGPT, skin it in ChatGPT, and have something fairly operation in pretty short order these days!

Not everyone has a physical reaction to it, but I get a FAHN response (FAtigue, Headache, Nausea). Doing math literally makes me angry lol:


I have Executive Dysfunction due to Inattentive ADHD, does any of this sound familiar from your experience?


It took me 14 years to finish my 2-year degree. I can do my job at work just fine, but school is just a real bear for me!
I awakened to schooling in junior high. The pure logic necessary to comprehend the math classes was a tool that was accessible to me. I wanted to have success academically, so I pursued what I was good at. The other courses I wasn't good at until the end of high school. Then I started to get at what they were about. But by that time my ability to understand courses that used mathematics really kicked in. Physics and chemistry in high school were easy for me, I just got it. Took that to the university and I aced the freshman curriculum. But when physics started getting too abstract and mathematics based I began losing interest. Many areas of higher education did interest me and I took a lot of elective coursework. I changed my major from physics to math. Some math courses were easy for me but for some reason the topology class I took mystified me. Could have been the professor, maybe the textbook or the fact that it was by far the largest math class I ever took. It was an auditorium. The professor was far away! I felt no connection. I passed but never felt like I knew what was going on and why. There didn't used to be a reason to even graduate. You could just take elective courses but they changed the rules and I was forced to focus on graduating at some point. Meantime, I'd dropped out and come back several times. I eventually did fulfill the requirements and graduated in math. None of this provided me with a vision of a career. That didn't bother me because I didn't want to become a <whatever>, I just wanted to learn about and do things that fascinated me. I eventually learned database programming at a pretty high level, which IS interesting.
 
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Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
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I awakened to schooling in junior high. The pure logic necessary to comprehend the math classes was a tool that was accessible to me.

The best way I can describe it is "walking uphill in a landslide". When I use that part of my brain, it triggers a stress response. I have to draw flowcharts & learn things by heart for even really basic things like compounding interest. But I can build a fiber network with virtual servers in my sleep lol. It's specifically numbers & number-related logic that triggers it. Thank goodness for ChatGPT lol!
 

Muse

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Jul 11, 2001
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It took me 14 years to finish my 2-year degree. I can do my job at work just fine, but school is just a real bear for me!
It took me 11 years to finish my 4 year degree. I have to count on my fingers every time I want to know how many times I dropped out, reapplied, dropped out, etc. There's something to be said for that syndrome. You don't appreciate the sequestering of campus life if you're stuck in it too long. Stints outside it give you perspectives that are helpful.
 
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Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
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The best way I can describe it is "walking uphill in a landslide". When I use that part of my brain, it triggers a stress response. I have to draw flowcharts & learn things by heart for even really basic things like compounding interest. But I can build a fiber network with virtual servers in my sleep lol. It's specifically numbers & number-related logic that triggers it. Thank goodness for ChatGPT lol!
Calculators were a boon for the arithmetically, mathematically challenged. In high school the STEM people, some of them anyway, used to carry around slide-rules. I had a pretty nice one. They came in cheap and fancy forms.

I'm not as nimble with numbers as I'd like to be. I often reach for pen and paper to figure out stuff I think I should be able to handle in my head in 2 seconds. Anyway, I know how to deal with that stuff. My math background does help in every day life many times.
 
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