JGeropoulas
The Living Force
.http://www.popsci.com/category/tags/space
Fastest Binary Star Pair: 310 Miles / Second
- Thread starter JGeropoulas
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.http://www.popsci.com/category/tags/space
How do they know how fast the Earth moves anyway in an absolute sense? I mean, isn't it just relative other objects in space? What if the entire cosmos is moving in the same direction, would that even be detectable or measurable?
Like when they say a car is going 60mph, that's ignoring the fact that the earth is moving 18 miles/sec, so the car is actually doing that too. But when they talk about Earth's speed, are they including the speed of our solar system orbiting around the galaxy (not sure if it does?), or the speed of our galaxy flying through space, or the speed of the galaxy cluster which we are part of flying somewhere all together, and so on? So is speed always a relative thing, and no one knows the "absolute speed" of the universe (or anything else for that matter)? If we can't see an object to measure movement against, do we just assume that there isn't one? Like how do we know our entire universe isn't all moving somewhere or orbiting something?
Look at this baffling article:
_http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/03/galaxies-exiting-universe-in-the-fast-lane/1
When they say galaxies moving at million miles per hour, do they mean relative to something else, and if so, what? Also, the fact that a bunch of galaxy clusters are all headed in the same direction is weird, for all we know it's another universe, maybe a bigger one, and maybe ours orbits around it or something. Then all the "speeds" we know of are relative to objects we can see in our own universe? And how does this jive with Theory of Relativity - does that theory provide the means to measure speed in absolute terms based on the mass of objects?
Ok so let's say one galaxy is moving at 2/3rd the speed of light in one direction, and another galaxy is moving at 2/3rd the speed of light in the opposite direction - neither exceeds the "speed of light" in absolute sense (again, here's that quirky absolute speed idea that I'm not sure exists), but if they were to measure their own speed relative to each other then they exceed it! If the universe was to expand at near the speed of light then each "edge" of the universe is moving at twice the speed of light away from the opposite edge!
So if speed is a relative concept and is only measured against something else, and we have no idea how fast we're moving in absolute terms, then what does this make of theory of relativity that states that nothing can exceed the speed of light in "absolute terms"? On the other hand, if this theory is correct does that mean speed *can* be measured in absolute terms? So there is such a thing as a point that's not moving at all - a point that's stationary in an absolute way, and if so, how can we know that? How can we measure speed without relying on other observable objects to measure against - objects that we arbitrarily define as "stationary" for our needs? Like when looking at speeds of cars the earth itself is arbitrarily defined as stationary since we don't care about its speed for our local needs. Otherwise even Bill Gates couldn't afford his speeding ticket for 18 miles/sec or 64,800 mph!
Like when they say a car is going 60mph, that's ignoring the fact that the earth is moving 18 miles/sec, so the car is actually doing that too. But when they talk about Earth's speed, are they including the speed of our solar system orbiting around the galaxy (not sure if it does?), or the speed of our galaxy flying through space, or the speed of the galaxy cluster which we are part of flying somewhere all together, and so on? So is speed always a relative thing, and no one knows the "absolute speed" of the universe (or anything else for that matter)? If we can't see an object to measure movement against, do we just assume that there isn't one? Like how do we know our entire universe isn't all moving somewhere or orbiting something?
Look at this baffling article:
_http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/03/galaxies-exiting-universe-in-the-fast-lane/1
When they say galaxies moving at million miles per hour, do they mean relative to something else, and if so, what? Also, the fact that a bunch of galaxy clusters are all headed in the same direction is weird, for all we know it's another universe, maybe a bigger one, and maybe ours orbits around it or something. Then all the "speeds" we know of are relative to objects we can see in our own universe? And how does this jive with Theory of Relativity - does that theory provide the means to measure speed in absolute terms based on the mass of objects?
Ok so let's say one galaxy is moving at 2/3rd the speed of light in one direction, and another galaxy is moving at 2/3rd the speed of light in the opposite direction - neither exceeds the "speed of light" in absolute sense (again, here's that quirky absolute speed idea that I'm not sure exists), but if they were to measure their own speed relative to each other then they exceed it! If the universe was to expand at near the speed of light then each "edge" of the universe is moving at twice the speed of light away from the opposite edge!
So if speed is a relative concept and is only measured against something else, and we have no idea how fast we're moving in absolute terms, then what does this make of theory of relativity that states that nothing can exceed the speed of light in "absolute terms"? On the other hand, if this theory is correct does that mean speed *can* be measured in absolute terms? So there is such a thing as a point that's not moving at all - a point that's stationary in an absolute way, and if so, how can we know that? How can we measure speed without relying on other observable objects to measure against - objects that we arbitrarily define as "stationary" for our needs? Like when looking at speeds of cars the earth itself is arbitrarily defined as stationary since we don't care about its speed for our local needs. Otherwise even Bill Gates couldn't afford his speeding ticket for 18 miles/sec or 64,800 mph!
combsbt
Jedi Master
SAO said:
This is not correct. Say you are in your own reference frame that you declare to be at rest. You see galaxy A going at 2/3 the speed of light in one direction and galaxy B going at 2/3 speed of light in the other. To determine the speed relative to eachother you have to use special relativity. Specifically the velocity addition formula given here: _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity-addition_formula
The formula for the velocity of one galaxy in the other galaxy's reference frame is:
u' = (u + v)/(1 + uv/c^2)
So in your example u = 0.6666c and v = 0.6666c. So the speed of one as seen in the reference frame of the other one is given as: (0.6666 + 0.6666)c / (1 + 0.6666*0.6666) = .9230c which is not faster than the speed of light.
Special relativity is kind of tricky because it's counter intuitive like that. Rarely do we get a chance to observe things at such speeds that it makes a difference in their combined velocities.
I was just reading about general and special relativities last night. It seems for these theories to "work", absolute speed cannot exist. The speed of light was measured to be the same regardless of whether the reference point was itself "moving". So if you're moving at near the speed of light yourself and shine a flashlight in any direction, the light from that flashlight apparently moves at the speed of light away from you no matter what direction you shine it.
But from what I read (again, maybe I misunderstood), the theory of relativity doesn't actually say that nothing can move faster than the speed of light - only that it cannot move faster than the speed of light as perceived from an external reference point to the moving object. In other words, if you were to move at 100 times the speed of light, everybody else would still see you as moving at the speed of light, but you yourself would be moving at 100 times its speed, and in order to reconcile that, special relativity necessitates that the speed of your time increases to 100 times of everyone else. So from your perspective, at 100 times the speed of light, it takes you 1 year to travel 100 light years. From the perspective of all other reference points, they see you moving at the speed of light, so for them it actually will look like you took 100 years to go 100 light years. So the traveling person ages only a year in this scenario, while everyone else ages 100 years. In other words, the "law" that nothing that has mass when at rest cannot go faster than the speed of light seems to be a relative law, which speaks only about perspective from a given reference point - not any "absolute" speed?
When you used my example of 2 galaxies moving at 2/3rd the speed of light in opposite directions, and used special relativity to calculate the "real" speed they are moving away from each other, which isn't 1.333 which you get from just adding the speeds together, but 0.9230, that really is counterintuitive, but isn't that only an effect of observing and "measuring" these speeds from a reference points?
Here's a layman's explanation I found, which I may be totally misunderstanding since I'm in way over my head here. But it's just so fascinating that I hope I can at least grasp a general idea without using formulas:
_http://www.perkel.com/nerd/relativity.htm
The text elaborates:
The text continues with the implications of what this difference in time speed would mean:
So if I understand correctly, the formula that says that your mass is infinite if you were to reach the speed of light isn't talking about absolute speed of light since absolute speed does not exist according to the theory of relativity, only relative speed. But in actuality, relative speed is "subjective speed" so wouldn't that mean that the infinite mass is also a subjective and relative observation, and not infinite mass in an absolute sense? If you're talking about speed as *perceived* by an observer. So it seems to me that if you keep accelerating something until you reach the speed of light, who is to say that YOU are the one moving and not everything else? Why is it *you* that should reach infinite mass, if from your perspective it is everything else that is moving at the speed of light relative to you, so wouldn't the entire universe, from your reference point, be approaching the speed of light, and therefore should also be approaching infinite mass? Again, considering there is no absolute speed, then if object A moves relative to object B, how do you know if it is in fact object A that is moving and not object B? Shouldn't it be equal - that it doesn't matter, since speed is in the eye of the beholder and relative, so you can just as easily argue that if "you" move at the speed of light then it is the rest of the universe which does the same relative to yourself! So from your perspective wouldn't the universe be reaching infinite mass? But in "reality" it isn't, so is that just an illusion and faster than light speed IS possible?
The text continues...
What about quantum physics where the observer who does the "measuring" completely changes the "reality" of what is being observed? Doesn't that, once again, demonstrate that measuring does NOT show us what is in fact real, all it shows us is what something appears to *us* from our subjective point of view. Neither time, space, nor even the structure and behavior of atoms and reality itself truly behaves as it is observed from our reference point, which necessary distorts and alters the objective reality for one reason or another. The more I learn about physics - on the macro scale and quantum scale, the more I get the impression that measurement is almost irrelevant to what objective reality is, and what is *real*, so I am truly perplexed how others get the opposite impression, that measurement somehow "defines" what is real and what exists.
This quote by the C's seems to apply profoundly:
We already know that speed, space, time - all are "relative". And indeed it's counter-intuitive because our linear minds like the "classical" absolute view of things, but even our current theories show it's most likely just an illusion. And it appears to me that when our own theories say it is "impossible" to do something (like go faster than light), it seems like we're actually talking about our very subjective reference point from our illusion, our perspective, our awareness of reality. I have a strong feeling that such declarations of "impossible" are easily circumvented if we are able to mathematically incorporate higher densities and the implications for space, time, distance, and other dimentions - and I think that such mathematical understanding is very difficult for us to obtain because our 3rd density brains are not wired to conceive of such notions, it is so counter-intuitive and so foreign to our minds that it is a struggle even trying to make sense of the things we have already observed. No wonder only a few people in the world delve into things like theoretical and quantum physics - it requires us to overcome our 3rd density wiring and that's why I think that so many scientists, including Einstein (at least his public theories) seem to be "outside the box" and yet simultaneously still stuck in the box because they are not able to fully discard their former thinking patterns that prevent them from making further progress.
That's probably why the "theory of everything" is so elusive - it necessitates a multidimentional understanding that doesn't allow us to retain our former thinking and somehow incorporate it. It doesn't allow us to glimpse into how things really work, like Einstein did, without going all the way, not just one foot in the pool and the other foot still on "solid ground" that the pool is telling us to be an illusion. Cuz then we end up with incomplete theories, or wrong conclusions based on our own theories, still clinging to what does not apply.
I think Ark has a good shot at it because of the total mind/body/emotion/soul cleansing that he's involved in as a result of being part of this group and with Laura. What other physicist on Earth has such a massive advantage? Seems like none, but such detoxification, deprogramming, and consciousness-buiding Work also seems like a necessity to truly fill in the blanks that others were unable to with their theories, and to make the impossible, possible.
But from what I read (again, maybe I misunderstood), the theory of relativity doesn't actually say that nothing can move faster than the speed of light - only that it cannot move faster than the speed of light as perceived from an external reference point to the moving object. In other words, if you were to move at 100 times the speed of light, everybody else would still see you as moving at the speed of light, but you yourself would be moving at 100 times its speed, and in order to reconcile that, special relativity necessitates that the speed of your time increases to 100 times of everyone else. So from your perspective, at 100 times the speed of light, it takes you 1 year to travel 100 light years. From the perspective of all other reference points, they see you moving at the speed of light, so for them it actually will look like you took 100 years to go 100 light years. So the traveling person ages only a year in this scenario, while everyone else ages 100 years. In other words, the "law" that nothing that has mass when at rest cannot go faster than the speed of light seems to be a relative law, which speaks only about perspective from a given reference point - not any "absolute" speed?
When you used my example of 2 galaxies moving at 2/3rd the speed of light in opposite directions, and used special relativity to calculate the "real" speed they are moving away from each other, which isn't 1.333 which you get from just adding the speeds together, but 0.9230, that really is counterintuitive, but isn't that only an effect of observing and "measuring" these speeds from a reference points?
Here's a layman's explanation I found, which I may be totally misunderstanding since I'm in way over my head here. But it's just so fascinating that I hope I can at least grasp a general idea without using formulas:
_http://www.perkel.com/nerd/relativity.htm
Here I want to comment that this is what I'm referring to. A "stationary observer" is the external reference point, and to him, nothing can go faster than the speed of light RELATIVE to that observer - so something traveling at 0.9c shining a light in front of itself would appear that the light is only going 0.1c to the stationary observer - since the total speed cannot be faster than 1c. But to the person flying at 0.9c and shining the light, the light still moves at 1c away, so it seems that the light from the flashlight is moving at a total of 1.9c, it's just not *seen* to do that from "stationary" reference points, and the reason the perspective is different, at least according to how einstein explains it, is that the speed of time must be different for the person flying at 0.9c and the person at "rest".
The text elaborates:
And because they do not agree on time, the "distance traveled" must be different as well in a given time period. For the person flying at 0.9c and shining the light in front of him at 1c, the light travels at 1.9c "total" so it ends up going farther in the same amount of "time" from the perspective of the moving observer as it does for a stationary observer, relativity says it must be because their time perspective is different, since it's the only variable left in the equation. In other words, since speed is distance/time and the speed of light is always the same no matter how fast the observer of the light is moving, that means the thing that makes light appear to go a farther distance (because an observer moving at 0.9c and shining a light in the same direction will actually see the light go almost twice as far in the same amount of time as an observer who isn't moving) cannot be a change in the speed variable, so it must be a change in the time variable.
The text continues with the implications of what this difference in time speed would mean:
If you can move infinitely fast through time, that means in "effect" your speed can be infinite too - you can get to the other side of the universe instantly, it's just that for all other observers it took you billions of years, but from your perspective it took a split second since your perspective of time was accelerated to a few billion times faster than for others.
So if I understand correctly, the formula that says that your mass is infinite if you were to reach the speed of light isn't talking about absolute speed of light since absolute speed does not exist according to the theory of relativity, only relative speed. But in actuality, relative speed is "subjective speed" so wouldn't that mean that the infinite mass is also a subjective and relative observation, and not infinite mass in an absolute sense? If you're talking about speed as *perceived* by an observer. So it seems to me that if you keep accelerating something until you reach the speed of light, who is to say that YOU are the one moving and not everything else? Why is it *you* that should reach infinite mass, if from your perspective it is everything else that is moving at the speed of light relative to you, so wouldn't the entire universe, from your reference point, be approaching the speed of light, and therefore should also be approaching infinite mass? Again, considering there is no absolute speed, then if object A moves relative to object B, how do you know if it is in fact object A that is moving and not object B? Shouldn't it be equal - that it doesn't matter, since speed is in the eye of the beholder and relative, so you can just as easily argue that if "you" move at the speed of light then it is the rest of the universe which does the same relative to yourself! So from your perspective wouldn't the universe be reaching infinite mass? But in "reality" it isn't, so is that just an illusion and faster than light speed IS possible?
The text continues...
Exactly but that's not "true", the observers were still moving relative to other objects! You can't just discount that as non-existant motion. So it's all just a math trick to explain how an observation can be reconciled with known laws of physics, and it seems that the explanation is very observer-dependant and very "relative", which apparently leaves a loophole to go faster than light in an "absolute" sense. It seems that just because an observer (in theory) should not be able to "see" you move from one edge of the universe to the other in a split second has nothing to do with whether you can do that in reality, even if that makes your "split second" drastically different than the observer's.
Remember how the C's said this issue with scientists assuming that only what can be measured is real is their big stumbling block? Well, doesn't the theory of relativity demonstrate that "measurement" has little bearing on reality - that the observer doing the measuring is subjective and isn't measuring "objective reality" - like the speed of something moving, if measured, is only "true" for the observer doing the measuring, but it has no bearing on what the objective reality is - what the "real" speed is as far as the traveler is concerned, whose time reference may be entirely different, which means spacial reference too because time/space are intimately linked.
What about quantum physics where the observer who does the "measuring" completely changes the "reality" of what is being observed? Doesn't that, once again, demonstrate that measuring does NOT show us what is in fact real, all it shows us is what something appears to *us* from our subjective point of view. Neither time, space, nor even the structure and behavior of atoms and reality itself truly behaves as it is observed from our reference point, which necessary distorts and alters the objective reality for one reason or another. The more I learn about physics - on the macro scale and quantum scale, the more I get the impression that measurement is almost irrelevant to what objective reality is, and what is *real*, so I am truly perplexed how others get the opposite impression, that measurement somehow "defines" what is real and what exists.
This quote by the C's seems to apply profoundly:
C's said:
We already know that speed, space, time - all are "relative". And indeed it's counter-intuitive because our linear minds like the "classical" absolute view of things, but even our current theories show it's most likely just an illusion. And it appears to me that when our own theories say it is "impossible" to do something (like go faster than light), it seems like we're actually talking about our very subjective reference point from our illusion, our perspective, our awareness of reality. I have a strong feeling that such declarations of "impossible" are easily circumvented if we are able to mathematically incorporate higher densities and the implications for space, time, distance, and other dimentions - and I think that such mathematical understanding is very difficult for us to obtain because our 3rd density brains are not wired to conceive of such notions, it is so counter-intuitive and so foreign to our minds that it is a struggle even trying to make sense of the things we have already observed. No wonder only a few people in the world delve into things like theoretical and quantum physics - it requires us to overcome our 3rd density wiring and that's why I think that so many scientists, including Einstein (at least his public theories) seem to be "outside the box" and yet simultaneously still stuck in the box because they are not able to fully discard their former thinking patterns that prevent them from making further progress.
That's probably why the "theory of everything" is so elusive - it necessitates a multidimentional understanding that doesn't allow us to retain our former thinking and somehow incorporate it. It doesn't allow us to glimpse into how things really work, like Einstein did, without going all the way, not just one foot in the pool and the other foot still on "solid ground" that the pool is telling us to be an illusion. Cuz then we end up with incomplete theories, or wrong conclusions based on our own theories, still clinging to what does not apply.
I think Ark has a good shot at it because of the total mind/body/emotion/soul cleansing that he's involved in as a result of being part of this group and with Laura. What other physicist on Earth has such a massive advantage? Seems like none, but such detoxification, deprogramming, and consciousness-buiding Work also seems like a necessity to truly fill in the blanks that others were unable to with their theories, and to make the impossible, possible.
Fascinating discussion. SAO, you wrote a lot of things toward the end of your last post that I was thinking reading through the thread. The whole "only what can be measured is real" is the crux of the matter isn't it. Measured by whom, with what instruments, perception capabilities, awarness level, assumptions, etc. Everything comes down to what is subjective and what is objective, and even here the concept of relativity comes into play. After all, we are currently subjective to varying but predominating degrees. But to move toward objectivity, we must travel through our own subjectivity. It is a processs, one of learning and thus increasing awareness.
JGeropoulas
The Living Force
I think you both would enjoy reading the intelligent banter about this article "New Computer Processes Faster Than The Speed of Light". Check it out on the PopSci site. My 2 cents worth is posted under my user name, "Gravitywaver". Check it out.
_http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-03/computer-processes-faster-speed-light
_http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-03/computer-processes-faster-speed-light
SAO said:
I think they talk about angular speed. It is measured in angular degrees per time unit. And if the circumference of the orbit is known, you can calculate meters per time unit (speed). It can be measured quite accurately when the stars in the distance -- which have a quite static position -- are used as a reference point.
