Special Theory of Relativity??

[MitaPi]

Can someone explain einstein's theory of relativity? Feel free to go all out on this one. I need something to kill some time with. ^_^ And what better way to kill time than to try and understand that which you dont.

[GT40_GearHead]

think this should do it:;:
http://www.astronomynotes.com/evolutn/grwarp.gif

[MitaPi]

Does this have anything to do with E=MC2? What does that stand for anyways? Thanks for that cool diagram type thingy... I wonder how he came to this conclusion?

[OvRiDe]

Does this have anything to do with E=MC2? What does that stand for anyways?

It appears that GT posted information on General Relativity. E=MC^2 has to do with Special Relativity, etc etc...

Energy = Mass X C^2 (The speed of Light in a vacuum.)
Thats the easy part to remember.. heh For more information, Wikipedia is always a good place to start an investigation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity

[Slug Toy]

uh oh, here i come. youve done it now. i cant back down from something like this.

heres a poser. the fastest thing currently known is the speed of light. supposedly, to get an object to travel at the speed of light, it takes increasing amount of energy (an infinite amount in fact). so we cant possibly make anything go the speed of light because we cant possibly have enough energy. so then... how much energy does a photon have? and why cant we get an infinite reservior of energy from the sun, or even a single photon? and why does light travel at the speed of light if there shouldnt be enough energy in the universe to do that?

[Airbozo]

But light doesn't have any mass... (or so minute that it is not measurable), nor does light generate friction.

Anyway this is what I remember frrom physics class...

But then again, supposedly everything has some mass and would therefore generate some sort of friction.

I guess it has been too long to remember some of this, but this is what I remember.

[Slug Toy]

theres a fairly large and boring debate in the physics world over whether light is a particle or is energy. it travels in waves and can be slowed down just like matter, yet it is very fast like energy.

personally, it makes more sense to me to think of light as a subatomic particle like a quark (to many quarks, even cement walls are like large mesh screens with plenty of space to slip through). quarks are fast and can travel through quite a few things that normal matter cant... and many of them come from nuclear reactions or atomic collisions (cough cough... the sun).

if you start thinking about this type of stuff too long, you start asking the right questions (or maybe they're the wrong questions in disguise). when you start asking those question and then try to answer them... the world melts down (just like my pi=infinity stunt.... i SHOULD have destroyed trigonometry that day, but evidently im the only one who thinks that way).

so think about it... is light matter or energy? how much energy is in light and how do you quantify it... as a unit of mass? if something like supercooled sodium can slow light down (it really can) does that mean it starts absorbing infinite amounts of energy? what did i have for breakfast today?

oh ya... i didnt wake up until lunch.. thats right.

[silverdemon]

if you think about something for very long, you will always get to something that is not right or that doesn't work....

you should try, works every time ;)


so think about it... is light matter or energy? how much energy is in light and how do you quantify it... as a unit of mass? if something like supercooled sodium can slow light down (it really can) does that mean it starts absorbing infinite amounts of energy?

light is energy, imagine this:
you have a lightbulb, you put in elektricity (energy) and what comes out??

heat and light...

now there is some thermodynamics law that states that energy can't dissipate into nothing, it can transfer to some other kind of energy, but it'll always remain energy in some form...

so that leaves light as energy, because the amount of heat from the lightbulb is less energy than the elektricity that you put in...

or maybe I am missing something... it's late over here ;)

[Slug Toy]

ight is energy, imagine this:
you have a lightbulb, you put in elektricity (energy) and what comes out??

heat and light...

well it can get a little more complicated than this. theres alpha and beta particles that get emitted sometimes. unfortunately its been a good 2 years since ive touched on atomic principles and radiation, but i think im going to refresh myself because this is interesting.

yes, there are laws in thermodynamics that state energy cant be created or destroyed. tell that to the sun and einstein though. those laws fly in the face of E=MC^2. im sure theres probably some sort of special law to compensate for this fact, but i havent found it, and at the lowest level, the fact remains that thermodynamics and relativity dont like each other. quantum stuff is a good go-between for the two, and unfortunately you have to go there to answer questions about the characteristics of light. its complicated stuff to say the least. the principles themselves (like tunneling) are simple to understand, but the equations to prove this are murder.

anyways, what am i getting at? what im trying to say is... why cant energy be turned into a small amount of mass that takes form as a quark or some other subatomic particle? the mass is nearly negligible, allowing for the high speeds, and there may be some energy left over to explain the heat from a light bulb. once again... ill look into this though.

<EDIT> to further ramble... remember all the way back to gearhead's little diagram? light bends around stars because "the gravity of the star disrupts the space-time bla bla bla". i dont consider it that way (hence me being very stupid even though i know so much about everything). i for one think that this bending light further supports the "light is matter" argument. think about it for a second... if it has mass, it will be affected by gravity. i wll now direct you to hacums razor.

another thing i just remember. they did some tests a while back. they took a red laser on the top of a building and shot it down to the ground. they then observed that the laser had a little bit more blue in it. i look at this phenomenon this way... red is a low energy and blue is a high energy (hopefully everyone knows that this is a universal truth). therefore perhaps the red light is travelling slower and blue light is travelling faster. THEREFORE that means the red laser was accelerating towards the earth... meaning it was affected by gravity. my god, is it starting to sound like i know what im talking about?

[DaveW]

Everything is energy. Einstein's equation concerns the energy held in the atomic mass of a particle. The energy in the particle is equal to the square of the speed of light squared multiplied by the mass.

Light beams, or photons, are both particles and waves at the same time. It's called Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. You can't measure both, which leads to people citing that this is proof that there exists millions of dimentions co-existing in the same spot: obviously, we can only see one, the way we can only see light as a wave if it has a wavelength, or a particle if it has a mass. They're still trying to figure this one out.

Dear god man, next time you're bored, start hopping wikipedia. Click 'random page', then click links through the pages, learning as you go. It's always good fun when your bored.

-Dave

[Slug Toy]

Everything is energy. Einstein's equation concerns the energy held in the atomic mass of a particle. The energy in the particle is equal to the square of the speed of light squared multiplied by the mass.

yes, but then you can turn that around and say everything is mass as well. if you can turn mass to energy, you can reverse it, just like solving for a variable. i get the feeling you dont absolutely mean it the way you wrote it.. but im just posing that argument.


Light beams, or photons, are both particles and waves at the same time. It's called Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. You can't measure both, which leads to people citing that this is proof that there exists millions of dimentions co-existing in the same spot

bingo, thats what i was looking for. good old heisenberg... the master of compromise. i still lean towards light being matter though.

yes, theres plenty of "proof" to support both cases, but my logic leads me to believe that theres mass in this light. who knows.... maybe thats why the universe is expanding at near the speed of light... everything is being pushed by light itself, and when all the stars burn out, everything will come crashing back together. maybe its why stars are so dense... the light coming off exerts an equal and opposite force on the emissive matter (just like firing a gun), which causes everything to compress a lot. maybe its why earths magnetic field gets distorted in the presence of the sun's rays. uh oh, sounds like a hypothesis is creeping up on me.

boy this is a loaded topic. too many things to argue about at once. see why its so damned boring? its not boring for me, but i bet to the average person who doesnt care or think about this kind of thing enough... its pretty damn boring.

[CanaBalistic]

(hence me being very stupid even though i know so much about everything).
A man with genius is unendurable if he does not possess at least two things in addition: gratitude and cleanliness. :D


The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more you must still seduce the senses to it....

Quantum Physics, the physics of posibilities: What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399877/)

Doctors, Physicists, and Scientists in film:


David Albert PhD:
Professor & Director of Philosophical Foundations of Physics. Columbia University

Dr. Joe Dispenza DC:
Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine, Life University

Amit Goswami PhD:
Professor of Physics, University of Oregon. Senior scholar in residence Institute of Noetic Sciences

John Hagelin PhD:
Professor of Physics and Director of the institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at Maharishi University

Stuart Hameroff MD:
Professor of Anesthesiology and Psychology, and Associate Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona

Dr. Miceal Ledwith:
Formerly Professor of Systematic Theology at Maynooth College in Ireland

Daniel Monti MD:
Director of the Mind-Body Medicine Program at Thomas Jefferson University

Andrew B. Newberg MD:
Assistant Professor Department of Radiology, and staff physician in Nuclear Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania

Candace Pert PhD:
Holder of patents for modified peptides

Ramtha:
Master Teacher - Ramtha School of Enlightenment Channeled by JZ Knight

Jeffrey Satinover MD MS:
Past President of the C.G.Jung Foundation of New York, and William James Lecturer in the Psychology and Religion at Harvard University

William Tiller PhD:
Professor Emeritus of Material Science and Engineering, Stanford University

Fred Alan Wolf PhD:
Ph.D in Physics from U.C.L.A. Physicist, lecturer, and writer

If this movie doesnt boggle your mind, your dead, or are you?

SlugToy: Required viewing, watch the "wedding" scene!

Foot Note: The movie doesnt touch base on the effects of light but it'll enlighten you on the subject of matter.

[MitaPi]

theres a fairly large and boring debate in the physics world over whether light is a particle or is energy. it travels in waves and can be slowed down just like matter, yet it is very fast like energy.

personally, it makes more sense to me to think of light as a subatomic particle like a quark (to many quarks, even cement walls are like large mesh screens with plenty of space to slip through). quarks are fast and can travel through quite a few things that normal matter cant... and many of them come from nuclear reactions or atomic collisions (cough cough... the sun).

if you start thinking about this type of stuff too long, you start asking the right questions (or maybe they're the wrong questions in disguise). when you start asking those question and then try to answer them... the world melts down (just like my pi=infinity stunt.... i SHOULD have destroyed trigonometry that day, but evidently im the only one who thinks that way).

so think about it... is light matter or energy? how much energy is in light and how do you quantify it... as a unit of mass? if something like supercooled sodium can slow light down (it really can) does that mean it starts absorbing infinite amounts of energy? what did i have for breakfast today?

oh ya... i didnt wake up until lunch.. thats right.

Cant light be matter AND energy? or is that not possible? Why is there a debate on whether its matter OR energy? Why not both? lol I feel so confused now...

[simon275]

There is a thing called Wave-particle duality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave-particle_duality

Where Light can act as both particles and waves Ive done lab expriements to prove both. With having a cathode gun and shooting partiles down a tube and making it turn a very small glass padel means that light is acting as a particle but then light can be defracted like a wave.

The wiki article explains all.

I didnt read the last post proerly but I leave the beging of my post in.

Light is matter and energy and it acts as a wave and a particle. This physics stuff aint for the faint hearted.

[CanaBalistic]

Some Light Reading
Our sun is an average sized star and it has been burning
for about 4.5 billion years. Few people think of the sun as
a nuclear furnace and fewer realize this is a source of
nuclear energy that does not pollute. About four million
tons of the sun's matter turns into energy every second and
only one-billionth of the sun's light ever strikes the
Earth.

At the equator the Earth receives about one kilowatt per
square meter of solar energy. A kilowatt is 1000 watts of
or the amount of energy needed to light 10 one-hundred watt
bulbs.

Light is energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation.
Light is the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
All electromagnetic radiation has the properties of both a wave and a particle. It is most useful to consider this radiation as a wave with the following properties:
*Velocity
*Wavelength
*Frequency

Light waves, as with all electromagnetic waves, require no transport medium and so can travel through a vacuum.
Electromagnetic waves have diffrent frequencies and wavelengths but the same velocity: 3x10(to the power of eight) m/s

All waves can undergo the following effects:
Refelection - Change of direction at a surface
Refraction - Deflection at the boundary of a surface
Defraction - Deflection at apertures or the edges of objects

When light hits an opaque surface it either undergoes reflection or absoption. There are two distinct types of reflection:
Specular Reflection - Each light beam incident on the surface is reflected in one direction only so that the angle of reflection equals the angle of incidence.
Diffuse Reflection - Reflected light is scattered in all directions.

Light absorbed at a surface cannot be reflected and is eventually converted to heat.

I dont know about changing the speed of light as with the "sodium" thing but ill check it out tomorrow.

If you think thats a lot to grasp, try understanding a white hole... WOW...

[Omega]

But light doesn't have any mass... (or so minute that it is not measurable), nor does light generate friction.

Anyway this is what I remember frrom physics class...

But then again, supposedly everything has some mass and would therefore generate some sort of friction.

I guess it has been too long to remember some of this, but this is what I remember.


but you see, there's a difference between no mass and immesureable. if it has no mass (which, i believe to be true), then it will actaully take no energy to get it to move at the speed of light. if it has an immesureable amounr, no matter how minute, it will take infinite amounts of energy to move the particles at that speed.

"Only two things are infinite. The universe and the human stupidity, and I'm not so sure about the former." - Albert Einstien.

[Slug Toy]

phew, i thought you were going to pose a question like those damn "a train leaves atlanta, georgia at 8:00AM at 100km/h, and a train leaves seatle, washington at 9:30AM at 165km/h"... thank god you didnt. i hate those because they have no practical use (not even in train related jobs because there are delays and all that crap).


Electromagnetic waves have diffrent frequencies and wavelengths but the same velocity: 3x10(to the power of eight) m/s

this is an approximate speed though. apparently there are recorded cases where the speed has been "calculated" and shown to be more or less.

this is where my argument may come in... ill make it come in anyways. perhaps the frequency and wavelength are non existent, and what we perceive as changes in those two are changes in velocity. ive already rambled on about that, so i dont think i need to say any more.


If you think thats a lot to grasp, try understanding a white hole... WOW...

if you can wrap your head around the idea of black holes... white holes arent that much of a stretch.

i personally think white holes are a bunch of crap. yes, they were thought up to balance equations and try and explain where matter goes when/if it disappears into black holes and wormholes... but i dont think thats a very good reason for creating them. the whole idea about white holes repelling or ejecting matter doesnt agree with me. its wishful thinking.

while im at it, ill say that i think black holes are retarded too. not that they dont exist, because theres evidence of them. i just think that the "structure" and mechanisms involved are stupid. sure, matter may collapse into a black hole, but what the heck are the polar jets about in supermassive ones? no matter is supposed to escape, supposedly not even light.

actually... i dont agree with the whole "light not escaping" thing either. seeming as light is affected by large gravitational fields, its more likely that light ends up orbiting around a black holes event horizon, and not getting sucked in as most people assume (im not sure if physicists would assume this, and i would hope not).

i think whats more likely in a black hole is that we have three layers to a black hole. layer 1 is the inner most layer and is made up of super compressed matter (maybe even atoms that collapse into somewhat of an atomic singularity). layer 2 is orbiting light and maybe some other energy and super fast particles (i have my doubts about the other energy). layer 3 is matter that is waiting to be sucked in. that structure makes more sense to me.

heres an interesting thought about whats in a black hole though. its most likely that anything that gets sucked in will be destroyed, but what if it isnt? maybe if a person gets sucked in, they will compress but not die. maybe there are entire civilizations trapped in black holes, living out a small scale eternity. yes, it sounds stupid, but we havent been to a black hole yet, and probably wouldnt return if we ever DO get to one, so who knows.


if it has an immesureable amounr, no matter how minute, it will take infinite amounts of energy to move the particles at that speed

uh oh. maybe the speed of light isnt really the speed of light. maybe light travels slower than what it would take to use up an infinite amount of energy. maybe the light we know travels at 3x10^8m/s but the speed at which you can never travel is something like 3x10^8.1m/s.

there are lots of ways to look at this. who's right? probably me, but then maybe not. given enough time to argue.... id be right.

<EDIT> ooh, thought of something else.


Light waves, as with all electromagnetic waves, require no transport medium and so can travel through a vacuum.
Electromagnetic waves have diffrent frequencies and wavelengths but the same velocity: 3x10(to the power of eight) m/s

All waves can undergo the following effects:
Refelection - Change of direction at a surface
Refraction - Deflection at the boundary of a surface
Defraction - Deflection at apertures or the edges of objects

When light hits an opaque surface it either undergoes reflection or absoption. There are two distinct types of reflection:
Specular Reflection - Each light beam incident on the surface is reflected in one direction only so that the angle of reflection equals the angle of incidence.
Diffuse Reflection - Reflected light is scattered in all directions.

Light absorbed at a surface cannot be reflected and is eventually converted to heat.

ok this is all fine and good. lets look at some other energies then.

sound- sound follows the same rules about reflection and absorption and all that. sound IS after all just waves travelling through matter.

heat- seems to me the only thing that can be done with heat directly is absorption. we can reflect/refract radiation that gets converted to heat, but we cant do it to heat directly.

electricity- well this is the flow of electrons... the flow of matter. enough said.

magnetism- we cant control where this goes except with certain metals. we cant bend a magnetic field or reflect it.

chemical and nuclear- energy stored in matter. enough said again.

so... it would seem that the only "energies" that can be reflected and refracted and absorbed are ones that have something to do with matter (in my case this includes light).

disprove that eh...

[MitaPi]

If you were sucked into a black hole.. wouldnt you be crushed? I mean it doesnt "resize" you to an atomic level does it? If you were to put a car in a car compressor... it wouldnt shrink the car.. it would crush it? Isnt that somewhat similar to a black hole? or at least of what we know of them?

Another thing I read about a quote from einstein... something about the universe being infinite. So... idk.. how do we know that again? Maybe there is an finite ammount of stars and planets and solor systems and any other kind of system.. but maybe the emptiness of space itself it infinite? Is that what he is refering to the universe being infinite? or does he mean all those systems and stuff out there to? What about the big bang theory? Dont some or most scientists believe in that too? So... doesnt that mean that space is finite and not infinite? I think I am confusing myself here.. can someone try to make sense of what I just said?

[DaveW]

Jesus guys, go mod a case or something. I can't moderate this stuff, it's too tiresome. ;)

-Dave

[Slug Toy]

Jesus guys, go mod a case or something. I can't moderate this stuff, it's too tiresome

i cant mod right now... im in the middle of exams, and cant start anything big yet. dont worry about moderating this stuff though. i dont think itll get out of hand.


Another thing I read about a quote from einstein... something about the universe being infinite. So... idk.. how do we know that again?

actually thats not true. the latest studies in microwave radiation have allowed us to look at the edges of the universe. we cant see exactly to the edge, but we can see to this kind of fuzzy radiation area where nothing is distinguishable anymore, and that appears to be the end. i cant remember what distance, or timescale we're looking across, but rest assured its a large one.

i think what einstein was getting at had to do with gravity curving space-time. the idea was that if you shoot a beam of light out, it will slowly be curved by the collective gravity of hte universe, and would end up right where it started. this kind of hinges on a toroidal universe and then it start getting into the string theory. once again though... i dont agree because of the microwave studies. the universe appears to be an expanding sphere... and thats good enough for me (for now).


What about the big bang theory?

people are starting to shoot holes in this now too. i think everyoen is starting to migrate towards this supermassive blackhole theory. i used to know all about this one because i did a speech on it, but i went a forgot now. seems to me the general idea is that all the matter in the universe started out as a huge black hole that went boom for some reason. this also leaves room to argue that perhaps there are other supermassive black holes elsewhere that could do the same thing... and then it gets retardedly complex again. i dont think this is a very good explanation of things either, but its the best we have for now. im working on something of my own... but i doubt it will attract any attention seeming as i dont even have a bachelors degree yet.

interesting note about this though. if you took any physics, youd know about momentum and how you can look at mass and vector of different objects that are travelling, and determine where they all orginated from (the classic example is a bowling ball exploding into 4 or 5 pieces, and you have to find the spot where the ball sat before it blew up). taking this into account, we should be able to examine momentums of galaxies and find the exact center of the universe right? who knows actually. every physics professor i asked just kind of danced around the subject and didnt answer anything. we SHOULD be able to find it, but based on the hush hush nature of everyone ive asked... we havent found it yet, and it may not even exist.

[Rankenphile]

Jesus guys, go mod a case or something. I can't moderate this stuff, it's too tiresome. ;)

-Dave


AHAHAHAHAHAHA

oh man. my sides.

oh man.

[CanaBalistic]

Has anyone seen and/or downloaded that movie yet? Watch it and then see how many of your questions get aswered by the huge list of professors, ect, ect,.. They cover molecular structure of the universe, atoms, god, quantum physics, ect, ect, ect.

It'll leave you with a whole new set of questions.

Im recomending this movie because it takes so much time to read boring manuals and text books. It covers a lot of topics.

[Slug Toy]

im getting to it... one thing at a time here. long list of to-do's for me. pointless bickering and arguing happens to be one of them too.

[GT40_GearHead]

its to damn funny, no body could yelle
=))=))=))

[Omega]

Using LimeWire is only illegal if you're downloading without permission

so like, If I put a story I wrote up on it for people to take, that's not illegal if they download it

as long as i say something like "free to distribute"

music and movies, however...

[MitaPi]

Ha, my point exactly... :P But no one here would EVER do that right? ;)

[meticoeus]

A photon is defined in the standard model to to have zero mass and to be a quantum of electromagnetic radiation. The standard model is far from perfect but I fully believe this to be the case, as a lost of what we know in physics, etc. would not work if light had any mass at all (regardless of how minute). Special relativeity (to get back to the original question) is based of the postulation that the speed of light is constant, period, to all observers (at least at the same instant, not ruling out the possibility that the speed of light could flutuate over time).

E=m*c^2 only applies to things that have mass. There is another equation for the energy of things that do not have mass based on wave properties, though I don't remember it atm. So while it is possible to manipulate equations, care must be taken to be sure that a given equation applies to what you are manipulating or the result probably won't be accurate :p.

As far as being compressed in a blackhole, unfortunately due to the radical changes in gravitational force near the event horizon, your body would ripped into multiple layers long before you got the edge (so in effect the oppisite happens first). To put this simply, if you were falling feet first, standing up, you feet would be travelling much faster than your head and you would be ripped apart. It might be fun to watch what would happen to silly putty there. This same change in gravitation force exists on earth, but the change is so small that the result is minute and almost undetectable due to all of the other disturbances that muck with equipment.

[GT40_GearHead]

you're feet would be travelling much faster than your head and you would be ripped apart

not shure i agrea! because it wont pull youre bones, it will pull every atom, so in a way you would alongate, and if we assume what (i think) Slug sayd that you would stop in the hole(or that you get spet out the ass hole, oups), the space betwin youre atoms would compres

[Slug Toy]

To put this simply, if you were falling feet first, standing up, you feet would be travelling much faster than your head and you would be ripped apart. It might be fun to watch what would happen to silly putty there. This same change in gravitation force exists on earth, but the change is so small that the result is minute and almost undetectable due to all of the other disturbances that muck with equipment.

i dont think different parts of your body would accelerate differently. your body is treated like a single object, and gravity usually acts uniformly on it. i could sort of understand the whole ripping apart when crossing the event horizon... but thats iffy. you can treat the event horizon like an orbit around the earth. theres a point at which satellites will stay in orbit, and any closer to the earth, the orbit will start decaying and the satellite will crash. it probably work the same way with a black hole. there really shouldnt be any special cases just because it has a huge mass, it just means the point of stable orbit would be way out there. i think all the speculation over what happens in and around a black hole is a little eccentric. just treat it like its a REALLY large star.

as for the light having or not having mass argument... im still holding firm. so what if what i think makes nonsense of the rest of physics. for all we know we COULD be wrong about everything so far. weve based quite a few things on false pretenses before. besides, i like trying to destroy current conventions of everything.

light travelling at the same speed relative to all observers... thats a good one. granted, its widely accepted and its the best we've got, but i think thats retarded too. just because its light and it travels really fast we have to start making up new rules now? screw that, i say that if light travels towards you at 3x10^8m/s and you travel towards light at 1.5x10^8m/s, the light hits you at 4.5x10^8m/s. again, hacums razor. thats why we get blue and red shift, its not just that the frequency gets higher because of the wavelengths piling up... its additive velocities.

now dont get me wrong. ill play by the rules if i have to, but i dont want to. sure einstein was a great thinker, and he made some great contributions. i just think that maybe he got too caught up with the subject of relativity and started spouting off mumbo jumbo to compensate for discrepencies, instead of solving. he was probably doing what im doing now, or at least thats the way i look at it.

bottom line is ill show you all. one day youll wake up, and all the sudden ill be standing there and ill hold up a newspaper and a scientific journal, and ill say "ya you like that dont you". then ill eat the newspaper and journal right there on the spot.

[DaveW]

i dont think different parts of your body would accelerate differently. your body is treated like a single object, and gravity usually acts uniformly on it. i could sort of understand the whole ripping apart when crossing the event horizon... but thats iffy. you can treat the event horizon like an orbit around the earth. theres a point at which satellites will stay in orbit, and any closer to the earth, the orbit will start decaying and the satellite will crash. it probably work the same way with a black hole. there really shouldnt be any special cases just because it has a huge mass, it just means the point of stable orbit would be way out there. i think all the speculation over what happens in and around a black hole is a little eccentric. just treat it like its a REALLY large star.


Having Studied physics, i can tell you that there is a special equation that states how any body will stretch when travelling at speeds clost to the speed of light. I know, it sounds ludicrous. But objects will stretch. while travelling, and 'rectify' twhen the decellerate.

Sorry i can't be more specific.

-Dave

[Slug Toy]

Having Studied physics, i can tell you that there is a special equation that states how any body will stretch when travelling at speeds clost to the speed of light. I know, it sounds ludicrous. But objects will stretch. while travelling, and 'rectify' twhen the decellerate.

yes, i remember that one too. in fact my grade 11 teacher gave me the assignment to create equations based on this to explain how more complex shapes would change based on speed. i worked out equations to explain the change in surface area and volume for spheres, cubes, and pyramids. i also worked out equations to figure out changes in densities for different metals.

thing about this is that the equations you are talking about are only good for constant speeds which are a sizable fraction of the speed of light. they kind of fall apart when dealing with constant acceleration on the order of only 9.8m/s/s. this still leaves me disagreeing with the idea that things stretch when under the influence of gravity. if anything, i say they compress when under the influence of gravity.

i think this whole thing is calling for me to start consolidating my ideas. i wont start yet because ive got exams to think about, but as of tuesday those are over, and then i shall begin destroying the world.

[DaveW]

they kind of fall apart when dealing with constant acceleration on the order of only 9.8m/s/s. this still leaves me disagreeing with the idea that things stretch when under the influence of gravity. if anything, i say they compress when under the influence of gravity.

I don't really agree with the whole thing either, but to be frank, who am i to disagree with the men in white coats? Best to stop trying to poke holes in the Space Time continuum, and just shrug and say "Do i really give a ****?" That's what i did anyway, before i dropped physics for Comparative Literature: Heroics, which was much, much, more interesting.

-Dave

[Slug Toy]

i shall not back down. not now, not ever. i never have. the ones who back down will fade away into obscurity and will never make their point known, even if it is overwhelmingly right.

even if im overwhelmingly wrong, there is no way to disprove OR prove it at this point. i have all the reason in the world to pursue my beliefs until someone comes along and proves to me that things dont work that way.

effectively, this is an area where no one knows for sure because no one can go there or travel at those speeds or shrink themselves that small. its all guess work if you get down to basics, and my guess is pretty much as valid as the next person, providing i know what im talking about.

belief is the strongest thing in the world, and as long as i have my beliefs, no one can stop me.