Homer Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 no no no! lol completely not it. The point is (you, a car or whatever) can't get to the speed of light because it would get exponentially harder to get there... i.e. it is an impossible situation to find yourself in. You can't just suddenly be doing the speed of light, everything has a history and the history for your example is an impossible one! you're right, the only way anything can reach the speed of light is to become light. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chilli Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 OK, I get that, I just don't believe it. The speed of light is (apparently) 299,792,458 m/s, but it's only a figure! What's to stop something going 299,792,459 m/s (if it didn't need to accelerate to it)? well that's a good question! basically the laws of physics as we know then state that c (the speed of light) is the fastest anything can go. It's an absolute upper limit that applies to _everything_ and it happens to be the speed that electromagnetic radiation (light) travels at (which is energy essentially). But speed is only relative to what you measure it against anyway, this is why time and the spatial dimensions get distorted, because something has to give if c is always fixed regardless of your viewpoint! What's important is that this is a fundamental property of the universe, it applies to everything (not just light) - i.e. nothing can effect or propogate faster than this! everything ultimately is energy one way or another and this can not be moved in such a way as to violate c. However some people speculate that there are particals that do travel faster than c (tachyons IIRC) but the point is these are then always confined to be above c. i.e. if you start off below c then you stay that way, if you start off above it, likewise. Interestingly things travelling above c don't interact with things below c in the normal way but they would appear to us to be travelling back in time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soonto_HAS_soop Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 Why is sign language different in different countrys? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tbourner Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 well that's a good question! [i'm not gonna quote the whole thing!] I'm learnding! So the only way to get somewhere quicker than the speed of light is to become light (or invent a warp drive of some kind - or fold space?)? I seem to remember reading somewhere that to record the coordinates of every particle of a human body to transport somewhere else, would take enough 500GB HDDs that they could be put one on top of the other and reach from Earth to the centre of the galaxy!! So that probably won't be happening any time soon!! The engine from Event Horizon? Is that a bad idea? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tbourner Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 Also, if someone can speak 2 languages what language do they use to think to themselves? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prof. Monkey Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 Why does toast always land butter side down when you drop it Why do tiny paper cuts hurt so much Mikey if you test out the theory of "butter side down" using 50 slices of toast, and you do not deliberately drop it face down. Statistically it will land face up approx 51% of the time. It has been tested, and by god when I get back to school I will test this out with some of my year 11's and video it to verify......... Me Year 11 pupils Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tbourner Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 Mikey if you test out the theory of "butter side down" using 50 slices of toast, and you do not deliberately drop it face down. Statistically it will land face up approx 51% of the time. I thought it was proven that it is usually 'knocked off' of a worktop, and the average height of a worktop means it will spin an odd number of times and so usually land face down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SimonB Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 I seem to remember reading somewhere that to record the coordinates of every particle of a human body to transport somewhere else, would take enough 500GB HDDs that they could be put one on top of the other and reach from Earth to the centre of the galaxy!! So that probably won't be happening any time soon!! It's also impossible. You cannot know precisely everything about a particle. For example you cannot know its position and momentum at the same time. The more certain you are of one the less certain you can be of the other. The Heisenburg uncertainty principle states that, part of Quantum theory. This thread has turned into Physics 101! Lol! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prof. Monkey Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 Well I feel a scientific investigation coming on.................. Fecking hell I can give it as course work. I love you guys, just gave me a quality idea. Quality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 Well I have learned something today - I know feck all about physics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedM Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 If at the speed of light you would be everywhere at once why does light from the sun take several minutes to reach us? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
penguin Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 Also, if someone can speak 2 languages what language do they use to think to themselves? i speak 5... and use pretty much all of them Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 i speak 5... and use pretty much all of them isn't that supposed to be which one do you dream in? wrong quote there, sorry....?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SimonB Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 If at the speed of light you would be everywhere at once why does light from the sun take several minutes to reach us? It doesn't from the point of view of the light. Time is relative, so at the speed of light it would appear to take you no time at all to get anywhere - time for you is infinitely slowed down. From everyone elses point of view it would take you however long it takes to get there at 186000 miles per second. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedM Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 Ahh I see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conrad Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 7. Why are carrots not called oranges? They are more orange than oranges are. Carrots aren't actually orange, they're purple. The dutch somehow bred them or GM'd them 100's of years ago to suit their national colour! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chilli Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 It's also impossible. You cannot know precisely everything about a particle. For example you cannot know its position and momentum at the same time. The more certain you are of one the less certain you can be of the other. The Heisenburg uncertainty principle states that, part of Quantum theory. This thread has turned into Physics 101! Lol! very true lol. The more accurately you try to measure say the position the more you disturb the momentum and vice versa It's worse than that, you can't measure the quantum state without forcing it (the particle) to adopt a particular state (until you measure (interact with) it, it's any one of many states). No one really knows if the quantum state would be important in the operation of say human brains or other processes, but quite likely it is, so making a live copy is could be impossible for that aspect alone. You might make a copy, it would never be "identical" to the original... Is a nearly identical copy of you still you? If at the speed of light you would be everywhere at once why does light from the sun take several minutes to reach us? Yes as Simon says, if you could see things from the lights perspective, the journey takes no time, it is instant. From our perspecive it takes 8 minutes. Effects like this have been found and measured in real life at partial light speeds (atomic clocks on aeroplanes) Some comsic rays, on hitting the earths atmosphere create exotic particals like mesons. These normally (at normal relative speeds) have very short lives because they are unstable. Because they are travelling so fast though, these particals last much longer than would be expected and penatrate much further into the earths atmosphere than would otherwise be expected. This is a real life example of relativity and time dialation... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terribleturner Posted December 22, 2005 Author Share Posted December 22, 2005 5 pages?? jesus. If a zombie was to bite a vampire, would the vampire turn into a zombie?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamAhead Posted December 22, 2005 Share Posted December 22, 2005 5 pages?? jesus. If a zombie was to bite a vampire, would the vampire turn into a zombie?? No as they would cancel each other out as they are both dead. "I think " Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toyotasuprauk Posted December 23, 2005 Share Posted December 23, 2005 Not overly weird but when people are giving someone a choice of say two things why do they say: For example "Would you like ice in that orrrrrr......." but then don't complete the sentence? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kopite Posted December 23, 2005 Share Posted December 23, 2005 Talking of light and that, can somebody tell me why things look smaller the further away they are? Think it's to do with them havin a smaller angle of subtense and the smaller the image size you get on your retina meaning it's perceived to be smaller because less cells are being "hit" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tbourner Posted December 23, 2005 Share Posted December 23, 2005 The Heisenburg uncertainty principle states that. I actually tried to read that theory once, a proper one written in sciency talk (I'm quite sciency myself as well!), but eventually had to find a slightly more lay-folk version so I could understand it a bit better! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chilli Posted December 23, 2005 Share Posted December 23, 2005 lol in a nutshell it's actually really simple. In order to measure something you effectively have to interact with it. The more accurately you want to measure it the more strongly you interact with it and therefore the more you disturb it! So basically the net effect is that there are limits on what you can know about something and position and momentum can be traded off but you can't know both exactly at once because you disturb one or the other or both! Easy huh. Other interesting things like the Pauli Exclusion Principle are all equally simple conceptually, the mathematical analysis can get a bit complex of course though! The world we live in is a fascinating place but unfortunately the more you think you know often the more you realise you don't know! I still have trouble with the whole quantum U -> R process and it leaves me with an uneasy feeling that either we will never know the truth or we have got it quite wrong (or both)! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tbourner Posted December 23, 2005 Share Posted December 23, 2005 I wanted to do a quantum mechanics course with the OU, but I'm on level 3 now and don't fancy jumping straight into a level 3 physics course with little background!!! Might just do a level 1 one anyway even though it won't go towards my Degree - just cos I'm interested in it. At least Star Trek did their research, they had Heisenburg compensators on the transporter!! Didn't say how they worked though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chilli Posted December 23, 2005 Share Posted December 23, 2005 lol Heisenburg compensators, now that would be a neat bit of kit! I'd like to study Physics (most quantum, sub atomic) but it's hard to find the time really. I'd also like to do it on OU. I've done a bunch of level 4 courses for my msc but they were all computer science related (work related) - I'd love to study for fun, maybe something for the future... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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