Quantum Theory, Thermo dynmaics and Physics

[hercules71185]

Does anyone else on these forums know a decent amount about this? I have some questions that I would like to know other peoples views on and ideas. If there is someone I'll post them if not I'll continue finding someone.

[DMB2000uk]

We've got a few peoples that know some about those subjects, hows about you throw us a couple of questions to see if anyone knows, I have done those subjects before, but it was a while ago now and I've probably forgotten half of it.

Dan

[hercules71185]

Basically as we all know the faster something moves, the slower the time is progressed. Correct? I'm positive it's true. Mainly because we see proof of this with our GPS satellites. They have to calculate the time difference they experience from moving so fast to compensate. Now, theoretically light speed is the cosmic speed limit. Now the reason I think it is. Is because if you are moving at the speed of light you don't age. So, if you approach the speed of light for 1 second, being that you don't age or time virtually won't exist. You would outlive time. Better way to explain it is, if you travel at 99.9999999999999999999999 etc. And you traveled from here to the Andromeda galaxy. It should take about 3 million years to get there. But, that's 3 million years at earth time. Obviously not the time you are on the ship. So by the time you get there and come back, might only be a few hours for you, but would be almost 6 million years here on earth. But! if you were to actually reach light speed how long would it take YOU to reach it? Not in Earth time but, in actual time. Instant? well if it's an instant how
do you know when to stop? You can't stop in an instant. An instant is an imaginary speck of time... So how long would it take, and does this actually ruin the hopes of light speed travel? Aside from the energy crisis.

[hercules71185]

PS you have done those subjects before? You are as young as I am. But I suppose that in America we are not educated as much unless we do it on our own.

[DMB2000uk]

We have A-Levels which we can choose to do from 16-18, and they are more in depth than what you do over there. We get to choose what subjects we want to do, I did maths, physics and computing (miles too much work and I ended up doing a lot worse than what I'm capable of).

But anyway...

Aside from actually getting something to move at that kind of speed, and somehow navigating a path that is obstacle free; How does one overcome the acceleration and deceleration G forces?

I'm confident that (people) travelling as fast as light isn't going to happen in our lifetime, so you don't have to worry about the complications

Dan

[Skippman]

You're overlooking something fundemental here. You don't cease to age. You age at your normal rate. It's that time becomes relative. The faster you go, the greater the gap becomes. If you're really interested in this read "Tau Zero" by Poul Anderson. In it he talks about a theoretical space ship that can go faster than the speed of light and the problems it presents such as possibly outliving the universe.

[hercules71185]

ok, and yes Dan I don't think it will happen, more or less it's just the ideas that teach you the different problems. And for string theory or M theory, does anyone know the 11th dimension. I can't find any explanation of it. They all stop at 10. From what I've heard, time slows the faster you go. This also affects you. Basically, Dr. Flippenko was saying how if you were to travel at nearly the speed of light. You wouldn't age in those years, while the people that were at the current speed would age. He also explained it as, light might be slow in terms of the vast size of the universe, but in actuality it really is instant. Due to this law. Simply put for light to reach a star 100,000 light years away, the time on earth is 100,000 years, but at the speed of light it would basically instant.

@Dan
Another random thing is that even though yes you would need an obstacle free course for someone to test it. But, a rising theory basically proven by photons. The faster you go an object shaped like an O would become closer and closer to an I . At the speed of light you would basically be 2 dimensional, thus giving the double slit experiment its outlandish results. You would pass through any object that was not moving at the speed of light. They are trying to justify this with something with mass such as a particle.

[hercules71185]

another thing I think would help some experiements, I think you all know about Absolute Zero. But, you may or may not know that at this temperature everything stops including the speed of light. We have slowed light down so much because we made it so close that even though light has not stopped it has been slowed down to a crawl (5mph) why not have particles in the accelerator go through a temperature close to absolute zero? Can't they then reach it or break it?

[Skippman]

Absolute Zero cannot be resoloved with the Heisenberg Principle which is the basis of zero point energy theory. If we reached absolute zero, the strong and weak atomic forces that hold everything together would have to cease to exist.

[hercules71185]

Yup, but they sure do try. We are so close it's nuts, and have you seen the images of light moving through it? It's crazy

PS time is relative to light. Not light to time. Proven by Einstien. That is what the general theory of relativity is. It's also how our GPS satellites can stay accurate. Besides if 5 seconds passes by you only age 5 seconds, but because time isn't relative age is only a byproduct of time. Obviously is you are around 100 years you're about expired, but at a high speed you will age slower.

[Alathald]

Well, seems I'm missing out on some of my favorite subjects

Anyway, time dilation is a pretty cool phenomenon, the best way I can think to describe (which will still manage to confuse the hell out of you me and everyone else) is to think of time as a line on a graph, a 'timeline' if you will . If we aren't moving then the line is relatively straight and thus fairly short but if when are moving at great speed then time becomes bent away and appears to travel more slowly to an outside observer (REALLY being loose and fast with the terms here, my prof would kill me ). When we slow back down our timeline levels off and so it seems to speed back up.

It gets really weird when you ask yourself "OK so time dilates more the faster we go but faster relative to what? Why can't I just say that the earth is moving away from me really fast instead of me moving away from it and reverse the time dilation?" The answer, and the secret to what causes time dilation itself, is acceleration. We can't just say that we accelerated away from the earth because we are the ones that felt the forces of acceleration, not the earth. That's why in the twins paradox the one on earth ages faster than the other. That's also why time dilates around supermassive objects like neutron stars or black holes because gravity is just a from of acceleration(sorta...)


If you really want your hat blown off check out Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Schrodinger's Equation (namely, his cat ).

As for Absolute Zero, it is to temperature as the speed of light is to velocity, ie impossible to reach...

[hercules71185]

Oddly it's nice to have people to have views on the subject. Because I can't find anyone even slightly educated on it. But, with that said yes it's theory is that it's relative to light. Now if we knew what was standard time? haha. that would be neat. When you say time dilates around supernovae, we know that the fabric of space-time is VERY warped including around black holes, but we haven't figured out anything about how much. That subject baffles everyone. I suppose it's true with the quote,"when you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand quantum physics." I think that works for cosmology.

Slightly off topic, but have you heard of Richard Dawkins watch this it will blow you away.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... ins+&hl=en
This is one of my favorite lectures, it REALLY makes you think.

[Skippman]

I heard a theory the other day about how electrons in an atom may all be part of a supermass that exists in a higher dimension. I wish I knew where I read that. Apparently while doing some testing on subatomic particles the found that when one electron was hit another across the room resonated implying a physical connection not a covalent one. Most of this stuff is over my head. I'm more into applied physics than theoretical.

Things like gauss rifles and coil guns are what really interest me. Maybe it's because I read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" when I was a kid. I wonder, does anyone write hard sci-fi anymore or do all sci-fi novels contain nothing but pseudoscience?

[hercules71185]

The electrons bonding to create a higher dimension is slightly mentioned in that video I posted. Basically the short story of the quote is. Think of a time when you were younger, think of a time you can remember vividly, maybe you can see, feel, or even smell. So you were there right, you had to be how else could you remember it? But, you see you weren't there, not a single atom in your body today was there when that even took place, matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to make you. Therefore you are not the stuff that makes you up today.

I love theoretical science, even though some of the things that are theories that are proven, but science won't consider it anything else until it can merge every theory that relates together. And theoretical physics is what gives us applied physics. I like all of them, just the theories seem so impossible. Then it's just accepted. Just like the earth going around in circles around the sun. Imagine how hard that would be to understand. Obviously it's the little sun revolving around us. Or to think that light isn't instant. But, if it was instant, glasses, or telescopes wouldn't work.

[martini161]

As for Absolute Zero, it is to temperature as the speed of light is to velocity, ie impossible to reach...

not very imposible for ilght...
as for what you said about ageing and traveling at the speed of light, its not that you wouldnt age, youd just age slower. its weird though that when you think of the uncertanty principle i dont really know if anybody here is really real...

[hercules71185]

not very imposible for ilght...
as for what you said about ageing and traveling at the speed of light, its not that you wouldnt age, youd just age slower. its weird though that when you think of the uncertanty principle i dont really know if anybody here is really real...

Damn is he really catching on? BOTS THINK HARDER!!!

[Alathald]

not very imposible for ilght...
as for what you said about ageing and traveling at the speed of light, its not that you wouldnt age, youd just age slower. its weird though that when you think of the uncertanty principle i dont really know if anybody here is really real...

Damn is he really catching on? BOTS THINK HARDER!!!

Seems Marty just failed the Turing Test...

As for the speed of light, think about this: no matter how fast you are traveling, the speed of light is always measured at ~3x10^8 m/s. Light is the only thing this happens with. If you're in a jet traveling at the speed of sound the measured speed of another jet would be different than if you were standing on the ground. Or if you were standing on earth you would measure the speed of the earth as zero while compared to the rest of the solar system we know the earth is whizzing along at around 30,000 m/s. But it doesn't matter if you are standing still or traveling at 99.999% the speed of light, light will always move away from you at ~3x10^8 m/s. THATS what relativity is all about, the fact that the only constant in any time frame anywhere at any speed is the speed of light. There's a great book that has a good deal of info in layman's terms on this type of thing that I read awhile back, I think it was called Euclids Window...really good read if you enjoy this type of thing but aren't really heavy into the math side of it.

BTW I love gauss rifles as well (super easy to build) and as for coil guns, well marty built an awesome one with pics somewhere on these forums.

[martini161]

hey, i made a coil gun

[hercules71185]

Haha that is awesome. We just need to make sure dolphins don't learn that to make that in their attempts to take over the world.