speed of light

Discussion in 'Philosophy' started by froggy, Dec 8, 2002.

  1. so ur in ur microbus going that the speed of light.
    and u turn on ur headlight. what happens?
     
  2. ..you spark another one. you reach a wormhole and get sucked into a distant planet made entirely of marijuana. you put on some marley..



    ..your eyes turn red.
     
  3. /\/\/\/\/\~~~ what he said!!!!! :D:D


    :hippie:
     
  4. If you are traveling in a spacecraft at light speed and turn on a light, you will still be able to see the light because although the light source is in a fixed position in relation to your own position within the craft, the light source is still moving at the same relativistic speed (light speed).
     
  5. i dont think so.... that only works with flies inside of vans. not with light. im thinking it would never appear to be on. or there would be a huge flash of light anyways so u couldnt see it. (kinda like the sonic boom from speed of sound.
     
  6. uh you would turn to energy and BE light.
     
  7. Your analolgy in reference to the fly in the van is interesting. The same applies to a person travelling on a jumbo jet airplane. Imagine, if you will... a 747 travelling at approx 500 miles per hour over the Atlantic Ocean. Also imagine, that you are sitting in the last row of seats at the back and the toilets are twenty feet in front of you. You decide that your bladder is reaching bursting point and that you need to visit the toilet. As you begin to walk up the isle, you realise that the plane you are walking in is tralling at 500 miles per hour. Your walking speed is roughly 2 miles per hour in those cramped conditions. So, thechnically, you are now the fastest moving man in the world.... you can walk at 502 miles per hour.... correct...... nope. You are still walking at 2 miles per hour. It's the same with light... all you have to do is think about it. The light is still travelling at light speed, no matter it's surroundings. That's the thing with light speed. It can't go faster and it can't go slower (that's not strictly true but that's another ball of wool).....
     
  8. Ah yes... relativity...

    Ok, let's say we are on a most gigantic cosmic "stationary" runway and the ship cruises past at the speed of light (relatively to us on thid cosmic runway of course).

    Relative to the cosmic runway, it seems there'd be a "luminescant boom" (like the new invention?)

    Relative to the ship.... the headlights would come on as normal.

    (as if we can somehow travel that fast and still be normal)

    So... I believe nucan and wilds@rd are both right. It's just a matter of which point of view you're contemplating.
     
  9. Or would we just call it "luminescant flash"
     
  10. dead head is right

    you wouldn't even be able to turn on the lights because you would be energy, with no will of your own
     
  11. What if there is something to be said about that idea. It would certainly lend credence to the belief that although intelligent life exists (or existed) on other worlds within our universe, we are unable to make contact due to the immense differences in our abilities to perceive existance. It certainly would be a quandry... the only way in which to travel throughtout the galaxy within humanly survivable time frames would be at light speed.... but to do so would transform our state of existance. We wouild in effect no longer be physically or mentally able to exist within the constraints of the physical world as we know it.
     
  12. Epiphany time...


    Now there's a thought!

    Good call tednugent and deadhead.

    Very intriguing.

    I don't know, though.... that much matter turning into pure energy would be gigantically titanic. It would be some flash!

    And... all they'd have to do to turn back into matter is slow down? I dunno.....

    I don't put much merit in my luminescent flash idea either... so don't feel bad. lol

    And since "speed" is a relativistic concept.......... who's to say when it's actually been reached?

    From the point of view of those about 5 or so billion light years away from us we are the ones moving at near light speed (away from them). They appear to be doing the same way out there from our point of view.

    So..... then we are all energy already.

    **throwing lightening bolts from my fingertips**

    It'll be so cool when we figure out warp speed… if it's even possible. (Hmmm would warp speed turn you into anti-matter en route?)
     
  13. hats of to bud burner and especially wildc@rd. When it comes to these sort of questions we will always fall back to relativity... because relativity is more relative than anything else!

    Would light act in the same way as a person going to the toilet on a jet?

    for this i guess it would require a greater understanding of how light behaves on a sub-atomic scale (is it more waves or traveling particles?). It's not qute the same as for sound. But asuming it did have a similar relativity to sound, then of course we would see the light in the cockpit... much the same as we HEAR co-pilots in a jet fighter or concorde. and once you realise this you understand that of course light acts in the same way! EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE, in a purely Space-Time concept.
     

  14. IMO it would almost certainly have to be faster than light speed. But perhaps I'm just too much of a trekkie.

    Light, on a cosmic scale, ain't really that fast either.

    Very enlightening posts though. :D
     
  15. light speed, according to einstien is impossible for us, even if it is, the time it would take to get to somehabitableworlds yet to be found,even traveling at light speed, would exceed the human lifespan. The way for us to go is fold-space, altering the space-time continium, folding it so that two spots, very distant along the continium, to the point that they are virtually touching eacch other--though the energy and scientific know-how to do this are incomprehenseble to me.
     

  16. Hard for me to grasp as well, but this is what I think warp speed will be. We'd be actually warping the fabric of space-time and be traveling way faster than light.

    The way I am best able to understand it is to imagine the universe as the surface of a blown up balloon. You want to get from one side to the other quickly.

    So you squeeze the balloon together so that the 2 points are very near eachother (through the inside of the balloon) and cross inside the balloon.

    It's been a while since I've rally thought about this, but I believe this is where wormholes come in. The wormhole would be the opening you'd create to be able to go through the inside of the balloon to get to the other side very quickly.
     
  17. Ok I didnt wanna read ALL that stuff to see if anyone got it right. But the first reply by wildc@rd
    was right, but not really explained good..

    SO imagin your inside a care driving 30 mph, and you lean out the window and throw a rock at 30 mph, its now traveling 60 mph momentarily, as friction from air slows it down, as well as gravity. But in comparison to you it was moving 30 mph, in comparison to a non moving person it would be going 60.

    But in a microbuss going the speed of light, with head lights on, you would see them, because in comparison to you, its moving ahead at the speed of light, withought friction from air, because light is slowed by refraction not friction.
     
  18. A guy in my physics class once asked my teacher (a brilliant and cool guy) a few questions:

    "What if you were traveling at the speed of light and-"

    "You can't"

    "So lets just say you were traveling the speed of light..."

    "You can't"

    "Ok so hypothetically saying you were traveling at the speed of light"

    "You can't"

    It was a classic moment, you had to be there
     
  19. Ru lot stoned or wot???

    I used to think i understood the world till i just red this thred.

    I dunno bout u lot but i'm off outside to shine a light down a worm hole and c if i can make sence of the world again or at least blind a few worms (dont dare tell me worms r blind, it makes me feel better) and if any1 asks wot im doing when they see me crawlin round the garden at half 1 in the morning with a maglite then im just gonna act drunk and wish then all happy xmass.
     

  20. I think that instead of "folding space" we will use higher dimensions to get to other part of the universe that spacce folding will not allow. the fourth dimension (I dont beleive that time is the fourth dimension, I beleive that the 4th is spacial) Is not only nowhere it is everywhere. Dimensions are like An aluminum foil ball. The first dimension is like the first ball, the second dimension is wrapped around the first, and so on. It is also infinitly small. when you blow smoke into a room, it fills the room with smoke right? this smoke is 3 dimensional and cannot exist in is true form in a higher or lower dimension. therfor the 4th dimension is both larger than the entire 3rd dimension and also smaller that a single 3 dimensional atom. Its hard to understand but stay with me. If we walk across a room we move about, say 10 feet right? but since the 4th dimension is infinitly small we are walking across and entire universe in the 4th dimension, we just are in 3 dimensional form when we do it. If there was a way to change from a 3 dimensional into a 4 dimensional being by adding a 4th trait (L x W x H x ?) We could travel into the infinitly small 4th dimension and go across the universe and emerge on the other side by changing ourselves back into 3 dimensional being again (by removing the ?) we could Travel millions of light years away by walking 10 feet.


    Maybe it would be easier to think of it this way. Imagine that you are a 2 dimensional person (meaning you have no height) you move around your 2 dimensional world by moving side ways, never up or down. your world seems flat to you because you dont know what up or down feels or looks like. to a person in the 3 dimensional world, your world appears to be a sphere. a person in the 3rd dimension could draw a box around you and you could not escape. For you to get from one side of your world to the next you have to travel all the way around the sphere which is your dimension. bu is you became temporarally 3D you could move through the center of your world to get to the other side in seemingly a blink of an eye.

    Sorry about how confusing this all seems. I'm getting dizzy just thinking about it:)
     

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