posted 11-13-2001 09:54            

1) DId they >they is the scientists that i don't know< break the speed of light by exciting particles with some sort of gas?

and 2....
If your going the speed of light, is your body traveling in a wave pattern.??

and 3....
how does a black hole become a black hole.

and 4....
he was saying something about everything starting from Hydrogen and then shit would react(explode or whatever) and form new compounds.. etc.

K. just trying to figure some shit out. Thanks.

posted 11-13-2001 18:18            

>1) DId they >they is the scientists that i don't know< break the speed of light by exciting particles with some sort of gas?

As far as I know, scientists have never meaningfully broken the speed of light. Under relativity, c (speed of light) is better thought of as simply "the theoretical maximum velocity". Light is one of the things that moves at this velocity.

BUT- it depends on your definition of "thing". Lots of things can move faster than c- for example, a shadow. if you shine light on a wall far away, and move your hand quickly through the light, then the shadow can "move" faster than c. But, a shadow doesn't have mass or carry information. Particles, in general, do, and thus cannot move faster than c.

>and 2....
If your going the speed of light, is your body traveling in a wave pattern.??

As you get closer to C, lots of things behave very differently than they do at regular speeds, so it's pretty uncertain what would happen to a "person" moving at a high percentage of C. I imagine they'd die, at the least, but I'm not sure how.

But for particles moving close to C, the idea is something like this. The theory of particle/wave duality suggests that particles and waves are not, fundamentally, different things at all. Rather, they are both a single thing, sometimes called a wavicle, that looks and behaves like a particle under normal conditions (macroscopic sizes) but like a wave under quantum conditions (microscopic sizes). You might liken it to the difference between "a planet" and "dirt". Basically the same thing, but when viewed from far away, it acts like a planet, revolving around the sun, and when viewed up close it acts like dirt, getting under your fingernails.

and 3....
how does a black hole become a black hole.

I don't know if this is properly understood or not. The basic idea is that a dense, large piece of mass, such a star in the late stages of burning itself out, has a strong gravitational pull, so it attracts other mass that floats by into it. And when it gets massive enough and dense enough, then the enormous pull of its own gravity overcomes the strength of its own structural integrity, like a house that weighs more than its foundation can support. At this point, it collapses to, theoretically, a "point mass"- which is to say, an object with mass but not size, which makes it, by definition, infinitely dense. Then, depending on its gravitation pull, there will be some distance (called the event horizon) such that any photon passing within that distance will not have enough energy to escape the object's gravity well. The higher the object's mass, the larger the event horizon. But if light can't escape, then it will look dark, and thus, a "black" hole.

>and 4....
he was saying something about everything starting from Hydrogen and then shit would react(explode or whatever) and form new compounds.. etc.

Here I plead ignorance. I think that, in theory, after the big bang the universe was mostly empty space and chunks of the first couple elements, mostly hydrogen. Then, through some very low-level, high-temperature reactions, higher elements like carbon and oxygen were formed, matter cooled, clumped into planets and stars and whatnot, and the universe happened. I think metals and what not were further formed as these atomic reactions continued in stars and planets' cores.

But this gets into the formative stages of the universe (i.e. the first few seconds, or fractions thereof) and I don't think very much is really known or agreed on.

Hope this helps. I can clarify the first three points if you want, but that's all I know about the fourth.

posted 11-13-2001 18:52            

quote:

---

Originally posted by fenomas:
Lots of things can move faster than c- for example, a shadow. if you shine light on a wall far away, and move your hand quickly through the light, then the shadow can "move" faster than c. But, a shadow doesn't have mass or carry information.

---

:: blinks ::

I think I'm missing something here... oh no wait, I get it, you're talking about the leading and trailing edges of a shadow moving laterally faster than c, and while the shadow is in fact conveying information from the point source to the shadow's surface, it's not conveying information from the leading edge to the trailing edge, or vice versa. Right?

I was all ready to charge into a vociferous "wtf?" about the idea of a shadow *not* transmitting information there, for a second. Even contemplating going down to Radio Shack and buying a 101 Science Projects kit with the solar cell to make some morse code and prove my point.

Incidentally, aren't the effects of change in a gravitational field supposed to be transmitted instantaneously, regardless of distance? If you made like Larry Niven and trapped a black hole in a monstrosity of a field generator and lobbed it from side to side, wouldn't the resulting delta in gravitational field strength make for effective instantaneous transmission of information?

posted 11-14-2001 01:28            

As for gravity-- I think experiments have been done that suggest that gravitational force is transmitted instantaneously, but it hasn't been fit into any theory. In other words, this is a sticking point. But then gravity, at the basic interaction level, isn't understood at all. I think it's reasonable to say that its the biggest outstanding problem is physics today, correlating gravity with quantum dynamics/relativity.

posted 11-14-2001 17:10           

1: nothing exceeds the speed of light, the faster something goes the more it becomes energy, the speed of light is where it becomes energy, energy equals mass times velocity squared.

2:if your going the speed of light, you are light. Which does travel in waves, if your traveling very close to speed of light then its a little different.

3:I think this was covered but I'll give it a shot. Everything is affected by gravity even light, if something is dense enough light will get pulled into it and never be able to escape. With no light escaping it will be black, and since nothing can travel faster nothing else will be able to escape.

posted 11-14-2001 18:06            

So the big bang is complete fact now?

And the speed of light isn't reachable because of Einstein?

posted 11-14-2001 18:31            

life is only a dream of an imagination of ourselves

we are all one conciencesness

all adhearing to ourselves subjectively

see son we have appoable thumbs so that we can use tools

if god is love, and god is everywhere that means theres no such thing as bad

posted 11-14-2001 20:11            

So from a physics perspective is it plausible, seeing as we controll the atoms in our body, to control atoms outside our body? And will we ever be able to transport things without moving them??? hmmmm....

posted 11-14-2001 21:07            

Although, interestingly, I don't think relativity forbids massive particles from going faster than light, just not AT c.

Pete: Don't throw out the scifi books yet, these are just sort of baseline physics theories. I dont know any reason why teleportation might not be possible, especially if it takes the form of "dissassembling" something and reassembling it elsewhere. I also don't see where say, a star trek matter converter defies any basic laws of physics. Although building one would require physical understanding far beyond what we have.

Also, recall that no physics theory is ever "done"-- There's every possibility that relatvity or quantum dynamics, or some other well-understood theory could in the future be discovered to be, if not wrong, then in need of interesting corrections in certain situations. That would then lead to them being superseded by a broader theory. Such is physics...

posted 11-14-2001 21:09            

Lets take a star for example. When the temperature of matter reaches that of a star, all atoms, compounds, what have you fall apart. This is where we get the light that is emited from the star. A star is just a soup of subatomic particles at such a high energy that light is emited and high energy waves, such as cosmic rays, are emited.
Think of a heated liquid, like water, that cools slowly to form a solid. Different things happen under different conditions, if you cool water fast, it freezes with out any aparent structure, however, if you cool it slowly, crystals form. A dying star is cooling at varying rates, causing all of the free subatomic particles to "clump" together. In this process, atomic nucleuses are formed with varying constituents. It has been seen in many stars that cool slow enough that iron, sulfur, and cobalt are present. This process is nuclear fussion.
If you have heard of the "cosmic wind:, that is basically the same effect as above, only the particles are released from the star and quickly cool, forming Hydrogen its isotopes. Still, no one knows how the heavier elements came about, seeing as the heaviest element that we have seen in dying stars is iron.

Any way, burn me at the stake for my inaccuracies, I am only a Biochemist ya know, not an astrophysicist.

posted 11-15-2001 19:20            

SO what would one say in response to the arguement that there is one underlying principle that is 'inside' everything so-to-speak. Smaller than quarks or whatever the newest thing they 'discovered' was. And we figure out that even light, and sound and my keyboard all consist of the exact same thing. Do you think that this would be the answer? Do you think the answer to all the questions resides in one thing, or is more complex?

posted 11-15-2001 23:49            

Well, I'm not gonna try to dive into all this, I just wanted to pop my head in the door and let Jimbo know about the propagation speed of change in a gravitational field. I asked one of the profs back in school this very question once, and he gave me a pained look and launched a twenty minute oration that also boiled down to, "We don't know."

posted 11-17-2001 10:50            

ok, im attempting humor again, sorry.

I think when you use the word relative, you get to hide behind the fact that your not sure. "Cuz you know, it's all relative." Which boils down to saying things are connected. Related. So I guess thats what were trying to figure out right?. How is/are this/these things all connected? What keeps it connected?

I think it's all in the bible code. :o)

Well I'm going to propagate myself head change... Sorry i don't have any wonderous technical input.

Pete