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I was wondering why I haven't been myself lately. |
Posted on 08/01/2004 12:25:39 PM PDT by wagglebee
Bump, for later.
Yeah, but it's still pretty darn fast.
Very easily. Gravitational force was defined as a constant for centuries, until Dirac's work in the 1960s and 1970s. Unfortunately for the sake of precision, many times the usage of the phrase ''by definition'' should be (and/or have been) replaced by the phrase ''by hypothesis''.
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I was wondering why I haven't been myself lately. |
I like it. It simplifies Chaos Theory into a simple axiom: Everything is chaos.
This explains Government, Politics and my missing sunglasses.
In relativistic terms this would be consistent with expansion of the universe. If the universe is expanding, it's probably not doing so just at the edges, but everywhere. This doesn't just mean that the orbits of the planets get larger, but that the planets, the spaces between, and everything on the planets and in space gets bigger. Even particles. If space is expanding, the measuring stick expands, and the light traveling through it covers less distance per second.
This would have a significant impact on time calculations which are based on distance/time calculations relating to C.
Physics is Phascinating.
So the trend for Americans to be getting bigger is less related to caloric intake, and more related to physics.
Cool. Now I have an excuse.
except if space is expanding, in which case your measurement unit fails to be constant, which means that although the speed of light is constant, 186,000 mps is a one-time only measurement of that speed. So you're correct in that c is constant, but our representation in units will change with our units.
Not quite. Electromagnetic forces and gravitational forces prevent local expansion. This includes the galaxy we live in.
The speed of light is invariant in all frames of reference.
I should add in a vacuum.
***LOL***
I've gotten a peer review like THAT once. It turned out to be personal jealousy by one of the reviewers and another journal published my work.
HORRORS! Petty personal politics happening in Science!
More to the point though.............If in fact there is a quantized change in the speed of light over time, will there be some point in the future where THIS parameter will affect others adversely (ie. like changing the Strong and Weak forces so much that things like nuclear and electronic structures fall apart and everything falls apart into a 'grey goo')?
But if you have instruments with adequate accuracy and precision, you can repeat measures at a different time and in similar conditions: a constant should give the same value within a predefined margin of error.
Since it is the case of light speed ,measured with great accuracy and precision since the 1960's, and without differet results except for the expected margin of error , it is constant (or variable but so little that this variability would be so small that can't be measured yet), until different responses: to use historical series dating back centuries to prove something is totally irrelevant (and unuseful: can you prove that experiments in the last 40 years were wrong?) ,given the gross imprecison and inaccuracy (by present standards) adopted in those remote experiments.
"I like it. It simplifies Chaos Theory into a simple axiom: Everything is chaos."
Hail Eris!
All hail Discordia!
[LOL!]
It's time to milk the sacred Chao.
[what? no RAW fans out there?]...;)
OK, here it is. What makes you think the Universe is expanding? Well, when you look at the sky, everything looks to be moving away. In fact, the farther something is from you the faster it moves away. Imagine a ballon covered with dots, you are one one of the dots. Standing there, all of the other dots move away from you as the balloon expands. The more distant dots move away faster. Thus, it looks like the Universe is expanding.
How do you measure this. Well, light is coming at you from those dots, but if the dots are moving away from you, the light seems to be going slower when it hits you...it is shifted toward the red spectrum, thus the name red shift.
The article describes an old idea actually - the so-called tired light idea. This idea is that light slows down as it travels. It has no experimental support but it would explain why light from objects that are farther from you appears to be moving slower even if the Universe is not expanding. The light has been travelling longer, and slows down more. I do not know the current status of the tired light idea, whether it was been rejected. However, the constancy of light is very fundamental to the way physicists view the Universe.
And finally, none of these ideas are meant to disprove creation, they are meant to explain the things we see in nature. But that is what it is about. I'd be happy to be corrected by someone more in the know....
Which is still being measured/refined today. However, the speed of light was given a fixed number by definition.
Your area.....what's your analysis of this? Thanks for your help ahead of time. X.
I can correct one thing:
Well, light is coming at you from those dots, but if the dots are moving away from you, the light seems to be going slower when it hits you...it is shifted toward the red spectrum, thus the name red shift.
It doesn't seem to be going slower. It's still traveling at the speed of light. But the frequency is stretched out, thus it looks red. Conversely, when the source of light is moving toward you, the frequency is shifted into the blue part of the spectrum.
THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN WHEN CLINTON WAS IN THE WHITE HOUSE!!!!!!
;)
IT'S ALL THE POLLUTION FROM HALIBURTON!
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