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Scientists attempt to measure speed of gravity
spaceflightnow.com ^
| 5 SEP 02
| staff
Posted on 09/05/2002 9:08:22 AM PDT by RightWhale
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To: RightWhale
Might you be referring to the difficult vortex theory of gravitation?Thats the one its difficult indeed
To: ATOMIC_PUNK
its difficult indeed It is so difficult that they were happy to have something relatively [!!!] simple like the general theory of relativity come along so they could work on that instead.
To: RightWhale
That makes sense, but what should be made of the case where light is slowed down to a fraction of its vacuum speed, say for instance to 20 mph in a BEC medium? As far as I can guess, the speed of such light could be varied by moving the medium while it contains the light.
There would have to be some light speed reduction or medium (or something) that would define the regime of non-relativity, it seems.
To: apochromat
the case where light is slowed down to a fraction of its vacuum speed, say for instance to 20 mph in a BEC medium? The Bose-Einstein Condensate is not a place one would normally try to travel in or have a picnic. But perhaps when I am doing my doctoral studies, I will have the opportunity to measure the angle of Cerenkov radiation inside there.
To: RightWhale
BECs are exotic, but they are what prompted my questions.
I was thinking about Cerenkov radiation for several minutes after I wrote my previous reply, while I was also muddling over whether "nonrelativistic" was the appropriate term for me to have used.
After thinking about it some more, I suppose that such exotic phenomena are relativistic, but their conditions are so complex that naively-applied relativistic transformations won't fit.
To: apochromat
Bose-Einstein Condensates are exotic alright, but we don't have to use them to wonder about relativity inside non-vacuum conditions. The simple glass in your telescope lens allows light to pass right on through fairly easily, yet what kind of relativistic effects are going on inside there? You could shoot a nuclear particle into that region at over the speed of light in the medium until it collided with something. Light slows down instantly at the air-glass interface, but the alpha particle keeps on trucking, moving faster than light for a while. What happens to relativity there?
To: E. Pluribus Unum
Are you saying, " E = M G squared "???
Great Scot, you could be right!
To: RightWhale
What happens to relativity there? I'll make an attempt at answering that, and you can correct me if you disagree. It seems that the non-uniformity of the medias involved is being made evident in such phenomena. In other words, the light-speed reduction defined for a medium is a macroscopic quantity based on averaged effects of all the atoms that make up the medium. Looking at it microscopically, the medium is a combination of vacuum and atoms, and light is normally induced by the atoms to meander about instead of taking the shortest path through the vacuum.
To: apochromat
the medium is a combination of vacuum and atoms It's the kind of thing we don't know and may never know. Even the deepest outer space between galaxies and between galactic filaments where there is really nothing contains photon radiation fields and and gravity fields and who knows what else criss-crossing in every direction everywhere. There may be no such thing as a perfect vacuum, and if there were it might be disastrous.
To: FairOpinion
130
posted on
08/17/2005 11:10:40 PM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(Down with Dhimmicrats! I last updated by FR profile on Sunday, August 14, 2005.)
To: realpatriot71
131
posted on
08/17/2005 11:16:00 PM PDT
by
Stellar Dendrite
(The presence of "peace" is the absence of opposition to socialism -- Marx)
To: medved
Too many exclamation points in your article.
So it must be B.S.
To: SunkenCiv
Thanks for the science pings, in addition to the GGG ones.
I haven't had much time to spend on FR, so it helps to be pinged, to avoid missing interesting stuff.
To: FairOpinion
You're most welcome. This one hadn't been posted to in nearly three years though. :')
134
posted on
08/18/2005 10:02:03 PM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(Down with Dhimmicrats! I last updated by FR profile on Sunday, August 14, 2005.)
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