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How about spin the dime as your are dropping it so it will continue to spin. It will be on an edge until it stops spinning. But it did 'land on an edge.'
Jeff.
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Lots of creative answers for this one.
Hold it against a "sweaty" cocktail glass and let it go. It will slide right down the side of the glass.
Jordon
News Editor/Publisher
The Code Project Insider
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That's not dropping ... that's "letting go"
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If I'm driving down a dark road at the speed of light and I suddenly turn my
headlights on, will I see anything?
Jordon
News Editor/Publisher
The Code Project Insider
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The News from Jordon wrote: If I'm driving down a dark road at the speed of light and I suddenly turn my headlights on, will I see anything?
No, because you will have infinite mass, the gravitational pull you have on the objects around you will mean that what ever road you were driving on has been ripped out of the ground and is sticking your your infinitely massive body* , as will the ground the road was on, etc.
You will see nothing as even the light you emit will be unable to escape the now densly crushed headlights of the car.
* Sorry, That sounds a lot worse than I ment - By travelling so fast Einstein predics that any body approaching the speed of light will also approach infinite mass
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
--Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
My: Website | Blog
-- modified at 13:44 Tuesday 9th May, 2006
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Colin Angus Mackay wrote: By travelling so fast Einstein predics that any body approaching the speed of light will also approach infinite mass
So that's why my fingers get heavier after I've been typing for a while then. I've always wondered...
The enemy's gate is down.
Welcome to CP in your language. Post the unicode version in My CP Blog [ ^ ] now.
People who don't understand how awesome Firefox is have never used CPhog. The act of using CPhog alone doesn't make Firefox cool. It opens your eyes to the possibilities and then you start looking for other things like CPhog and your eyes are suddenly open to all sorts of useful things all through Firefox. - (Self Quote)
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If you had a vehicle that could go the speed of light (impossible due to the whole approching infinante mass and time approching zero thing) you wouldn't see the light. The photon's would only keep up with you but not "shine" ahead of you.
So you wouldn't see the tree as you smash into it...at the speed of light...And that, kids, is what causes Nova's.
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What happens to the photons that are being generated then? Do they sort of pool up at their source?
regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland
Feed Henry!
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
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No, because you are going the speed of light, the light would not be able to shine from the headlights. Therefore it couldn't bounce of an object, and return to your eyes, creating an image you could see.
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Regardless of an infinite mass (or even a zero mass), time itself is literally stopped for an object traveling at the speed of light. It is meaningless to "turn on" the headlights. You would not age even a moment to be aware of your circumstances, and you could perform no action in that "instant".
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Huh? Now I nearly failed science but that sounds wrong to me. Time is local, not universal. The chap doing the speed of light wouldn't be in a timeless space. To those observing him and who aren't doing the speed of light then maybe it is instant.
regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland
Feed Henry!
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
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Paul Watson wrote: The chap doing the speed of light wouldn't be in a timeless space.
He would.
Cheers,
Vikram.
I don't know and you don't either.
Militant Agnostic
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Explain.
regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland
Feed Henry!
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
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t = t0 * sqrt ( 1 - (v^2 / c^2))
t is time period for traveler
t0 is time period for observer at rest
v is velocity of traveler
c is, well, speed of light
As you travel faster and faster, time flows slower and slower. *You* the traveler, wouldn't notice a clock on your spaceship ticking by any slower, but you would age slower than the people you left back on earth, and your clock would be behind the clocks you (pardon the pun) left behind. Plug in v = c, and all sense of time stops.
Of course, we have to be thankful it's not possible for v = c, for a variety of reasons.
Satisfied?
Cheers,
Vikram.
I don't know and you don't either.
Militant Agnostic
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You will notice that that is what I stated. The whole relativity deal of observers. There is no timeless space. If you are doing the speed of light then your local area is not timeless. If you are sitting there at the intergalatic highway junction and someone goes past you at the speed of light your local space is not timeless either.
It is all relative to you.
regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland
Feed Henry!
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
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(Vikram, hope you don't mind me reiterating the obvious)
As I understand the matter, we are speaking of the extreme: the question did not regard "approaching the speed of light" but "at the speed of light." As Vikram pointed out, time *is* zero (not *essentially* zero). When you speak of relativistic time, perception implies some movement of time (however slowly). If time stops, perception stops.
For example, if you were traveling very very fast, one second for the traveler (t) might be equivalent to a million million years to the stationary observer (t0); the traveler would not be able to *perceive* this slowing of time (i.e. time would be relative for him). However, *at* the speed of light, time has stopped for the traveler (t). He will *never* perceive the event to occur, nor will the stationary observer ever observe an event (unless the traveler should eventually slow to sub-light speed).
The flaw is in the question (apart from the obvious mass issues): one will/can never turn his headlights on while traveling at the speed of light.
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C# or Bb wrote: However, *at* the speed of light, time has stopped for the traveler (t).
Why?
Why is there a sudden change in rules for the traveller that at 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% the speed of light it is all nice and relative and time is chugging along fine for him but at 100% the speed of light he suddenly has no time?
I am just curious
regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland
Feed Henry!
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
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Paul,
We could distill the question down to: "how long does it take... if time equals zero." This is an unmeasurable event.
My off-the-cuff analogy would be of a person walking in a straight line from point A to point B. If he had speed (i.e. *anything* above 0), he *must* reach point B eventually (although the time it would take would be a function of his speed). This is a measurable event. If the person had a speed of 0 (i.e. never left point A), how long would it take him to reach point B? This is an unmeasurable event.
The nuance can be subtle, but it is one of the unique characteristics of 0 that sets it apart from the set of all Real numbers -- and when using mathematics to describe a principle, we must be prepared to accept the answers we get. A mathematical example of the difference between "close to" and "at" is the following function:
f(x) == x/x, x = 0
The answer is strictly undefined at 0. However, using our rudimentary calculus, we can represent this as:
lim(x/x), x -> 0: 3/3 == 1, 2/2 == 1, 1/1 == 1, .5/.5 == 1,... Therefore, we can say the "limit" (i.e. near but not at 0) of the above function is 1.
Remember that we are speaking theoretically, so *any* percentage below the speed of light will create a measurable event.
Warmest regards.
I always get lost half-way to clever.
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You would never actually turn your headlights on. Attaining the speed of light is impossible, since the closer you come to it, the slower time will pass for you - relative to the rest of the universe. So, you would get closer and closer to the speed of light, without actually reaching it. The passage of time would slow down, even though you wouldn't notice it. It would seem to you that you were just about to reach light speed, but you would be forever waiting to turn your headlights on - since time would travel slower and slower, as you go faster and faster.
http://www.goamazing.com/content.asp?id=2203[^]
In 1971, scientists used atomic clocks and jets to test out Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Atomic clocks are so accurate they can measure time in billionths of a second. One atomic clock was set on the ground and another was sent around the world on a jet travelling at 966 km per hour. At the start both clocks showed the same time, but at the end of the experiement the clock on the jet was behind by a few billionths of a second. A few billionths of a second isn't much, but then the speed of the jet was a very long way short of light-speed!
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There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.
- Alexander Ledru-Rollin
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Even more interesting than the above test, GPS uses relativistic calculations to make sure that the correct flight time is calculuated from the satellite to your hand held.
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The only possible answer is, we don't know.
So many people embrace theory as fact. Since no one in this group has ever traveled at the speed of light(including me), we only have Einstein's theory which talks of infinite mass and in contrast, recent experiments that suggest particles in an atomic accelerator move faster than the speed of light by bumping them together at near light speeds.
If you move out of Einsteinian theory, into theories by more modern scientists such as Steven Hawkins, other ways of thinking suggest that faster than light travel is possible. If it is possible, then why is it not possible to project a photon from a speed of light body, which would then be moving faster than the object, or faster then other light.
Also, if it is possible to go faster than light, but light can't be emmitted at these speeds, then the photons would be trapped and it would be dark in "front" of you.
As of right now, I hold that we don't have any solid emperical evidence to support either position, only theory to support both, clock experiments not withstanding.
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You will never get your hand to the headlight button because time has stopped for you.
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The (formula for) mass increase has been verified experimentally on elementary particles going more the 99.999% of the speed of light in empty space. I agree that this is not 100%, but to my knowledge there is nothing to suggest that this formula will break down at some point. Experiments that allegedly prove the existence of signals "things" (signals) going faster than light actually describe the effects of entanglement in quantum mechanics. This issue was already raised by Einstein in the 1930's and it was already shown then that entanglement does *not* imply that there is anything moving faster than light to produce the effect.
It is worth pointing out that it is a misconception that time will come to a standstill. It does not! At least not for the person doing the travelling. For example when a person falls into a black hole (a similar situation) that person will seem be frozen in time before reaching the edge (event horizon) of the black hole *to an outside observer*. The person him/herself *will* experience going over the edge and hardly notice it, unless he/she is ripped to pieces before that of course. For any person travelling at high speed and/or accelerations the experienced time will always be as normal. It is the relative observation by somebody else that is affected only, that is why they call it relativity.
Anyway, since you can't drive at the speed of light the question is meaningless. Close to the speed of light you would see the objects in front of you rotated towards you (e.g. you could see the far side of a house or tree that would otherwise be invisible). The Lorentz/Fitzgerald contraction would be measurable but unobservable because you would really see the combined effect of this contraction and an optical illusion because of travelling so fast.
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Alex Fekken wrote: Close to the speed of light you would see the objects in front of you rotated towards you (e.g. you could see the far side of a house or tree that would otherwise be invisible).
How? I understand objects become more two-dimensional as they travel faster, but how on earth would you be able to see the far side of things?
Cheers,
Vikram.
I don't know and you don't either.
Militant Agnostic
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Because the light emitted from your imaginary headlights doesn't know that it already going at the speed of light. In its own little world, it is going 0 klicks until it is emitted - and then it seems to be going C away from its point of origin -- in its own relatavistic frame of reference.
ergo "relativity", not "absolutivity"
This is Einstein's whole point.
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