Science Brian Cox on Cern's baffling light-speed find

[old.Tohtori]

Is it possible that there's a particle so small that we can't detect it, but at the speed of light(as the explonential growth happens) it becomes a visible neurominatronom? So basically it only slowed to that speed8from say 2x lightspeed) due to reaching a larger mass. Could've been a renegade mini-neutrino, traveling past the jiggywig just at the time as it was fired. Cosmic coincidence etc.

I'm no science geeky type so i have no idea, just a thought

 

[Job]

Hmm that's interesting, do you suppose it might have got a bit skewiff on the laughter shaft resulting in a treddle anomoly?

 

[rynnor]

Aliens put in that false data in an attempt to disrupt the development of earthly physics!

 

[old.Tohtori]

Hmm that's interesting, do you suppose it might have got a bit skewiff on the laughter shaft resulting in a treddle anomoly?

What? I was just musing on the idea that a miniscule particle could become visible if accelerated and he increased mass would slow it down.

Maybe it got caught in the stream

 

[Lamp]

Does this mean that this will allow men to know what women want

No. This is physically impossible. Even at the quantum level. Women remain outside all conceivable laws of physics.

 

[Jiggs]

I blame the Vulcans

 

[Job]

Anyway I love Einstein, did you see the Andrew Sachs programme on him, he just basically sat down and thought it out using simple logic, his brain must have been a one in a billion.

 

[Lamp]

This is it, isn't it?

Einstein Revealed [1/4] - YouTube

 

[Wij]

What? I was just musing on the idea that a miniscule particle could become visible if accelerated and he increased mass would slow it down.

Maybe it got caught in the stream

Increased mass doesn't slow things down. Neutrinos aren't middle-aged men

 

[old.Tohtori]

Increased mass doesn't slow things down. Neutrinos aren't middle-aged men

Hmm, thought that was the basic principle behind things not being able to reach past lightspeed.

 

[Lamp]

The closer you get to light speed, the amount of energy "required" reaches epic proportions
E=mc^2

 

[old.Tohtori]

Hmm, well then i blame where i read it from.

That doesn't really make it impossible though, just an energywhore.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Yeah it was on the article about this on escapist; "Traditional theory dictates that as an object approaches the speed of light, its mass increases exponentially, slowing the object and preventing anything from ever beating The Flash in a footrace."

Iwouldn't know as i've never looked much into it

 

[Tom]

Another curious feature of such travel is the difference in the way time is perceived. Someone travelling to our nearest neighbour, at close to the speed of light, might perceive the journey as taking only a few days, while an observer on Earth would see them take about four years.

Anyone travelling there and back wouldn't really age at all. Meanwhile, everyone on earth would be eight or nine years older.

 

[old.user4556]

Neutrino

Who's there?

Knock knock

 

[Zenith.UK]

The closer you get to light speed, the amount of energy "required" reaches epic proportions
E=mc^2

Only for particles with mass. Neutrinos have a tiny mass and so follow this law.
Massless particles such as photons however don't need to be "accelerated" to c, their speed of propagation *IS* c. That more to do with the wave/particle duality of photons though.

 

[old.Tohtori]

So the thing i quoted; ""Traditional theory dictates that as an object approaches the speed of light, its mass increases exponentially, slowing the object and preventing anything from ever beating The Flash in a footrace." is hooey?

Oh and as a sidenote, if something going at the speed of light did end up in the accelerator stream, would it be accelerated more? Or is that improssible?

 

[Tuthmes]

So the thing i quoted; ""Traditional theory dictates that as an object approaches the speed of light, its mass increases exponentially, slowing the object and preventing anything from ever beating The Flash in a footrace." is hooey?

Oh and as a sidenote, if something going at the speed of light did end up in the accelerator stream, would it be accelerated more? Or is that improssible?

Impossible according to the theory. It would need mass to be accelerated more. Also time is a thing that needs to be factored in. If you approach the lightspeed the surrounding enviroment seems to stop.

Imagine a lightbeam carring information (ie. the "stuff" that happends) from earth. Now imagine yourself approaching and reaching the lightspeed within this beam. The information would crawl to a halt (ie. it seems time on earth stops for you). If you stop and turn this information would speed up (you're going back through the beam).

Not sure how this would work in a circle on earth though and I'm be no means an expert, so correct me if i'm wrong.


The problem is theorist see their laws as a fact and certainty. Which can be true, but history has a habbit of throwing in a wrence from time to time. If something doesnt work, they tend to search and make new laws to fix the problem and make sense of it all. While it give perfectly fine answers to the theoretical problems and it's usuable and can be tested in real life situations (although even that isnt totally true anymore) it takes a genius of the likes of Galilei, Newton, Einstein, to come up with a "new vision" and theory. One must note that their visions didnt spring to life out of the blue though. Usually the work of other theorist gave them their insight.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Problem with local thinking really, our planet isn't exactly the pinnacle of physics

I theorise that einstein was wrong.

 

[Tuthmes]

Problem with local thinking really, our planet isn't exactly the pinnacle of physics

I theorise that einstein was wrong.

Well you can be "almost" certain he is. The question is how wrong. Einstein didnt like the concequences of quantum physics. Black holes are another big elephant in the room. Not even mentioning the big bang, dark energy, dark matter.

It seems the larger you go, the weirder it gets, the smaller you go the weirder it gets. Or to say it in other words. Einsteins laws seem to begin crumble at the extreme ends of physics. Now all we need todo is to wait for another brilliant mind to put it all together in a new theory.

 

[old.Tohtori]

And a bunch of equally smart people who tell the less smart people that the aformentioned brilliant person is probably a moron

I might have an issue with someone saying "well stephen hawking said so".

 

[Job]

OK my mind experiment, if you spin a very powerful laser fast enough, surely the beam, if shone on a theoretical object far enough away could easily exceed the speed of light.
But of course it can't so the photons will start not to reach the object and start to 'lag' behind, like when you spin a water jet, is this what happens? It's not like spinning a solid object , I just can't quite visualize what would happen, I'm thinking the spinning 'dot' would simply lag behind as the light takes it's time to reach the object.

Of course if you could build a 'super' stick that could survive the revolutions and be long enough, say 10,000 miles long, you wouldn't have to spin it that fast for the ends to reach the speed of light, physics would take over and it would all fall apart, but if you could do it, would the end of the rod turn into light?

 

[WPKenny]

Sooooo......

All this is a bit over my head but I was wondering about the following scenario:

A person travelling at the speed of light throws ahead of himself. Technically that ball is travelling faster than the speed of light, so does it then go back in time?

 

[rynnor]

Anyone travelling there and back wouldn't really age at all. Meanwhile, everyone on earth would be eight or nine years older.

In theory this actually applies at slower speeds - if you spent your life on a jumbo jet constantly re-fueled and in motion you would age ever so slightly less.

In practice the high levels of radiation at altitude would probably kill you early but its a good theory

 

[Tuthmes]

If spaceship A leaves earth and reaches 90% of the lightspeed and spaceship B does exactly the same in the opposite direction they should move in excess of the lightspeed relative to eachother. Yet A can send a message to earth and earth can relay it to B.

This is one thing nobody ever could explain to me. I know it's not 180% and it's something in the likes of 98% of the speed of light. But if someone knows how this works please explain! :<

 

[WPKenny]

View attachment 8814

If spaceship A leaves earth and reaches 90% of the lightspeed and spaceship B does exactly the same in the opposite direction they should move in excess of the lightspeed relative to eachother. Yet A can send a message to earth and earth can relay it to B.

This is one thing nobody ever could explain to me. I know it's not 180% and it's something in the likes of 98% of the speed of light. But if someone knows how this works please explain! :<

Oooh I might be able to answer this.

Imagine light/radio waves/whatever you want to send like a ball. You can throw that ball at 98mph. So if you're moving at 90mph and throw it behind, it will travel at 8mph until it reaches earth.
Now earth can throw it again at 98mph and it will travel 8mph relative to the second space ship till it reaches it.

The reason they can't go direct is because, relative to each other they're travelling at 180mph and unfortunately you can't throw the ball that fast. If you could throw the ball faster than 180mph then you could go direct.

 

[Zarjazz]

If spaceship A leaves earth and reaches 90% of the lightspeed and spaceship B does exactly the same in the opposite direction they should move in excess of the lightspeed relative to eachother. Yet A can send a message to earth and earth can relay it to B.

This is one thing nobody ever could explain to me. I know it's not 180% and it's something in the likes of 98% of the speed of light. But if someone knows how this works please explain! :<

It's actually 99.4% the speed of light.

The first example with the cars is called the Galilean addition of velocities.

speed = a + b where a & b are the velocity of each car

This doesn't work for (special) relativity, the rule there is.

speed = (a + b) / (1 + a * b)

where a and b are the speed normalized to the speed of light, so in your example: a = b = 0.9. This is sometimes called the Lorentz addition of velocities. So if both speeds are very small compared to the speed of light you get the first equation.

The beauty of special relativity is that you can derive all this very simply just by assuming the speed of light is fixed and some basic trigonometry.

 

[Tuthmes]

Oooh I might be able to answer this.

Imagine light/radio waves/whatever you want to send like a ball. You can throw that ball at 98mph. So if you're moving at 90mph and throw it behind, it will travel at 8mph until it reaches earth.
Now earth can throw it again at 98mph and it will travel 8mph relative to the second space ship till it reaches it.

The reason they can't go direct is because, relative to each other they're travelling at 180mph and unfortunately you can't throw the ball that fast. If you could throw the ball faster than 180mph then you could go direct.

But that would mean that the two are moving faster then the speed of light relative to eachother. Which isnt possible.

 

[Tuthmes]

It's actually 99.4% the speed of light.

The first example with the cars is called the Galilean addition of velocities.

speed = a + b where a & b are the velocity of each car

This doesn't work for (special) relativity, the rule there is.

speed = (a + b) / (1 + a * b)

where a and b are the speed normalized to the speed of light, so in your example: a = b = 0.9. This is sometimes called the Lorentz addition of velocities. So if both speeds are very small compared to the speed of light you get the first equation.

The beauty of special relativity is that you can derive all this very simply just by assuming the speed of light is fixed and some basic trigonometry.

Thank you. Ill have a ponder at it.

 

[Raven]

View attachment 8814

If spaceship A leaves earth and reaches 90% of the lightspeed and spaceship B does exactly the same in the opposite direction they should move in excess of the lightspeed relative to eachother. Yet A can send a message to earth and earth can relay it to B.

This is one thing nobody ever could explain to me. I know it's not 180% and it's something in the likes of 98% of the speed of light. But if someone knows how this works please explain! :<

Also, what happens if they are going the other way and crash into each other, would the impact speed would be close to 2x the speed of light?

Anyway, as a kid one thing that I came up with, which messed with my head a little is as follows.

You have a space ship starting at point A. say above London. The ship travels around the world, back to point A. This ship goes so fast that from an observers point of view, it doesn't look as though it has moved. Would the pilot see himself leaving? and therefore have travelled back in time? Would he not eventually get so fast that he would end up crashing into the back of himself? If he crashed into himself then he would never have been able to take off, therefore would never have been able to crash into himself (A paradox) Or would a separate branch of reality be created? If he got even faster would he eventually arrive minutes, hours, days before he left?

Obviously if you cannot exceed the speed of light then it is irrelevant.