Special Relativity - Time Dialation

Some of you will know this, others might not. But did you know that no matter how fast you're traveling, even if it's close to the speed of light, light will still travel away from/towards you at 670,000,000mph. That means if you pointed your laser out of the window, it would show no distortion what so ever. I find this pretty facinating, it's one of the reasons Albert Einstein is such an inspiration to me, as for a man in the early 1900's to be able to picture and understand these concepts is beyond admirable. I found these two videos interesting, the second more so than the first.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7vpw4AH8QQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qji7pVf7-Ik

I never previously knew light worked this way, and thought others may find it interesting to know...

Yeah thats good, light doesnt travel at 670,000,000MPH it travels at 300,000,000 metres per second.

299,792,458 Metres per second to be exact

and 186,282.397 MPH, thats not in the millions thats a decimal point so its only in the hundreds of thousands .

The wave theory was wildly successful in explaining nearly all optical and electromagnetic phenomena, and was a great triumph of nineteenth century physics. By the late nineteenth century, however, a handful of experimental anomalies remained that could not be explained by or were in direct conflict with the wave theory. One of these anomalies involved a controversy over the speed of light. The constant speed of light predicted by Maxwell's equations and confirmed by the Michelson-Morley experiment contradicted the mechanical laws of motion that had been unchallenged since the time of Galileo, which stated that all speeds were relative to the speed of the observer. In 1905, Albert Einstein resolved this paradox by revising the Galilean model of space and time to account for the constancy of the speed of light. Einstein formulated his ideas in his special theory of relativity, which radically altered humankind's understanding of space and time. Einstein also demonstrated a previously unknown fundamental equivalence between energy and mass with his famous equation


where E is energy, m is rest mass, and c is the speed of light.

And you cam actually prove some of the effects of relativity yourself nowadays. You can get ultra-accurate atomic clocks on ebay now, and use them to measure time dilation. Leave a clock at your house at low altitude while taking one to a vacation place at a very high altitude (or vise versa) for a week or two. When you get back the clocks will be different. Technically all clocks, such as your pocket watch, will be different. But with consumer accessible atomic clocks, you can now have clocks accurate enough to see the difference, since the difference will be in something akin to nanoseconds (I don't know the exact units, could be smaller like femtoseconds or picoseconds). But you can buy atomic clocks accurate enough to see it without leaving earth.

Diachi said:

Yeah thats good, light doesnt travel at 670,000,000MPH it travels at 300,000,000 metres per second.

299,792,458 Metres per second to be exact

and 186,282.397 MPH, thats not in the millions thats a decimal point so its only in the hundreds of thousands .

Click to expand...

Erm, I think you'll find 299,792,458 m / s is equal to roughly 670,000,000 mph... You have your numbers the completely wrong way around lol... Miles per hour is greater than meters per second...

^I never knew that... I bet they cost a bomb though...

pullbangdead said:

But you can buy atomic clocks accurate enough to see it without leaving earth.

Click to expand...

Now why would they go and take all the fun out of shopping?

Spoilsports

I'm buying mine at Alpha Centauri anyway

Peace,
dave

thinking 4th dimentionaly is not neccecaraly about time tho..
know what a hypercube is? its what a shadow of a cube in a 4 dimentional world.
as seen here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KT4M7kiSw

But yeah, 1905 was possibly the greatest year of science in human history, and most of the large contributions came from Einstein. What's quite daunting though is in that year, Einstein basically gave people everything they need to make the atomic bomb. He (co) proved atoms exist, told people how to accurately weigh them and even gave people the formula on how much energy would be unlocked (E=mc2).

VW said:

[quote author=Diachi link=1213973264/0#1 date=1213986084]Yeah thats good, light doesnt travel at 670,000,000MPH it travels at 300,000,000 metres per second.

299,792,458 Metres per second to be exact

and 186,282.397 MPH, thats not in the millions thats a decimal point so its only in the hundreds of thousands .

Click to expand...

Erm, I think you'll find 299,792,458 m / s is equal to roughly 670,000,000 mph... You have your numbers the completely wrong way around lol... Miles per hour is greater than meters per second...

^I never knew that... I bet they cost a bomb though...

[/quote]

Actually you might find i'm right, do the math yourself :

299,792,458 / 1000 gives you 299 792.458 Km, then just turn that into miles and see what you get .

299 792.458 kilometers = 186 282.397 miles ( using google converter )

if you dont believe me look :  http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=299792.458+kilometres+to+miles&meta=

So I was right , thank you very much .

Diachi  ;D ;D

The speed of travelling information in light is at max "c", but the light itself can go faster than "c".

keeperx said:

thinking 4th dimentionaly is not neccecaraly about time tho..
know what a hypercube is? its what a shadow of a cube in a 4 dimentional world.
as seen here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KT4M7kiSw

Click to expand...

Pikers!

Posers!

Wanabes!

String theory requires at least 10 dimensions.

Peace,
dave

the "bending" of time and "folding space" (ala frank herbert) can be pondered even more deeply if you think of the 4th dimention the way its described by sagan in that video..

NovoRei said:

The speed of travelling information in light is at max "c", but the light itself can go faster than "c".

Click to expand...

And slower . . . the term"c" , isn't.

Peace,
dave

The term "c" refers to the speed of light in a vacuum only, nowhere else.

Diachi

Diachi said:

[quote author=VW link=1213973264/0#4 date=1213987103][quote author=Diachi link=1213973264/0#1 date=1213986084]Yeah thats good, light doesnt travel at 670,000,000MPH it travels at 300,000,000 metres per second.

299,792,458 Metres per second to be exact

and 186,282.397 MPH, thats not in the millions thats a decimal point so its only in the hundreds of thousands .

Click to expand...

Erm, I think you'll find 299,792,458 m / s is equal to roughly 670,000,000 mph... You have your numbers the completely wrong way around lol... Miles per hour is greater than meters per second...

^I never knew that... I bet they cost a bomb though...

[/quote]

Actually you might find i'm right, do the math yourself :

299,792,458 / 1000 gives you 299 792.458 Km, then just turn that into miles and see what you get .

299 792.458 kilometers = 186 282.397 miles ( using google converter )

if you dont believe me look :  http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=299792.458+kilometres+to+miles&meta=

So I was right , thank you very much .

Diachi  ;D ;D[/quote]
That's miles per second, not miles per hour...  : You know?  MPH?

186 282.397 x 3600 = 670,616,629.2

670,000,000mph

Your welcome...

VW said:

That's miles per second, not miles per hour... : You know? MPH?

Click to expand...

186000 miles a second = 700 million miles an hour (rounded off for simplicity)

Back to the calculator for Diachi

Peace,
dave