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Speed of Light Inconstant?
DHR writes "Australian scientists have discovered that light isn't quite as fast as it used to be." We've done previous stories on these findings. Those of you with subscriptions to Nature can read the actual paper, the rest of us will just have to suffer.
So, does that explain the ever changing warp scale in Star Trek?
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I've noticed it takes a while for flourescent lightbulbs to turn on. I guess all of the technology bloat has finally taken a noticable performance hit on light.
...cause my exam in Algorithm Construction is only two days away, and I _really_ could use some extra time =)
Would this perhaps be linked to the idea that there's a limited amount of energy in the universe, which is more and more being turned into kinnetic potential as objects get further and further from the center point?
Or perhaps we're just setting aside another 'unbreakable' barrier.
-GiH
the rest of us will just have to suffer.
And given our new knowledge about changes in the speed of light, you'll suffer a little more slowly then you are used to.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
eh their mate, thats not a light.
Now that's a light.
> "That's illegal. It would be like a cup of coffee sitting on your desk getting hotter," Lineweaver says
Placing a coffee cup on top of my laptop and running Microsoft Outlook provides the exactly same effect. Where can I get my Nobel prize?
In October, 1971, American physicists took four super-accurate atomic clocks, kept two on the ground and put two on commercial jets flying at 1000 kmh in opposite directions around Earth.
When the planes landed, the scientists found what they were hoping for: The clocks on the high-speed journeys were ticking a few billionths of a second behind their stationary friends.
Isn't the speed of a jet negligible compared to the speed of the Earth rotating, revolving around the sun, the sun revolving around the center of the galaxy and the galaxy spiralling in the expansion of the universe?
Please explain.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
So if the speed of light is slowing down, could we convert matter to energy, wait millions of years for the speed of light to change, and then convert it back - violating the conservation of energy laws?
Even constantly improving the model!
Since most of us don't have the subscription I deduce that the majority of replies will come from AC's and be composed of nonsense.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
There were a group of people in a room of different professions, and a theorem was put forth onto the board that stated that all Odd Numbers Are Prime. Each person was supposed to disprove this.
The mathematician started off by looking at each number.
1, 3, 5, 7, 9.... 9 is not prime, the theorem is false.
The social worker turned in a long sheet of paper going "2 is prime, 4 is prime, 6 is prime..." etc.
The physicist turned in the following:
1... 3... 5... 7... 9 (Experimental Error), 11, 13.....
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
they are scientists, they understand things better than we do, that's how ;-)
You use this concept quite often in calculus with limits, i.e. 1/x approaches 0 as x approaches infinity.
I suspect what he meant was: as c approches infinity , the current thinking (equations) get all screwy. Or something technical like that.
The revolution will be televised. Blackout restrictions apply.
Light's just getting a bit older and isn't as fast as it used to be. See how you feel after a 30 nano seconds of pick-up basketball, the parts just don't work the same when you get that old.
One possibility, though, is that the structure of the vacuum in space has changed. This is where we get into the rather spooky world of quantum physics. When light travels through a medium other than a vacuum, such as glass or water, it slows down. A vacuum, far from being empty, is teeming with quantum "virtual" particles that flit in and out of existence.
Sometimes those particles become real, such as under a strong electric charge, Lineweaver says. If the vacuum of space is changing uniformly across the universe, just as the universe is expanding uniformly, it could affect the speed of light.
Well... this was the hypothesis that was given in the article... and from the looks of this, it seems that there is a possibility that light didn't slow down at all. Here he explains that it is the medium that light is travelling in that is slowing it down. So light's top speed in a vacuum may still be the same... c, but the medium, the universe, is changing. Who knows.
But if light is slowing down, then that faster than light travel maybe possible. However, how the hell do you see anything when your going faster than any signal? Well... maybe you can communicate with the spooky particles and get instant communication while travelling at faster than light speeds. Of course you'd best be sure your data arrived promptly, as you'll never see the planet you just rammed.
Back in my day, light was blimblamming all over the place! We had GOOD light in those days. Yessiree, you couldn't go outside with your onion strapped to your belt (as was the fashion at the time) without getting knocked over by rays of light all the time! Not like today's LAZY light, mind you.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
This is exactly the case put forward by Dr. Walt Brown (Ph. D.).
Daniel
"Excuse me, but how exactly can something be close to infinity?"
Well, I've never actually tried on Infinity, but I did read the price tag once.
"Derp de derp."
Well, let's see here:
The speed of light -is- always constant in one sense,
simply because the length of 1 meter is defined by the distance light travels in a set time.
Now, from a more physical standpoint: We need more evidence.
Quite a few measurements of c have been done, and a single measurement isn't about to upend all this.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, remember?
Now, nobody says that relativity is a complete and final theory. It probably isn't. But you still need lots
of evidence to replace it with another theory.
Otherwise, we won't even know if the theory we're replacing it with is better!
It's an interesting theory and experiment, but even so, I'd bet on this being a
freak result, for the simple reason that scientific breakthroughs don't come around that often.
Easy--say c = 1/t, where c is the speed of light and t is the time since the Big Bang (this is just an example, I'm not claiming it's the case). Since as t->0, c->infinity, I'd say "immediately after the Big Bang c was close to infinity" would be a reasonable English translation.
If the very early Universe, when all the matter and energy could be contained in a microdot, was such an exotic place that the speed of light approached infinity -- then what happened to the speed of sound?
Okay, maybe it is a dumb sounding question. But it is one I have been curious about.
I knew this performer once. Her stage name was "Infinity". I always wanted to take her out to dinner, just so when they said "how many in your party?", I could say "infinity plus one".
The reason Astronomers don't want to accept this is becuase it would change the nature of every cosmological theory they have. They've invested large amounts of time in old theories, why should they learn new ones? It's all about ego for them.
I would question this paper until other people have reproduced the results of their experiment. I think it's fairly common now for these things to get published without first being verified by other sources just because it's so out of the ordinary. Even a small error in their measurements could have been misinterpreted. Recently, someone published the properties of a new semiconductor using a the same graph they published in a previous paper. Same thing with the negative gravity experiment that no one can reproduce.
by going almost as fast as infinity, but not quite catching it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If the very early Universe, when all the matter and energy could be contained in a microdot, was such an exotic place that the speed of light approached infinity -- then what happened to the speed of sound?
Two points. First, the idea that the whole mass of the "universe" was contained in a microdot just at the Big Bang isn't really right (depending on what you mean by "universe"). The whole mass of today's observable universe, yes. But if you take the cosmological models at face value, the universe is probably infinite in extent, and always was (at least as far back as you can go without worrying about unknown theories of quantum gravity). It's more accurate to say that the density of the universe approached an arbitrarily large value; then you don't have to worry about a "smaller infinity" or similar.
Now, to what you actually asked: the speed of sound is not a fundamental quantity the way the speed of light is. "Speed of light" generally means "speed of light in a vacuum", which according to standard theory is a fundamental contant. (In material other than vacuum, light tends to travel at speeds less than the "speed of light".) Sound doesn't travel in a vacuum, but needs a medium to travel through. It's speed is entirely dependent on that medium. What we call the "Speed of sound" (when, say, timing distance to lightning strikes based on the delay before we hear the thunderclap) is the speed of sound in air at a typical density and pressure found on the surface of the Earth. The speed of sound in water is a lot higher. In rock, higher still.
In the very early universe, I would expect the speed of sound to be very, very high, but it will always be less than the speed of light in a vacuum (whatever that value happens to be at any given moment).
-Rob
Interesting they suggest that time and motion are different between two frames of reference travelling at different speeds.
Isn't this kinda the idea of relativity? How does it change the speed of light?
The reason Astronomers don't want to accept this is becuase it would change the nature of every cosmological theory they have. They've invested large amounts of time in old theories, why should they learn new ones? It's all about ego for them.
While there is a possible grain of truth in what you say, it's probably vastly overstated.
It would be better to say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. To almost everybody, the claim that the fine structure constant has been changing is pretty extraordinary, and as such requires pretty solid proof before any measurable fraction of people who care about these things will casually accept it.
There is a danger in the iconoclastic argument. Yes, if a new truth is revolutionary and will require everybody to throw out everything they know, everybody will resist accepting that truth. It does not follow that therefore every revolutionary idea which meets widespread resistance must be a new truth.
-Rob
The vacuum energy density of the early universe was much higher. I suspect that this is the cause of their results...
Time to dust off my old quantum mechanics texts...
*** Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams of Which Stuff is Made ***
Yes, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at the Marx brothers. --From A Demon-Haunted World
The second law of thermodynamics is just a statistical consequence of more fundamental laws of physics. I don't see why breaking it is automatically "illegal", while messing with the speed of light is fair game. You get temporal paradoxes if the speed of light is not the same everywhere[1], and that bothers me far more than cups of coffee getting hotter.
[1] General relativity rules out the concept of "everywhere at the same time", so if the speed of light changes, it can't change uniformly, because there's no uniform.
Ok, I'm not a physics major and I didn't get that good a grade back in high school. So I have a few questions, all which may be considered stupid by others who knows stuff... but ok. So go ahead and laugh before you reply ;-)
The discovery means faster-than-light travel, which is prohibited by the law of relativity, may one day be possible.
Why would this mean that faster than light travel will (or might) be possible in the future? Why not today? From what they are saying, the speed of light may have slowed down ever since the Big Bang. For me, that means that as soon as the speed of light has decreased, it should be possible with faster than light speed, right?
If the speed of light was close to infinity, immediately after the Big Bang, [...]
How close to infinity can one be? When are you far from infinite speed and when are you close? "Almost infinite"? What do they mean here?
The photons [...] interact with the electrons in the gas clouds, charged particles that orbit the nuclei of the metal atoms. This leaves a fingerprint on the light as it arrives on Earth, called the fine structure constant, Murphy explains.
How can this be a constant? Is it a universal constant or a constant different for each object? Still, how can this fingerprint be constant?
Thanks.
Will work for bandwidth
1 is not a prime number. look it up.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's that same group saying the same thing again.
Well, you are the same guy posting the same thing again, although I notice you have a different username than last time. Please tell me you didn't honestly go back to the previous story, pick a random message that got modded up to +5, and repost it here... that would be the ultimate in karma whoring.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
As other people have pointed out, the fine-structure-constant-is-changing work came out a year ago. The fine structure constant is a function of the speed of light, c, and the charge of the electron, e.
This particular article argues that e can't change much over time without causing inconsistencies, so they conclude that c must have been changing. No new data, no new support for the constant-is-changing theory. (And the original study was pretty damn flawed. This paper isn't bad.)
From the flaming the Astronomer gave me, he didn't even want to CONSIDER that these invariences, in fact, may vary. Which I would define as a closed mind living off ego trips, not discovery.
Actually when c approches infinity, special
relavity just becomes plan old newtons laws.
Unfornately i don't think General relavity
would work at all as the time parts of the
tensors would tend to infinity but not
the spacial parts.
Hey, I am an astronomer, and I'd love to see this confirmed. But its a very tough experiment and there are lots of possible problems. I'm sure there are also theorists out there who have already incorporated it into their latest model.
But, as the man says, extrordinary claims require extrordinary evidence. It took two totally groups conducting large long term projects, and some anciliary data that could be explained by it, for the reality of the Cosmological Constant to be seriously considered and incorporated into many standard models. And there are still problems with that results, both observationally and theoretically (we're in the process of publishing a paper on it in fact). It'll take a similar amount of effort and length of time for John Webb et al. to do the same with varying fine structure constant. The VLT data is a step, and publication of the paper in Nature meqans they're being taken seriously. Things will get interesting, though, when the VLT data becomes public (a year after observation) and other teams can go over it with independent analyses and try to confirm or refute the result.
But the mass increase wouldn't be there, becuase the space the matter occupies would change relative to it's speed, altering the mass's energy potenial to just what e=mc^2 says it should be. There is no time, no age, no limits to space. Just relative movement in space.
I haven't figured out if the black holes are gobbling things up. Or if we are slowing down and turning into dark matter. Or, if black holes turn quantum particles into dark matter by stopping them from vibrating. Probably all three.
With the exception of a very few flicks I think that would be an improvement.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
This is from the top of my head, and as such, may have some errors, especially dates.
... there are more reasons to think of One as prime that there are to not, and the primary reason to think of it as a non-prime, non-composite integer is one more of practical value than mathematical correctness.
...
Now that that disclaimer is done with
You see, the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra says, briefly, that every number can be reduced to a unique, finite, multiplicative set of prime numbers.
Now, if one were prime, we would run into the terrible, horrible problem of this being false. And all mathematics would slowly fall with it. Because if one were prime, one would be equal to:
1 x 1
1 x 1 x 1
1 x 1 x 1 x 1
et all.
However, before the 1800's or so, one was in fact considered to be a prime number -- as math was not then a practical discipline. At all. And it was considered prime because, from a theoretical standpoint, it is, as it only has the factors of itself and one. Nowhere did it then say that those must be unique factors.
anyway, just thought I'd shed some light, given the posts on top of posts that are a bit off on what it is to be prime.
Let me guess: you didn't take her out to dinner, because you knew that if you did that (which you undoubtedly would), she would never go out with you again.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Some creationist scientists explain the disparity between the size of th universe and the fact that we see stars more than 6000-7000 light years away as light slowing down. I tend to agree with them.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
It's a theoretical result, not an experimental one.
Peer review doesn't mean it's correct. Even Nature publishes some doozies. (This one isn't so bad, actually... the original one was in ApJ if I recall correctly, which has a lower standard.)
Incorrect; you're putting a lot more into peer review than is actually there. In reviewing an article, the reviewers are expected to read it and note any flaws in the article. Those flaws may be methodological flaws in the experiments, futher experiments needed to eliminate alternate explanations for the data, and all sorts of trivial problems like bad grammar, missed references, etc. But there's a limit to how much a reviewer can do to find flaws in a paper. He can't actually see the experimental equipment and note any problems with it, for instance, which might produce unnoticed systematic errors. It's also very important to note that the recommendations of reviewers are just that; a journal editor can publish a paper in spite of bad reviews if he thinks that there's justification for doing so.
Reviewers are also not expected to try replicating experiments themselves. In fact, doing experiments based on what you've seen in papers under review is considered to be at least bad form and may be unethical depending on what exactly you do. In some competitive fields, people have been known to accuse reviewers of trying to copy their experiments while stalling the original paper to get publication priority, and this is viewed as seriously unethical.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Okay, Science,
In 10 billion years, take my DNA, clone me, and reconstruct my mind from a computer backup, and when the process is complete, let me know your final answers that you've hopefully really figured out by then:
Actual Speed of light, and whether it varies.
Actual color of the universe.
Actual age of the universe.
Actual origin of the Earth's moon.
Whether we're descended from apes.
What's the nature of human consciousness.
Whether God actually exists or not.
Whether cholesterol is good or bad for you.
Whether global warming is caused by humans.
Whether gun control increases crime rates.
Whether fair-use causes loss of revenue.
Whether flouride causes or cures tooth decay.
Whether there is an actual speed limit for the x86 architecture that isn't eventually overcome by some new hack.
Whether security through obscurity really works.
Whether phenomenology is bunk.
(etc. ad nauseum)
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
This one came from my old chemistry teacher:
A philosopher, a mathematician and a physicist are at one end of a very, very long room. An observer tells them that there's a bottle of fine whisky on a table at the other end of the room, and that they can take as many leaps as they like to get to the other side and claim the prize but that every step must cover half the remaining distance, no more, no less.
The philosopher stands still, and contemplates whether or not the table and the whisky are there at all.
The mathematician does some quick thinking, and works out that he can never really reach the table as there will always be a finite distance, no matter how small, left to cover. He too stands his ground.
The physicist sets off across the room. He makes one, two, three, four jumps until he's withing arm's length of the table, shouts "that's close enough!" and grabs the bottle for himself.
(And after all that, what did I go on to do at university? Yep, astrophysics. Part astronomy, part physics, part mathematics and, at least with the options I took, part philosophy. No wonder I'm not a scientist by profession any more.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Did a search for "Paul Davies" (lead author of the paper supposedly) on Nature's site, and only came up with one old unrelated article. Don't see any links to anything like this on the main page or the Physics section page either... maybe it just hasn't been updated yet.
Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all the unhappy people.
Speed of Light Inconstant? no not really we are just moving faster and faster and light is
Haven't you noticed the days get shorter as you get older?
Yah, like `pin the DLL on the app' with the exciting `but keep this other app working' option. Or Blue Screen Roulette.
But not XBill. )-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
That is almost as crazy as the dude on the street corner who held up a sign saying that the ASCII code is going to undergo a fundimental shift. Thta is crazy! No onf jt hpjoh up cfmjfwf uifn/
Table-ized A.I.
Where can I get my Nobel prize?
How about the "No Bell" prize. That we can do.
Here is a
photo of the previous winner.
Table-ized A.I.
Barry is an Australian scientist as well. He's a long-time supporter of CDK (C decay).
But of course, when an Atheist thinks the matter through instead of simply reporting what he finds, anything which tends to support CDK is quickly binned. CDK offers a neat, simple solution to speed-of-light objections to a recent six-day creation of the world on one hand, and hard limits to the age of the universe on the other.
`Close to infinity' describes the mental oscillations needed to remain an Atheist in the face of a mounting stack of observations indicating the impossibility of your position.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Article quote:
"Mathematically, there were two possible reasons for this - either the electric charge of the electrons had increased, or the speed of light had fallen.
Using Stephen Hawking's formula for black hole thermodynamics, Davies, Davis and Lineweaver ruled out the electric charge possibility. By adapting Hawking's formula, they determined that an increase in electric charge would break the second law of thermodynamics, which says energy can only flow from hot spots to cold spots.
"That's illegal. It would be like a cup of coffee sitting on your desk getting hotter," Lineweaver says.
Observation -- but didn't they just prove that something "illegal" -- that the constant speed of light is changing -- is actually happening? Perhaps they should examine their logic on this point, because it seems to me it could be either. Or perhaps I should read the original article, where they probably address this issue.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
IANAP, so I may be completely wrong, and if so, please explain why, but, doesn't the photon get stretched out so that the rate of energy (e/s) recieved is less. Therefore the energy isn't lost and the photon actually has the same total energy, but the energy within a given length of the photon is less.
No, the total energy of a photon is hc/lambda, where h is Plank's constant and c is the speed of light (both generally assumed to be constant, though of course bringing that into question is what this whole thread is about). Lambda is the "wavelength" of the photon. The photon isn't really longer; it's a quantum particle whose position, detail of position, momentum, and so forth are governed by scary quantum things like the Heisenberg undertainty principle.
-Rob
I guess there really is a physical cap on Moore's Law.
The speed of light is only so fast... and it's only going to get worse.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
I am member of that educated crowd (Ph.D. candidate in Chemistry, specializing in protein structure and biochemistry, not that anybody cares) who has a negative reaction to what the creationists put out but that's becuase when I was younger I spent about a year reading their books and tracts and comparing them to mainstream evolutionary books and papers while debating the matter on a local BBS. I was able to debunk everything that was thrown at me then and it's rather sad that your 20 questions by Dr. Brown (Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, a discipline not noted for its rigorous requirements in evolutionary or for that matter any biology) is the exact same as the stuff I waded through and debunked ten years ago. As for the Bombardier beetle, check here for the actual truth of the matter. Actually, read the whole talkorigins site to get what is currently believed in evolutionary biology rather than the strawmen arguments that have been fed to you by creationists. Although personal experience tells me that creationists never change their position no matter how much evidence is presented to them or how badly their arguments and even their champions are crushed please surprise me by being different and holding that "critical view" that you believe is lacking in us supporters of evolution.
One more thing: scientists are trained to be skeptical. It's our job to take a critical view of everything we read no matter what journal it got published in or who wrote it. Evolution is still the prevailing view because of its merits not because of some vast conspiracy or adherance to the status quo because if you can't ask original quesitons and attempt to find the answers you're not doing science; this is the very definition of breaking the status quo.
Remember that this is based on observations of Quasars. There are several alternative theories to explain the apparent red shift of Quasars. Here's one of them.
These theories claim that Quasars are much closer and less bright than currently assumed. Needless to say, if any of these alternative theories are correct the speed of light may not need any adjustments, after all.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
From the article: ``If the speed of light was close to infinity immediately after the Big Bang....''
WTF is "close to infinity"? I'm not a mathematician, so maybe that's the problem, but I cannot parse this statement....
moto411.com
Besides, we know that anything that tacks on "science" to its name is the farthest from being one -- cf. creation science, political science, and (ba-da-bing!) computer science.
Hmm.... decisions, decisions.... defend the status quo? Or become a blithering moron?Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
What is the unique, finite, multiplicitive set of prime numbers that 1 can be reduced to?
anyway, just thought I'd cast some shadows, given the posts on top of posts that are a bit off...
The standard thought-experiment is the railway car with photocell-controlled doors at each end and a lamp in the middle. The light is turned on, and photons travel from it to the photocells, causing the doors to open. Since the lamp is exactly in the middle, an observer inside the train sees the doors open simultaneously. An observer standing standing outside while the train zooms past will see that the rear door opened before the front door (since in the time it takes for the photons to get from the lamp to the photocells, the rear door has moved closer and the front door has moved away). It's time that changes. In other words, the notion of "simultaneous events" is not one that can apply universally.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Congress wouldn't know a "meter" if it shoved itself up their butts... sideways.
Better change that to 182,000 yards per second, just to be on the safe side. And hey, if that slows down light, so be it. Light should have to follow our laws anyways.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
Dirty Bombs don't rely on E=mc^2 at all... A dirty bomb is just a conventional exposive with radioactive stuff in it.. so when it blows up, the radioactive stuff is spread over a large area, poisoning a bunch of people. It's when the terrorists build (or buy) a real nuke, that we have to worry about E=mc^2.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
In any case, I don't just have a Ph.D.; I also am a Doctor of Divinity! Go visit the Universal Life Church -- for a mere $25 you could be one too! (It's free to become a regular "Reverend" -- and you can become one on the web site.)
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Mathematica 4.1 for Linux
Copyright 1988-2000 Wolfram Research, Inc.
-- Motif graphics initialized --
In[1]:= PrimeQ[1]
Out[1]= False
In[2]:=
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
When I was young, I always wondered if the "constants" of the universe might vary across space and time. Turns out I was right, at least in some limited way.
Let me dig into my past a little more and see if I came up with any other brilliant publishable ideas. Let's see. Monsters under bed. Think Nature would take that one? Mom and Dad are Gods. That's some hardcore theology there. I was a walking intellectual rebellion.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is ... *picks up phone, dials KGB* "Hello? Yes, I need you to go out and burn all of the addresses down that have a 9 in them. Yes. Thanks.", 11 is prime, 13 is prime...
5 years later...
Teacher: "And thus, clearly, all odd numbers are prime."
Student: "What about 9?"
Teacher: "Have you seen a 9 anywhere?"
Student: "Er, no."
Teacher: "Then all odd numbers are prime. Let's continue..."
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Yes. If you took one of the clocks and left it absolutely stationary in space until we did a lap of the galaxy there would be more than a few billionths of a second difference.
If you sneeze on a train the boogers leave your nose at a fair old speed! It's not too fast compared to the speed of the train, or the speed of rotation of the earth etc.... but the guy oposite will still get pretty pissed if you hit him!
Quite a few philosophers of Science (most, IIRC), will argue that all scientific theories are wrong. They may be approximations that work most/all of the time, but history has shown that perfect prediction with current technology will be followed by new experiments with new technology that prove the old theory. We end up in a continuous situation where the correctness of our theories is limited by the sophistication of the supporting experiments.
Hold on. I'm not done yet.
The creatonists evolution show what poor scientists they are by attempting to debunk evolution. Fine. Assume evolution is wrong. However, creatonists are continuously failing to show conclusive evidence that their theory is correct. We are then (given that the creatonists are right in some of their contrary evidence) in the situation where neither party is right, but both parties claim to be right. See - the creatonists are just as ulnerable. If we give conclusive proof that some of their theories are wrong, they would by their own reasoning be forced to abandon creationism altogether.
Stop the brainwash
When the planes landed, the scientists found what they were hoping for: The clocks on the high-speed journeys were ticking a few billionths of a second behind their stationary friends.
Motion, it turns out, slows time - one of the funny effects of the law of relativity. At low speeds, the effect is slight and makes no difference to our daily lives.
The article is wrong. As far I remember abck the clocks in the planes were running infront of the clocks on earth. Why? They moved? Yes thats a special relativistic effect, but there is a second, the general relativity. Time flows slower near masses, and since the planes fly at 10.000km or so above the earth they are further away from the eart mass, so flowing faster. Yes these two effects work against each other, but as I recall the general time increasing effect was stronger in this case.
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
There has been much brouhaha in the past 4 years about an apparent increase in the rate of expansion of the universe. (Type I-A supernovae in distant galaxies look redder than they ought to.)
Is there a relationship here? Could this fine structure deviation account for the anomalous supernova spectra?
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
It's not science.
They have a critical view in the sense of criticism. Yes, creationists disagreed with the notion that species changed slowly over long periods of time. But their alternative was that there is no evolutionary change at all, not that evolution has rapid and slow phases.
Irreducable complexity is a crock. "I don't know how it could have happened." is not a proof of Intelligent Design, it is a proof of the lack of imagination.
Read 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense from Scientific American.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
(a) repeating experiments is not the duty of the referee (yes, you get a list of things you should do when reviewing). Actually, repeating an experiment takes much more time, effort, and money than a referee could ever afford. Repeating an experiment of this size requires several man-years (and the money to pay for the job).
(b) as a referee you can, and should, watch out for bad style, bad grammar/spelling, and obscure or needlessly complex wording. you should also watch out for inconsistencies, and/or conclusions that are not supported by the facts given.
(c) repeating the experiment, and judging on the validity of the results, is the responsibility of the scientific community as a whole. If it is important, someone will step up and repeat it.
(d) the difference between submitted date and published date is due to a combination of lazy referees, lazy authors (resubmitting the paper months after receiving the referees comments), and publication backlog.
Looks like Dark Helmet was right, light speed is too slow. :)
what are you people thinking?
I repeat: One is not prime!!
Prime numbers are numbers that have no other factors than 1 and itself, and the number one is a special case.
(So basically the number "1" can be used to disprove the hypothesis that all numbers are prime)
Don't quote me on this.
since our current point of view of the universe is infinitesimaly small compared to the size of the universe, the universe COULD have almost infinite mass and be in a small bubble and we would never know. Sortof like an equation could have inputs that make it go to infinity, but it might have higher-order derivatives that do not.
science is a religion
Imagine a large spacecraft traveling with a positive, but constant, velocity that was rotating in a vector orthogonal to its direction of travel. Two experiments that measure the speed of light to a high degree of accuracy are performed onboard the spacecraft; one at some distance away from the axis of rotation of the spacecraft and the other on the axis of rotation. Two observers that are very sensitive to red and blue shifts in light (due to the Doppler effect) are also on board, one by each experiment.
One observer, Alice, travels in the same portion of the spacecraft as the equipment and at the same velocity as the equipment, thus having zero velocity in the frame of reference of the equipment. However, due to rotation about the axis of the spacecraft, her (and the experiment's) frame of reference experiences time in a non-linear fashion (due to their non-constant speed with respect to the absolute frame of reference). Note that the speed of light measured in the experiment (relative to the Alice's frame of reference) changes depending on her instantaneous absolute velocity (and speed). Also note that Alice would not observe a blue or red shift in the equipment, since she has the same frame of reference as the experment and experiences time at the same rate.
The other observer, Bob, is positioned on the axis of rotation of the spacecraft and has the same frame of reference as the spacecraft. If Bob runs the same experiment as Alice, but the equipment is set up at on the axis of rotation of the spacecraft, Bob would measure the same value for the speed of light in his experiment as long as the velocity of the spacecraft remained constant. Bob would alternately observe red shifts and blue shifts when viewing Alice and her experiment. Likewise, Alice would alternately see blue and red shifts when viewing Bob and his experiment.
The red and blue shifts are due to relativity and the Doppler effect. Since their absolute velocities are changing, the light gets "bunched up" or "spread out" when leaving from an object in motion, depending on whether it is emitted from the side of the object that is in the direction of its absolute motion. When Alice's absolute velocity has a component that is the same as the velocity of the spacecraft, the light she is emitting toward's Bob is "bunched", or blue shifted. When here absolute velocity has a component that is the oposite as the velocity of the spacecraft, light she emits toward Bob is "spread out", or red shifted.
I propose that we are in the same situation as Alice the observer, that is, traveling at the same rate as the experiment setup. Our visible portion of the universe corresponds to Alice and her experiment and has a similar frame of reference. The axis of rotation of the spacecraft corresponds to an axis of rotation in our universe that is beyond our visible universe. Since we can't determine the absolute velocity of anything within our field of view, there is no way to determine whether our rate of experiencing time is constant relative to the absolute frame of reference of the universe.
The absolute frame of reference of the universe would be the frame of reference that has the maximum speed of light. Since models of the universe that have a big bang event nicely condense all matter into a small area, it is easy to imagine a point in the absolute frame of reverence--one that has all the matter with zero velocity. In that frame of reference, the speed of light as emmitted and measured within that frame of reference would be the maximum out of all possible frame of references that have light being emitted and measured.
science is a religion
Face facts - evolution AND creation are more than just theories. The answer to these questions will be fundamentally more than just "how old is the earth?". It will address whether there is a God, whether there is an afterlife or not, whether this life has any meaning, and much more. Our whole life stands to be turned around by this question.
Not really. This would be true if you based your entire worldview on a rather old book. For those of us that don't, it's merely another way to look at how we got here. Using evidence and critical thought.
This is not just a question of science, but a question of our entire life direction and purpose.
This is probably why you can't make any progress. See first paragraph.
Ocean basins were created and the waters receded into them.
How many times does "created" come up in your arguments? Is this why it is called "creation" science, the answer to "why" is always "it was created"? You are skipping the "how" part of the question, and jumping straight to "why". Science tends to focus on "how" and religion jumps to "why". This is another reason you make little progess in your forum debates.
Evolution took the world by storm. It won by popularity contest even before there was evidence for it, just Charles Darwin's hypotheses. The world was ready to hear it and they grabbed onto it.
Similar to how Christianity and Islam did, no? People know a good idea when they see one.
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Speed of light... decreasing...
E=mc^2....
E... decreasing....
m... another form of E...
m... decreasing...
cosmological constant.. not constant; decreasing...
less matter, less energy...
Both Big Bang theory versions incorrect, the universe is neither expanding infinitely, nor is it periodically collapsing and expanding....
One Big Bang, matter/energy dissipates..
Conservation laws gone...
Universe... will soon be gone...
Brain hurts now
No more thinky today
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
It seems Einstein was an Aussie too.
Hmm, I wonder how this is going to make my beer taste?
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
so if light were significantly faster near creation, it could reach earth in 6000-7000 years. But at current speeds it would appear to have taken much more time.
The problem is, you can't muck with the speed of light without mucking with a lot of other things. If the speed of light were really that fast 6000 years ago, stars probably couldn't have formed anyway.
*sigh* RIP, you old crank
Ahhh, Alexander Abian.
since that was the only point I saw you try and make. If you'd like to re-iterate your point, I'd be glad to wear it down to a nub, yet again.
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