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Intergalactic Race Shows That Einstein Still Rules
Ponca City, We love you writes "The NY Times reports that after a journey of 7.3 billion light-years, a race between gamma rays ranging from 31 billion electron volts to 10,000 electron volts, a factor of more than a million, in a burst from an exploding star, have arrived within nine-tenths of a second of each other. A detector on NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope confirmed Einstein’s proclamation in his 1905 theory of relativity that the speed of light is constant and independent of its color, energy, direction or how you yourself are moving. Some theorists had suggested that space on very small scales has a granular structure that would speed some light waves faster than others — in short, that relativity could break down on the smallest scales. Until now such quantum gravity theories have been untestable because ordinarily you would have to see details as small as the so-called Planck length, which is vastly smaller than an atom — to test these theories in order to discern the bumpiness of space."
Probably due to the reflex time when they started and stopped their stopwatches.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
The light propagated through space for 7.3 billion years. A delta of +/-0.000000000000000039% is not even close to statistically significant. It could have been from local variations in the density of a nebula or something.
they didn't. the slower one was waiting for its wife to get ready.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
It's not the distance, it's very likely that the different photons were emitted at slightly different periods during the burst. It would be like two cars leaving a parking lot, one after the other, and both traveling at the same speed. Obviously the one behind the other will never overtake it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
9/10th of a second is only about 3/4th the distance from earth to the moon. I don't know for sure but I think that's a rather small difference and could be accounted for just by the size of the star that exploded. Our own sun is about 4 seconds across isn't it?
The speed of light = 299 792 458 m / s (commonly 3.0 * 10^8 m/s)
The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is 384,403 kilometres
(384 403 kilometers) / the speed of light = 1.28223039 seconds
The diameter of the sun = 1391000 kilometers
(1392000 kilometers) / the speed of light = 4.64321221 seconds
Either you do good math in your head, or I respect your physics teacher for teaching you such interesting facts.
So the $500 high-energy gamma-output cables I bought actually DON'T improve my ping?
FUCK YOU MONSTER CABLE!
Aaarrggghh!!!
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Do we call in the MythBusters to stage an experiment? I need to see a Confirmed, Plausible, or Busted branding iron before I believe anything.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
His in-head rounding skills, however, were taught by Lorena Bobbitt.
You read the article. Obviously, injecting evidence and facts into the discussion is not helpful with the wild speculation, conjecture and skepticism of the uninformed.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
This Einstein guy is starting to really piss me off. Someone gotta take him down a notch or two.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
So God runs the universe using Verizon technologies?
Are they driving the same route? Did your brother not ride with so he could burn down a j? Will he share?!?
"When you have a period, chop it off?"
Yah, but think of the poor string theorists. Here they spend 30 years working on it, and they stack the department hiring processes so they will not be criticized for never have created a testable conjecture. Now some data comes in and half their theories crash.
An engineer, a mathematician, and a physicist are riding a train through Scotland.
The engineer looks out the window, sees a black sheep, and exclaims, "Hey! They've got black sheep in Scotland!"
The mathematician looks out the window and corrects the engineer, "Strictly speaking, all we know is that there's at least one black sheep in Scotland."
The physicist looks out the window and corrects the mathematician, "On one side."
Mythbusters already tested this. The episode will air 7.3 billion years from next week.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Photons with different wavelengths carry more or less energy depending upon frequency. High-Frequency is Higher-Engergy. E=MC^2. So, Higher Energy Photons are affected greater by gravity. Are they not?
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.