For Fun: Exercise For The Mind, Concepts, Insights, ...

[titan]

As an object's velocity approaches the speed of light (sol) it shrinks in length, and grows more massive (like getting heavier). *
In the following scenario, when both ladder & garage are at equal rest, the ladder is too long to fit in the garage. Approaching sol an object's dimension along the axis of travel shortens.




* This is why matter can't exceed sol. An object can't simultaneously be infinitely short, and infinitely massive.

 

[sear]

t #1
Thanks for the new thread. Enjoy leaping into the pool on the deep end do ya?

"... has given virtually endless trouble to technical people for over a century now." text t #1

On 30 June 1905 the German physics journal Annalen der Physik published a paper by a young patent clerk called Albert Einstein. The paper, Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper, (On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies) set out Einstein's theory of Special Relativity, which explains the relationship between space and time – and between energy and mass – in the famous equation E=mc2. The paper used Planck's concept of energy quanta to describe how light travels through space.

Albert Einstein publishes his theory of Special Relativity | timeline.web.cern.ch timeline.web.cern.ch ​

So Einstein himself puzzled over this "paradox"?

Might this "thought experiment" seem to support the idea of alternate parallel realities, & perhaps even their genesis? If so, what then? Merely a temporary divergence which vanishes when the two realities merge?
Or is it a fork, where the unity of their manifestation continue to diverge, establishing or exposing an alternate, parallel reality, each to continue separately to perpetuity?

 

[mark mywords]

if you are piloting a space craft travelling at the speed of light and put your headlights on does anything happen?
(light has a maximum speed the space ship is already travelling at that maximum speed for the light to exit the light bulb it would need to travel at greater than the speed of light)

 

[sear]

Indeed.
That's why it's called "relativity". What happens is determined by the observer's relation to the observed. If the observer is seated at the bus stop, and the speedster whizzes by @sol, the headlights on the speedster wouldn't to the bus stop patron appear to shine. BUT !!
To the whizzer driver passing the bus stop @sol, the lights would appear to function normally to him, for to him the vehicle passing the bus stop would be stationary in relation to the headlights. For you see, sol may be an absolute, but it appears to not be a universal absolute. The observer influences the observation. But no matter where the observer, the speed of light has not been witnessed documented as exceeding C.

I'd like to mention to t #1 something seemingly similar about quantum mechanics. But I shied from it so as not to appear to think Relativity and quantum physics are related. In quantum physics, the process of measuring can alter that which is measured.

The thing that sends me about quantum physics is entwined particles. Astronomer / author / professor Bob Berman says entwined particles could be galaxies away, and yet Berman says they will still respond simultaneously, instantaneously.
It's complicated of course. But the standard concept of size presents it as a spectrum, starting at zero as one terminus of the spectrum, and infinite at the other, but a linear spectrum.
The entwined particles have me wondering whether instead of a linear spectrum, whether it sort of loops around to form a circle relating in some way the tiniest, with the opposite.

Don't know.
Not smart enough to figure it out.

 

[sear]

"if you are piloting a space craft travelling at the speed of light and put your headlights on does anything happen?
(light has a maximum speed the space ship is already travelling at that maximum speed for the light to exit the light bulb it would need to travel at greater than the speed of light)" m #3

I believe to those aboard the HMS SOL the headlight would appear to operate normally. BUT !
To the "stationary" observer, one that perceives the craft to be traveling at speed of light (SOL) the headlight would not appear to project photons, no Tyndall.

Right?

 

[sear]

Minimum Wage:
There are arguments both for and against, some more persuasive than others.
From the employee perspective, how lovely to receive a salary above what market pressures support. Economics is more complicated. For obvious example:

In the case of a federal minimum wage, one that applied coast to coast, that means a minimum wage worker in NYC would earn the same as an entry level employee in rural Mississippi.
Problem #1:
the cost of living may be ten times as high in mid-town Manhattan as in Leflore, Mississippi. Therefore one fixed national minimum wage might be a bonanza for an entry level Mississippian,
and a hardship for the New Yorker.

Problem #2:
If we make employment more expensive, any wonder why there'd be less of it?

Surely fairness should prevail.
By and large, if the employment isn't adequately rewarded, Americans don't take it.
Our farmers don't hire illegal aliens to harvest crops because farmers don't have enough other opportunities for the excitement of breaking the law.
They hire illegals because legals won't do the work.

"Most poor people are making more than the minimum wage, and most people making the minimum wage are not poor people, they're students and other part time workers." George Will

 

[Shiftless2]

if you are piloting a space craft travelling at the speed of light and put your headlights on does anything happen?
(light has a maximum speed the space ship is already travelling at that maximum speed for the light to exit the light bulb it would need to travel at greater than the speed of light)

Reminds me of my grad student days. This is the sort of discussion we'd have in the grad student pub (usually after several pitchers of beer).

And relativity results in some strange things - the spaceship is travelling at the speed of light relative to the observer but, relative to the spaceship, the observer is the one travelling at the speed of light. So, when you turn on the headlights they act as if the spaceship is stationary and emit light accordingly. (Time for a few more pitchers of beer)

 

[sear]

"This is the sort of discussion we'd have in the grad student pub (usually after several pitchers of beer)." S2 #7

Pappy called it "socialization".
It's a valuable if subordinated benefit of such education. Does Lovejoy's detail this?

In the previous millennium one or more of these quantum particles were imagined to be massless, electrons and photons for example.

Einstein predicted that at SOL, a physical body's mass would be infinite. Somehow he / they dodged this principle for photons, which by definition do travel @SOL in a vacuum.

personal note:
Not quite sure why, but astrophysicists, Dr. Carl Sagan, Dr. Neil DeGrass Tyson, Dr. Valerie Rapson among many others
seem not merely to have an exceptional understanding, but also a gift for communicating it.
Imagine if this gift were as common among U.S. federal politicians !