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Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 12:32 am
by zerbaman
I understand that it's the idea that if you can move fast enough, you'll "travel through time". But does moving faster than the eye can see not just mean that you're moving faster than light?
If time is infinite and essentially immeasurable, how can you travel faster than it?

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 12:42 am
by Mortal
if you travel faster than light itself, then surely you arrive at your destination, before youve even left.

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:03 am
by bright maroon
It's a really wide sweep...the time syn

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:04 am
by zerbaman
I don't think so. You arrive when you arrive. People only see you arrive at what appears to be before you've left, but you'd arrive at whatever time you arrive.

We measure time in seconds, minutes, days, weeks, years etc. But it's smaller than that. Smaller than miliseconds. no matter how small, with time, there'd always be smaller? like irrational numbers

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:07 am
by knell
You can't go faster than the speed of light because it would take infinite energy. It's like saying you can go more "up" than "straight up".

your speed is relative to time in that the faster you go, the less time you go through relative to things going slower than you. the scale is immense though.

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:09 am
by youthful_implants
joke time.

the barman says "we don't serve faster than light neutrinos in here." a neutrino walks into a bar.

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:15 am
by noam
zerbaman wrote:I understand that it's the idea that if you can move fast enough, you'll "travel through time". But does moving faster than the eye can see not just mean that you're moving faster than light?
If time is infinite and essentially immeasurable, how can you travel faster than it?
you're thinking about time wrong when you say it is infinite and immeasurable

those are abstractions and time in that respect is immeasurable because its simply not possible to quantify anything 'infinite' beyond it being... 'infinite'

if you want to think about time in relation (relative) to relativity, you have to think about time as being linked to velocity, position of observer, vector (direction) and mass

the closer you come to the speed of light, the slower time becomes FOR YOU, for an observer time stays the same

relativity describes this difference

the greater mass an object has, the 'slower' time is the closer to it you get

its called Time Dilation, and its an idea that is ridiculously complex and way beyond me :corntard: :corntard: :corntard:

im sure there's something to do with the mass of an object increasing the faster it gets also, which increases its gravitational strength which curves spacetime even more

its all linked to the idea of time not being 'linear' but time being linked intrinsically to space - hence 'relativity'; giving us the idea of spacetime

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:21 am
by zerbaman
But why would time slow down? I don't understand that?

It's like saying with special calculators 1 + 1 = -1... Just for you...

I understand what you're saying, I'm just thinking that in this theory, time has been mistaken with light. I'm trying to get a grasp of how it hasn't been though, this has annoyed me for a while now

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:30 am
by noam
zerbaman wrote:But why would time slow down? I don't understand that?

It's like saying with special calculators 1 + 1 = -1... Just for you...

I understand what you're saying, I'm just thinking that in this theory, time has been mistaken with light. I'm trying to get a grasp of how it hasn't been though, this has annoyed me for a while now
you're just thinking about 'time' wrong

as i said, you're thinking about time being something which makes your clock go 'tick tick tick tick tick'

it isn't

time is a dimension that we travel through that is given its properties by the other dimensions we live in and by force characteristics such as velocity (your speed between two positions) and vector (the direction you're travelling) and mass (the gravitational force of an object)

so when we say that 'time slows down' it is that time appears to slow down relative to other observers...

the faster you go or the closer you get to an object of sizeable mass time, appears to slow

if what you're REALLY asking is 'what is Time?' then simply i dont have an answer outside of 'a unit of measurement' or 'what your clock measures'

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:38 am
by noam
in fact in the last post i wrote that time is given properties by things such as velocity etc. when in fact those things use our measurement of time as properties of themselves, this is bullshit

so if you accept time in the way we use it, as a measurement, we're all good and you can go on to think about relativity in the standard way

if you reject that and believe time is something... different... then well, your questions make more but also less sense

if you believe time to be an instrument of our consciousness then there's literally no more i can say cos its just to hard to start thinking about now but at least you'd kind of be right saying its infinite and immeasurable

but at least do you see the difference between the two idea's i spelled out briefly in my first post and more clearly here??

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:48 am
by zerbaman
I'm seeing it as the opposite in terms of clocks. I think clocks are inefficient measures of time.
Time isn't a unit of measurement, it's what is being measured. A unit of measurement in this would be seconds.
Velocity is a vector too. I'm saying light atm because you're saying it "appears" to slow down. That's not time, it's what you can see. You can't see time.


And Yes, I understand what you're saying, I already said I did, I just think time's been confused here

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:51 am
by youthful_implants
I definitely noticed time slowing down when I was reading this thread. :H:

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:55 am
by noam
zerbaman wrote:I'm seeing it as the opposite in terms of clocks. I think clocks are inefficient measures of time.
Time isn't a unit of measurement, it's what is being measured. A unit of measurement in this would be seconds.
Velocity is a vector too. I'm saying light atm because you're saying it "appears" to slow down. That's not time, it's what you can see. You can't see time.


And Yes, I understand what you're saying, I already said I did, I just think time's been confused here
i think when you're starting to claim that something has been misunderstood... and the thing you're talking about is what Einstein was talking about when he came up with his theory of relativity, perhaps you should think a bit more about what is that you think is wrong with the idea?

you're mashing up loads of concepts

i was hoping for some good discussion here too :(

im trying to see what it is you're saying about light and time... that time is mistaken for light???

again, like i said, you're seeing time as SOMETHING, when in fact, Time is just what our measurements read

and velocity isn't a vector... i duno where you got that from... a vector is a direction, you can be facing due North and not travelling at any speed which would make your vector North and your velocity 0. it'd pay to get the basics right before you start re-writing the theory of relativity.

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:56 am
by noam
youthful_implants wrote:I definitely noticed time slowing down when I was reading this thread. :H:
you haven't got the stones to tackle physics

gtfo

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:57 am
by jugo
Mortal wrote:if you travel faster than light itself, then surely you arrive at your destination, before youve even left.
don't understand why people think you'd travel backwards in time if you could go faster than light.
you're just moving very fast, but still take time to travel.

say for example, a light year. the distance it takes light a year to cross.
if you had a car that could travel faster than light it would still take you months to do it.
the interesting bit is that if you hit anyone on the way, they would be hit, and then after that they'd see you coming towards them!

this also explains why the neutrino joke isn't funny to physicists - it doesn't make sense.
in reality the faster than light neutrino would walk into a bar. then it's image would 'catch up'. then the barman would see it and say we don't serve faster than light neutrinos in here. but that isn't funny...

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 2:01 am
by Phigure
this whole thread is fucked if those faster than light neutrinos turn out to be true

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 2:03 am
by noam
jugo wrote:
Mortal wrote:if you travel faster than light itself, then surely you arrive at your destination, before youve even left.
don't understand why people think you'd travel backwards in time if you could go faster than light.
you're just moving very fast, but still take time to travel.
everything breaks down past the speed of light

time wouldn't be measurable anyway

its a concept 'travelling forward through time' that is in reality about as possible as travelling backwards through time

closing distance by somehow bending space time is like, the closest you could come

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 2:05 am
by zerbaman
Jugo!

This is what I'm trying to get across. I'm not very articulate. I do think though, in that lightspeed car situation, that the person being hit wouldn't even be able to register what happened before they were dead. They wouldn't even process it. It'd just happen.
#DepressingViolinMusic :i:

Noam, velocity is a vector. I got As in my physics GCSEs with that info.

Velocity has direction and speed.

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 2:07 am
by zerbaman
Have another question too.

If someone were to actually freeze time, understanding that all matter is supported by moving particles, wouldn't the particles freeze? Causing everything in physical existence to fall apart?

Re: Relativity

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 2:16 am
by noam
zerbaman wrote:Jugo!

This is what I'm trying to get across. I'm not very articulate. I do think though, in that lightspeed car situation, that the person being hit wouldn't even be able to register what happened before they were dead. They wouldn't even process it. It'd just happen.
#DepressingViolinMusic :i:

Noam, velocity is a vector. I got As in my physics GCSEs with that info.

Velocity has direction and speed.
yea you're right