Starship Asterisk*

...unless they [were] good [at] guessing, [their] second would not match our second. Bigger planet, shorter/longer year, longer/ shorter day. And through in a relative change in time. There is no way, [their] clock will match ours. So [their] speed of light will be different to ours. No, it will be...

It seems to me that [speed of light response] straight edge scissors would be strain distorted under the closing forces into Archimedes spirals and thus would proceed to close outward at a constant speed (= c). If you can start with straight blades that distort into outward curves in motion, you ca...

You forgot little old me :cry: Nitrogen Damn... For years I've thought the sky was blue because of resonance with the atomic spectrum of oxygen, based on a conversation I had years ago. Now that I hunt around I see that everyone says it's Rayleigh scattering, and that the size of the molecules is w...

I've sometimes compared atoms to bells. A bell has a characteristic set of frequencies, and will resonate if hit with sound of a frequency close to one of its own. A loud crash will make a bell hum a little, at its own pitch. So the sun hits the atmosphere with a big loud chord of WHITE! and oxygen ...

In thinking about the scissors, it is important to remember that we still can't convey any information faster than c. That means that if we decide the vertex can move at greater than c, we have to allow for the fact that it can't reach any arbitrary point in space faster than a photon released by t...

Clearly, if we work the scissors exclusively from one end , we cannot make the vertex travel faster than light. (At least not unless the blades have some very weird elastic properties such that they won't meet close to us until our impulse has had time to travel down to points far from us, in which...

The Big Bang event is defined as the moment that the Universe came into being... and time itself was created with the Big Bang. I beg to differ (or at least doubt). The Big Bang event is a something we extrapolate from present observations, something that happened roughly 13.5 bya, and we don't yet...

[Bumblebees'] wing size does not give them enough lift to fly (especially the really big ones), but they do not know that and fly around anyway. This is a myth. Even if it were true that bumblebees could not fly according to our theories of aerodynamics, that would simply mean that our theories wer...

mark swain wrote:Why did these numbers and letters make Researches go WOW?

Are you actually curious, or do you think this forum is for trivia challenges?

I must disagree with Chris Peterson... the brightness of the two slits will not change. It will. I've done this in the lab... If you move your head so that your eye is in an interference minimum, you'll see little or no light from either slit. Move to a maximum and you'll see the slits brightly ill...

You said: I would think that their electromagnetic nature would overpower or be more significant than the gravity forces of the source star for a certain amount of time... (boldface mine) Now you've dropped that and you're talking about something else: In addition, the fast moving plasmas of the eje...

...unlike the screen [the eye] is an imaging detector. So it won't see an interference pattern (that is, facing the slits, there will be no evidence of interference structure). But as the observer moves back and forth, he will see the apparent brightness of the light coming from the slits change- w...

I would think that their electromagnetic nature would overpower or be more significant than the gravity forces of the source star for a certain amount of time... What does that mean? Do you mean that electromagnetic forces would hold the star together for a while after core collapse? Plasmas don't ...

I guess I should amend my statement that light always takes the shortest path. Light always takes the extremal path, which in practice means that it won't take a path if there's a slightly different path that's shorter. So for example if a candle is next to a mirror, you'll see light coming to you a...

What happens in this case is the light from the distant background star is following a longer, curved path when observed during an eclipse. Yes, but in this context the word "curved" might not mean exactly what you think it does. So in addition to the light being blueshifted as it falls i...

I read the title, entered the thread, and was deeply disappointed to find an article about a mildly interesting new microwave absorber.

Can someone elaborate on the stadium wave riddle? Thanks. What I meant was to ask whether a stadium wave can travel faster than light. The question is open-ended, and it's hard to elaborate without giving it away, but here are some things to think about. Let's define a true stadium wave as one in w...

A follow-up question: Does the light travel the same distance in both scenarios? No, but the exact answer depends on what you mean by "both scenarios". If you mean during an eclipse vs. six months later, the Earth will move to the side of the sun closer to the star in question. It will be...

...your candle will never accelerate and, as a result never gain mass. No, my candle will burn, and therefore never gain mass. Also, without the energy of it's matter structured at the atomic level it will collapse- wick burning or not. With zero energy content, it will not exist. "Collapse&qu...

Would the background star's spectra appear to be red-shifted? In theory, no. If you sent a light source down into the gravity well, like mounting a laser on Mercury, then it would appear to be slightly red-shifted when viewed from Earth. Likewise a laser mounted on Earth would appear slightly blue-...

Jay Mack wrote:The poser does not specify the speed of light in relation to what. Speed is relative.

Actually, the speed of light is the one speed that isn't relative.

So if you are driving your car and increase your speed from 30 mph to 50 mph, does that mean that your mass increases along with your speed, however small the increase of your mass may be? Yes, if you drive a mid-size sedan the mass increases by a couple of nanograms, comparable to the mass of a gr...

The ability for [an] object to maintain it's pre-accelerated size/density requires certain amount of internal energy/pressure or else it would collapse into itself. Where on Earth are you getting your information? When, say, a candle burns, it just gets smaller and smaller until it's gone (in the i...

When an object is accelerated towards the speed of light, how much of the applied energy goes into the increase in velocity of that object, and how much goes into increasing the object's mass? All of it, and all of it. They're not competing. You will get an increase of mass according to KE = (m-m0)...

An object in motion approaching a Black Hole event horizon...mass increases, time slows. An object in motion approaching the Speed of Light............mass increases, time slows. From the frame of an outside observer. Other than each object accelerating or just being in motion, have I missed someth...