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imachavel
I loved and lost but I loved-ftw


Registered: 06/06/07
Posts: 31,564
Loc: You get banned for saying that
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Re: What's faster then light? quantum tunnelling! [Re: Madtowntripper]
#8178475 - 03/22/08 01:00 AM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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oh ok, yeah, i wouldn't figure you can accelerate light, i don't know if anything can travel faster than it. There's things we might not know about.. but who knows... maybe an atom is the smallest amount of energy possible, maybe not..
hard to say, huh?
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I did not say to edit my signature soulidarity! Now forever I will never remember what I said about understanding the secrets of the universe by paying attention to subtleties!
I'm never giving you the password again. Jerk
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DieCommie


Registered: 12/11/03
Posts: 29,258
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Re: What's faster then light? quantum tunnelling! [Re: imachavel]
#8178551 - 03/22/08 01:24 AM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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One reason scientists dont think there is anything that can travel faster than light (or more specifically, communicate faster than light), comes from relativity. Relativity has been experimentally verified to be correct to a very high precision. If you work the logic of it out, you find that something traveling faster than the speed of light violates causality. What this means is, if something travels faster than light the effects of interactions happen before the causes. That doesn't make sense.
Say you push a button, shoot a laser and destroy someones eyesight from afar. If something could travel faster than light, then in its reference frame (from its perspective) the persons eye would be destroyed before you shoot the laser. This would not be an optical illusion of any sort, it would happen in that order - eye destroyed first, then laser is shot.
So there are basically three choices: 1) relativity is wrong (but its been experimentally verified to such high precision...) 2) effects can happen before causes (wow, that would be wierd. probably not likley) 3) nothing can travel faster than light (also wierd, but probably correct)
Sometimes, truth truly is stranger than fiction. This type of tripped out shit is what drew me to physics.
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Madtowntripper
Sun-Beams out of Cucumbers



Registered: 03/06/03
Posts: 21,289
Loc: The Ocean of Notions
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Re: What's faster then light? quantum tunnelling! [Re: DieCommie]
#8178593 - 03/22/08 01:43 AM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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I hate physics so much.
If I had had to take more than two semesters, I never would have graduated school.
-------------------- After one comes, through contact with it's administrators, no longer to cherish greatly the law as a remedy in abuses, then the bottle becomes a sovereign means of direct action. If you cannot throw it at least you can always drink out of it. - Ernest Hemingway If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it. In the law courts, in business, in government. There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent. -Cormac MacCarthy He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. - Aeschylus
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DieCommie


Registered: 12/11/03
Posts: 29,258
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Re: What's faster then light? quantum tunnelling! [Re: Madtowntripper]
#8178682 - 03/22/08 02:31 AM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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Wait... dont you have a geophysics degree? And you only had to take two physics classes?
I dont understand how somebody could not find the implications of relativity fascinating. Sure you may hate doing the math, but to hate learning about things like time dilation and how the universe operates in general seems strange...
If you are looking in a thread titled quantum tunneling, I think you might like physics a little.
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Madtowntripper
Sun-Beams out of Cucumbers



Registered: 03/06/03
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Re: What's faster then light? quantum tunnelling! [Re: DieCommie]
#8178702 - 03/22/08 02:40 AM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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Saying I hate it is probably an overstatement because yes, I enjoy learning the reasons for certain behaviors.
But I really despise math. I'm not good at it and it doesn't make sense to me.
And there is surprisingly little physics involved in geophysics.
-------------------- After one comes, through contact with it's administrators, no longer to cherish greatly the law as a remedy in abuses, then the bottle becomes a sovereign means of direct action. If you cannot throw it at least you can always drink out of it. - Ernest Hemingway If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it. In the law courts, in business, in government. There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent. -Cormac MacCarthy He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. - Aeschylus
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Baby_Hitler
Errorist



Registered: 03/06/02
Posts: 27,660
Loc: To the limit!
Last seen: 9 hours, 11 minutes
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Re: What's faster then light? quantum tunnelling! [Re: DieCommie]
#8178901 - 03/22/08 06:57 AM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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I still don't see how light traveling at c could take a year to travel a light year, but if it traveled at 1.000000000000001 X c it would get there before it left.
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Annom
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Registered: 12/22/02
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Loc: Europe
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Re: What's faster then light? quantum tunnelling! [Re: Madtowntripper]
#8179159 - 03/22/08 09:38 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
And there is surprisingly little physics involved in geophysics.
I guess that depends on the field within geophysics. If you want to model dynamic behaviour of any process on earth, you will have to use differential equations.
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DieCommie


Registered: 12/11/03
Posts: 29,258
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Re: What's faster then light? quantum tunnelling! [Re: Baby_Hitler]
#8179644 - 03/22/08 12:32 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Baby_Hitler said: I still don't see how light traveling at c could take a year to travel a light year, but if it traveled at 1.000000000000001 X c it would get there before it left.
The fact that I used a laser in my example is just coincidence. If you could travel faster than the speed of light, there would be some reference frame out there where any effect would happen before a cause. There would be one where a person would die from a bullet before the gun is shot.
The reason for all this craziness is the idea of 'simultaneity'. Things do not happen simultaneously in all reference frames. In fact simultaneous events are only simultaneous in certain reference frames. You might say that my watch and you watch are each at 00 seconds, even though we are thousands of miles apart. But in most other reference frames, they are not 00 seconds at the same time. Again, this would not be an illusion of any sort, they would really be non simultaneous events. You cannot state the order in which things happen without stating what reference frame you are in.
To really 'get it' and internalize this idea, you need to do some math of course. Relativity is easy math though, no calculus just algebra. Also maybe google space-time diagrams (or minkowski diagrams) to get a pictorial view of it.
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OJK
Stranger


Registered: 06/08/03
Posts: 10,629
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Re: What's faster then light? quantum tunnelling! [Re: DieCommie]
#8181751 - 03/22/08 10:37 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
DieCommie said: Say you push a button, shoot a laser and destroy someones eyesight from afar. If something could travel faster than light, then in its reference frame (from its perspective) the persons eye would be destroyed before you shoot the laser. This would not be an optical illusion of any sort, it would happen in that order - eye destroyed first, then laser is shot.
Excuse my ignorance, but I don't follow the intuition here. Why would it apply to a laser and not, say, a bullet fired from a gun? If a man next to me fires a bullet at a melon 100 yards away, and I move to the melon faster than the bullet travels, the melon does not appear to explode before the bullet arrives.
I accept that you're right, I just don't understand why/how.
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DieCommie


Registered: 12/11/03
Posts: 29,258
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Re: What's faster then light? quantum tunnelling! [Re: OJK]
#8183105 - 03/23/08 11:35 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Edited by DieCommie (11/11/16 10:15 AM)
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