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 lowrider
ridin high
Registered: 03/28/02
Posts: 41
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 speed of light/ atomic clock 
#861031 - 09/03/02 06:25 AM (21 years, 7 months ago) |
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Is anyone familiar with the atomic clock and the relationshipe between it and the speed of light? Someone was saying that the speed of light was slowing down. I have no idea what this atomic clock theory is or why the speed of light is slowing, but without further investigation I'd have to say it is BS.
My simple reasoning is that no matter what kind of theory people come up with, unless somehow the very nature and essence of light is changed, light is light. He kept saying that scientists were able to stop light in a lab. Well I don't really care, there are ways to manipulate light in a lab but you can't change the essence of it can you? So light in the universe is always constant. Am I missing the whole p[oint?
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 MAIA
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 Re: speed of light/ atomic clock [Re: lowrider]
#861052 - 09/03/02 06:37 AM (21 years, 7 months ago) |
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"He kept saying that scientists were able to stop light in a lab"
Stop light ? Well, only if they are able to stop time.
MAIA
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Spiritual being, living a human experience ... The Shroomery Mandala
 
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Sclorch
Clyster
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 Re: speed of light/ atomic clock [Re: lowrider]
#861086 - 09/03/02 06:51 AM (21 years, 7 months ago) |
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Umm.... I know what you're talking about.
There was an article in Scientific American a while back ("Frozen Light"?).
In some ways, talk of slowing and freezing light is misleading. The physical speed of the photons that constitute the light is always precisely c, the speed of light in a vacuum. Any other speed, or freezing, refers to the phase, or the patterns in the electromagnetic field created by the photons. The situation is analogous to a large crowd of runners always running at precisely the speed c. While running, they may perform a backward "wave" like sports fans in a stadium - it is the wave, not the runners, that may be slower than c or even stationary.
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ToxicMan
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Re: speed of light/ atomic clock [Re: lowrider]
#861271 - 09/03/02 08:46 AM (21 years, 7 months ago) |
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The speed of light slowing down bit is a cosmology theory to explain some experimental results. It is possible that the speed of light has been changing verrrrrrrry slowly to lower values through the lifetime of the universe. Here's a short explanation of where the theory comes from and why.
The stopping light bit has absolutely nothing to do with that. It was the result of a physics experiment in quantum mechanics. Here's a short article explaining what they did, why, and the significance of it.
Hope that helps.
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lowrider
ridin high
Registered: 03/28/02
Posts: 41
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Re: speed of light/ atomic clock [Re: ToxicMan]
#862163 - 09/03/02 04:42 PM (21 years, 7 months ago) |
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hmm interesting. Thanks for the info, guys.
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tak_old
Endo Smoke
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Re: speed of light/ atomic clock [Re: lowrider]
#862607 - 09/03/02 11:05 PM (21 years, 7 months ago) |
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I hear alot on places like zeta talk and here about "time slowing down" and there not being as much time per day as "the good ol days" but if we live xx years, and we can still do yy tasks in the time it takes a clock to count zz seconds, its all good. Someone told me "Time is to prevent everything from happening at once" and then a voice came down from the heavens and said "Who says its not"
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Earth_Droid
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 Re: speed of light/ atomic clock [Re: tak_old]
#862614 - 09/03/02 11:19 PM (21 years, 7 months ago) |
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If time is doing anything, I beleive it is speeding up.
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gnrm23
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Re: speed of light/ atomic clock [Re: lowrider]
#862903 - 09/04/02 04:50 AM (21 years, 7 months ago) |
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lorentz-fitzgerald contraction
time dilation
tau zero (see poul anderson's sci fi novel)
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the old identical twins w/one on a space ship routine, eh?
to an observer at rest, the ticking of the clock onboard the very-rapidly moviong spaceship will appear to have slowed down...
t(0) = t(1) x (1 - ((v)2 / (c)2))1/2
tau zero equals tau one times one minus the square root of the velocity squared over "c" squared...
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(see TIHKAL for shulgin's take on big bang, red shift, age of universe, and "tired light"...)
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einstein's relativity games... shucks, see dr carl sagan's _cosmos_ for a bicycle ride at the speed of light in switzerland...
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Sclorch
Clyster
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 Re: speed of light/ atomic clock [Re: gnrm23]
#863375 - 09/04/02 10:04 AM (21 years, 7 months ago) |
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Time dilation is a charlatan's trick.
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Note: In desperate need of a cure...
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Anonymous
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Re: speed of light/ atomic clock [Re: lowrider]
#863882 - 09/04/02 03:25 PM (21 years, 7 months ago) |
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I read something linked on fark.com under the heading 'inconsistent speed of light may debunk einstein.' I wish I could remember the article.. Check the fark.com archives.. It was a few weeks ago, I think. Just search the archive page. I think the article may have been from cosmiverse.com, things of that nature generally are.
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Anonymous
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Re: speed of light/ atomic clock [Re: ]
#864991 - 09/05/02 06:37 AM (21 years, 7 months ago) |
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If i recall the article correctly, researchers have slowed down light by passing it through a material that has been cooled to as close to absolute zero as we can get. some how this slows down light. if i remember it correctly... look up superconductance and light on Google.
as for the atomic clock.....it's just a clock that uses a vibrating cesium atom instead of a crystal or a circuit. i has nothing to do with the speed of light except that it can measure time in super-tiny increments and thusly it has been used to measure the passage of time in vehicles moving at super high speeds... they put the clock on a plane going MACH 1 million or whatever and fly it arounda while and then compare its time to an identically timed clock on the ground...i think they've found that the clocks vary in time by a small amount. which means...if you went at the speed of light you would be going significantly faster than the Mach1million or whatever plane and thusly time would slow down much much more. so one day it may be possible to travel at the speed of light , arrive in another solar system, come home andfind that everyone is dead and you've only aged 1 year.  at least in the movies that's how it works...
Edited by vaporbrains (09/05/02 06:40 AM)
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero
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Re: speed of light/ atomic clock [Re: ]
#865318 - 09/05/02 09:48 AM (21 years, 7 months ago) |
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so one day it may be possible to travel at the speed of light
Current theory only allows something (such as a photon) with a rest mass of zero to travel the speed of light... our rest mass is not zero, so we could approach the speed of light, but never actually obtain it.
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Anonymous
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Re: speed of light/ atomic clock [Re: Seuss]
#865740 - 09/05/02 02:30 PM (21 years, 7 months ago) |
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at least in the movies that's how it works...
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