Age of the universe and Relativity of Time

[Johnny]

But that's irrelevant, because the watch has nothing to do with it. Five seconds is five seconds.

5 seconds is 45963158850 periods of radiation coming from a cesium atom in its ground state. If two cesium atoms are moving at different velocities, then 5 seconds is not really 5 seconds. Time is just a measure of interval, right? And two identical intervals at rest will not be identical at different velocities.

 

[Memento Mori]

5 seconds is 45963158850 periods of radiation coming from a cesium atom in its ground state. If two cesium atoms are moving at different velocities, then 5 seconds is not really 5 seconds. Which 5 seconds is right, then?

To whom?

 

[Johnny]

To whom?

As I understand it, both are right for their own inertial frame.

 

[Lighthouse]

But you can move 99% c relative to an inert outside observer. In this case, your time and the observers time run differently. Also, the distances you experience change... huh... Light is always constant no matter what speed you move. That's why it's called a constant. Light only changes speed through different material

For the sake of the argument you could certainly move at 99% 186,000 miles per second. No argument there. But if the light is moving that much faster than you, then you can never travel at 99% the speed of light.

My question is this: if the light is traveling that much faster than you, how is it not traveling 11,160,060 mph when you are traveling 60 mph?

I mean, it makes sense to me that it would not travel that fast if it was not traveling that much aster than you.

But, apparently, what led to the discovery that it travels that much faster than you, always, was the theory that it wasn't traveling that much faster and therefore should travel c+1/60. But I don't see how someone with any common sense would ever even conceive that light could travel at c+1/60.

5 seconds is 45963158850 periods of radiation coming from a cesium atom in its ground state. If two cesium atoms are moving at different velocities, then 5 seconds is not really 5 seconds. Which 5 seconds is right, then?

False.

 

[Memento Mori]

For the sake of the argument you could certainly move at 99% 186,000 miles per second. No argument there. But if the light is moving that much faster than you, then you can never travel at 99% the speed of light.

My question is this: if the light is traveling that much faster than you, how is it not traveling 11,160,060 mph when you are traveling 60 mph?

I mean, it makes sense to me that it would not travel that fast if it was not traveling that much aster than you.

But, apparently, what led to the discovery that it travels that much faster than you, always, was the theory that it wasn't traveling that much faster and therefore should travel c+1/60. But I don't see how someone with any common sense would ever even conceive that light could travel at c+1/60.


False.

I know what you mean. This is one of the most confusing subjects to face the natural world.

I don't know if I can teach you through this board. This subject is just too confusing. I would suggest having a someone in the physical world who knows what they're doing, teach you. Go to a physicist.

All I can tell you, is light always travels at c regardless of who is observing it. If you're traveling 100,000,000 m/s, light appears to be traveling 3 x 10^8 m/s. That same light would appear to travel 3 x 10^8 m/s to me, also.

I don't know how to explain properly. It is not simple. The video Johnny posted twice is a great explanation but you have to have a good imagination to understand it (and not because it's imaginary, it just goes against human perception, hence a paradox).

 

[Johnny]

5 seconds is 45963158850 periods of radiation coming from a cesium atom in its ground state. If two cesium atoms are moving at different velocities, then 5 seconds is not really 5 seconds. Which 5 seconds is right, then?

False.

I wasn't asking whether or not that's true or false. I stated a definition and then noted an observation, followed by a question.

You can't argue with a definition, and you won't get very far arguing with an observation. Which part was false?

 

[koban]

I would suggest having a someone in the physical world who knows what they're doing, teach you.

Teachers can only teach those who want to be taught.

Go to a physicist.

Go to a crippled physicist. That way, when LH inevitably calls him a moron, or an idiot, he won't get pummeled as much.

 

[DoogieTalons]

Lighthouse, the video you made seems to show a basic misunderstanding of relativity.

You understand light itself is kinda immune to the layman from the general relativity equation as it has no mass ? That's why there is the special theory of relativity and the search is on for a unifed theory that can include light, gravity, mass, velocity... everything really which will work with the very small and the very big.

If you want to understand MASS moving through space time then...

Imagine space is EAST and TIME is NORTH. on a chart.

Imagine traveling 100 mph North East.... now imagine going more north than east but still traveling 100mph.

Despite not slowing down relativistically you are going faster north than east.

Now imagine you start going faster in time, you go slower in space, slower in space... faster in time.

BUT ONLY RELATIVISTICALLY to understand relativity you have to ask relative to WHAT.

If I throw a ball up in the air on a train, relative to me it just goes up and down and moves only 30 cm 15cm up, 15cm down. But relative to an outside observer it's motion would describe an arc and the distance it travels would be relative to the speed of the train from the outside observers reference as the ball inherits the momentum of the train.

Now do you actually have a Question you wish to ask because I couldn't make one out in your video.

 

[Colette]

Nice. Thanks for sharing the video.

 

[Lighthouse]

I know what you mean. This is one of the most confusing subjects to face the natural world.

I don't know if I can teach you through this board. This subject is just too confusing. I would suggest having a someone in the physical world who knows what they're doing, teach you. Go to a physicist.

All I can tell you, is light always travels at c regardless of who is observing it. If you're traveling 100,000,000 m/s, light appears to be traveling 3 x 10^8 m/s. That same light would appear to travel 3 x 10^8 m/s to me, also.

Dick Tracy thinks you for your observation that c remains c.:dunce::duh:

What I mean to say is, no kidding light always travels at c, no matter who is observing.

The issue is whether or not it always moves that much faster than something that is moving right alongside it, at a lesser speed.

Here's something you might be able to explain to me.

What idiot though that light would travel at 186,000+1/60 miles per second if a car was traveling at 60 mph, with it's headlights on?

I, honestly, see no reason to expect that to be the case even as one who expected the relative speed to change. It only makes sense that the speed of the light would remain constant, and not gain speed. That's basic physics, isn't it?

Also, does 10^8 mean 10⁸?

And wouldn't it be easier to just type 300,000,000?

With that in mind, let's return to something I posted above, related to something you posted.

If something was moving at 100,000,000 m/s right alongside a light beam that was traveling at 300,000,000 m/s the light would still be traveling at 300,000,000 m/s, but why would it not be traveling 200,000,000 m/s faster than the thing right next to it? How is it that the light would still travel at 300,000,000 m/s faster than the other thing?

Note I did not ask how it is that the light would not travel at 200,000,000 m/s.

I don't know how to explain properly. It is not simple. The video Johnny posted twice is a great explanation but you have to have a good imagination to understand it (and not because it's imaginary, it just goes against human perception, hence a paradox).

The only reason a good imagination would be necessary is if you need to imagine something. And you only need to imagine something if it isn't real.

I wasn't asking whether or not that's true or false. I stated a definition and then noted an observation, followed by a question.

You can't argue with a definition, and you won't get very far arguing with an observation. Which part was false?

Actually I misread your post initially, and after rereading it I meant to delete the "False" from my post. As you can see what I posted after that was agreeing with you, at least mostly. Sorry about that.

Lighthouse, the video you made seems to show a basic misunderstanding of relativity.

You understand light itself is kinda immune to the layman from the general relativity equation as it has no mass ? That's why there is the special theory of relativity and the search is on for a unifed theory that can include light, gravity, mass, velocity... everything really which will work with the very small and the very big.

If you want to understand MASS moving through space time then...

Imagine space is EAST and TIME is NORTH. on a chart.

Imagine traveling 100 mph North East.... now imagine going more north than east but still traveling 100mph.

Despite not slowing down relativistically you are going faster north than east.

Now imagine you start going faster in time, you go slower in space, slower in space... faster in time.

BUT ONLY RELATIVISTICALLY to understand relativity you have to ask relative to WHAT.

If I throw a ball up in the air on a train, relative to me it just goes up and down and moves only 30 cm 15cm up, 15cm down. But relative to an outside observer it's motion would describe an arc and the distance it travels would be relative to the speed of the train from the outside observers reference as the ball inherits the momentum of the train.

Now do you actually have a Question you wish to ask because I couldn't make one out in your video.

You haven't said anything I do not understand. Nor have you said anything I disagree with.

Now, the question was, why is it that the age of the universe must be what it is believed to be, based upon the distance between the Earth and the stars whose light is within our range of vision if time goes faster at the speed of light?

Also, if light has no mass, how does gravity have an effect upon it?

I'm not suggesting it has a mass we can recognize, it clearly doesn't. But doesn't it need some measure of mass in order to be effected by gravity?

 

[Johnny]

Lighthouse,

I think you're starting to understand what we are conveying. Some of this is redundant for you, I'm sure, I just want to reinforce what we are trying to say. It should only take you a few seconds to skim over.

Stepping back away from the car analogies, imagine a space ship floating in space. There are no roads. There are no signs. There is only your space ship and yourself (and a stationary observer we will encounter in a moment). Now, you turn on your boosters and accelerate to 50% of the speed of light.

As soon as you pass the stationary observer, he fires a large gun right along side of you, which fires a projectile at 50% of the speed of light. As you look out your rocket ship window, you see the projectile traveling along side you. How fast is the projectile traveling relative to you? Recall that you're traveling at 50% the speed of light. We know that the projectile is traveling at 50% the speed of light as well, so relative to you the projectile is stationary. In other words, if we subtract the projectile's velocity from your velocity, we are left with 0 (0.5c - 0.5c = 0). If you were to look out your window, you would see the projectile appearing to hover stationary beside you because you're both traveling the same speed. Relative to a stationary observer, the projectile is traveling at 50% the speed of light, but relative to you, it's velocity is 0. Makes sense, right?

That is precisely not how light behaves. Imagine the same scenario with a laser instead of a gun. As you pass a stationary observer, he shines a laser right beside you. How fast is the light beam relative to you? Conventional wisdom says that light's velocity - your velocity = 50%, thus the light's velocity would be about 50% faster than your speed. But that's not we've discovered. We've discovered that if you were to look out the window, light would appear to pass you as if you weren't even moving! It passes by you at the full speed of light faster than you.

In simple mathematical terms: (speed of a photons passing you) - (your speed) always equals the speed of light; i.e. light always behaves as if your velocity is stationary.

The implications of this are phenomenal. It means that the stationary observer and the moving observer will not agree on how long it takes light to reach a certain distance -- and this is the basis for time dilation.

This strange, counter-intuitive property of light has been verified over and over experimentally.

If something was moving at 100,000,000 m/s right alongside a light beam that was traveling at 300,000,000 m/s the light would still be traveling at 300,000,000 m/s, but why would it not be traveling 200,000,000 m/s faster than the thing right next to it? How is it that the light would still travel at 300,000,000 m/s faster than the other thing?

Bingo. Why does it do that? I don't know why. I don't know that anyone can tell you why it behaves this way. All that we know is that it does behave that way.

The only reason a good imagination would be necessary is if you need to imagine something. And you only need to imagine something if it isn't real.

A good imagination is necessary to picture anything our brains and brains are not equipped to conceptualize. It's easy to become conceited and think that those things we encounter in our every day life are all there is. But our place in the universal scale is just a tiny point on a vast continuum. We can picture things like the earth, trees, cars, people, ants, and gravity. But there exists a whole other world of things and laws at an atomic scale -- atoms, electrons, quarks, neutrinos, brownian motion, wave-particle duality, etc., that the human mind can never truly conceptualize -- because we never encountered them directly. We exist at a different scale. Likewise, there exist a whole universe of things bigger than we can ever picture. The size of galaxies, the number of stars, the distances between galaxies, black holes, cosmic expansion, pulsars, etc. Our brains are ill-equipped to deal with these phenomena, and so a good imagination is necessary to conceptualize these things. That doesn't mean they don't exist.

 

[Memento Mori]

I, honestly, see no reason to expect that to be the case even as one who expected the relative speed to change. It only makes sense that the speed of the light would remain constant, and not gain speed. That's basic physics, isn't it?

Also, does 10^8 mean 10⁸?

And wouldn't it be easier to just type 300,000,000?

Yes 10^8 means 10⁸. I didn't now the codes for superscripting. But now I do! You learn something new everyday.

No. It's far easier to type 3x10^8 than type out 300 million each time. Or even 3e8 where e means x10^y in calculator lingo.

Once again, there's no chance I can explain this to you any better. If you don't understand that light always seems to travel 3e8 away from you regardless of your speed. If you're traveling 0 m/s, light will travel 3e8 away from you. If you're traveling 2.99e8 light will travel away from you at 3e8. At that later speed, light will almost seem like it is traveling 5.99e8 ((2.99 + 3) x 10^8). If you don't understand that then there's no point in talking to you about relativity.

With that in mind, let's return to something I posted above, related to something you posted.

If something was moving at 100,000,000 m/s right alongside a light beam that was traveling at 300,000,000 m/s the light would still be traveling at 300,000,000 m/s, but why would it not be traveling 200,000,000 m/s faster than the thing right next to it? How is it that the light would still travel at 300,000,000 m/s faster than the other thing?

Note I did not ask how it is that the light would not travel at 200,000,000 m/s.


The only reason a good imagination would be necessary is if you need to imagine something. And you only need to imagine something if it isn't real.

Light travels that fast because your time slows down.

And you need a good imagination because this goes against human intuition as you've clearly demonstrated. This is not a simple subject and unless you have a good teacher or prime ability to stretch your mind from books, then there's no point talking about it. The axiom is that you need to understand this. Then you can try to move on to General Relativity. I don't know General Relativity. So, I don't bother talking about it.

 

[Lighthouse]

Lighthouse,

I think you're starting to understand what we are conveying. Some of this is redundant for you, I'm sure, I just want to reinforce what we are trying to say. It should only take you a few seconds to skim over.

Stepping back away from the car analogies, imagine a space ship floating in space. There are no roads. There are no signs. There is only your space ship and yourself (and a stationary observer we will encounter in a moment). Now, you turn on your boosters and accelerate to 50% of the speed of light.

As soon as you pass the stationary observer, he fires a large gun right along side of you, which fires a projectile at 50% of the speed of light. As you look out your rocket ship window, you see the projectile traveling along side you. How fast is the projectile traveling relative to you? Recall that you're traveling at 50% the speed of light. We know that the projectile is traveling at 50% the speed of light as well, so relative to you the projectile is stationary. In other words, if we subtract the projectile's velocity from your velocity, we are left with 0 (0.5c - 0.5c = 0). If you were to look out your window, you would see the projectile appearing to hover stationary beside you because you're both traveling the same speed. Relative to a stationary observer, the projectile is traveling at 50% the speed of light, but relative to you, it's velocity is 0. Makes sense, right?

OK, for all those following along, according to my perception the projectile that was fired appears to be stationary, though I do know that it is actually moving, as I am. And since it looks as though it is just hovering nest to me I know it is traveling at the same speed. It is not going any faster, or slower, than I am.

So, it's having a velocity of 0 is only how it appears, from my visual perspective, because there is nothing else around by which I can judge that it is moving except my own knowledge that the ship I am in is, in fact, moving.

Now, to answer the question, yes it makes sense.

That is precisely not how light behaves. Imagine the same scenario with a laser instead of a gun. As you pass a stationary observer, he shines a laser right beside you. How fast is the light beam relative to you? Conventional wisdom says that light's velocity - your velocity = 50%, thus the light's velocity would be about 50% faster than your speed. But that's not we've discovered. We've discovered that if you were to look out the window, light would appear to pass you as if you weren't even moving! It passes by you at the full speed of light faster than you.

Of course it would pass me pass though I were not moving. Anything going faster than me would. No matter how much faster it is traveling. It doesn't take a genius to know that.

The real question is this: if I were traveling at 186.000 miles per second, or 300,000,000 meters per second, would light appear to be stationary beside me, or would it appear to move 3x10⁸ faster than me?

In simple mathematical terms: (speed of a photons passing you) - (your speed) always equals the speed of light; i.e. light always behaves as if your velocity is stationary.

How, exactly, have they proven this?

The implications of this are phenomenal. It means that the stationary observer and the moving observer will not agree on how long it takes light to reach a certain distance -- and this is the basis for time dilation.

If this is the truth, then how, exactly, can it be determined that the light from those stars took that long to get here?

This strange, counter-intuitive property of light has been verified over and over experimentally.

When, where and how?

Bingo. Why does it do that? I don't know why. I don't know that anyone can tell you why it behaves this way. All that we know is that it does behave that way.

So, no knowledge as to how?:think:

A good imagination is necessary to picture anything our brains and brains are not equipped to conceptualize. It's easy to become conceited and think that those things we encounter in our every day life are all there is. But our place in the universal scale is just a tiny point on a vast continuum. We can picture things like the earth, trees, cars, people, ants, and gravity. But there exists a whole other world of things and laws at an atomic scale -- atoms, electrons, quarks, neutrinos, brownian motion, wave-particle duality, etc., that the human mind can never truly conceptualize -- because we never encountered them directly. We exist at a different scale. Likewise, there exist a whole universe of things bigger than we can ever picture. The size of galaxies, the number of stars, the distances between galaxies, black holes, cosmic expansion, pulsars, etc. Our brains are ill-equipped to deal with these phenomena, and so a good imagination is necessary to conceptualize these things. That doesn't mean they don't exist.

I propose that a good imagination is not at all necessary, only a brain with the capacity to conceive of the idea. Imagination is for the imaginary.

Yes 10^8 means 10⁸. I didn't now the codes for superscripting. But now I do! You learn something new everyday.

:thumb:

No. It's far easier to type 3x10^8 than type out 300 million each time. Or even 3e8 where e means x10^y in calculator lingo.

Oh well.

Once again, there's no chance I can explain this to you any better. If you don't understand that light always seems to travel 3e8 away from you regardless of your speed. If you're traveling 0 m/s, light will travel 3e8 away from you. If you're traveling 2.99e8 light will travel away from you at 3e8. At that later speed, light will almost seem like it is traveling 5.99e8 ((2.99 + 3) x 10^8). If you don't understand that then there's no point in talking to you about relativity.

So, it always seems to, but you are not saying that it actually does?

Light travels that fast because your time slows down.

:rotfl:

And you need a good imagination because this goes against human intuition as you've clearly demonstrated. This is not a simple subject and unless you have a good teacher or prime ability to stretch your mind from books, then there's no point talking about it. The axiom is that you need to understand this. Then you can try to move on to General Relativity. I don't know General Relativity. So, I don't bother talking about it.

See my response to Johnny about imagination.

And, no, it doesn't go against human intuition.

 

[Johnny]

How, exactly, have they proven this?

We can accurately measure the speed of light. There are objects in the universe receding from Earth very fast. We can measure the speed of the incoming light.

If this is the truth, then how, exactly, can it be determined that the light from those stars took that long to get here?

Because relativity says that since the laws of physics are the same for each observer, each observer's conclusions regarding time are correct.

I propose that a good imagination is not at all necessary, only a brain with the capacity to conceive of the idea. Imagination is for the imaginary.

im⋅ag⋅i⋅na⋅tion -noun: the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses. That includes a whole lot of very real things.

 

[Memento Mori]

See my response to Johnny about imagination.

And, no, it doesn't go against human intuition.

A paradox is a statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition; or, it can be an apparent contradiction that actually expresses a non-dual truth (cf. Koan, Catuskoti).

Wiki: Paradox

Wiki: List of Paradoxes

It's interesting to read the Ladder Paradox which deals with Special Relativity.

 

[Lighthouse]

We can accurately measure the speed of light. There are objects in the universe receding from Earth very fast. We can measure the speed of the incoming light.

That does not answer the question.

Because relativity says that since the laws of physics are the same for each observer, each observer's conclusions regarding time are correct.

That's asinine.

im⋅ag⋅i⋅na⋅tion -noun: the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses. That includes a whole lot of very real things.

I only imagine having 1 million dollars because I don't have 1 million dollars.

A paradox is a statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition; or, it can be an apparent contradiction that actually expresses a non-dual truth (cf. Koan, Catuskoti).

Wiki: Paradox

Wiki: List of Paradoxes

It's interesting to read the Ladder Paradox which deals with Special Relativity.

I know what a paradox is. And I can see how some of them could very well exist. Others however...

 

[Tambora]

Try this one.

Video about light. About 8 minutes longe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjnYkodRjug&feature=related

 

[Letsargue]

One technical comment: The theory of relativity does not say you will travel through time at the speed of light, it says that anything with mass absolutely cannot travel the speed of light. This is because an object with mass would require infinite momentum to reach the speed of light. Information cannot travel faster than the speed of light for a myriad of reasons, but one consequence of information traveling faster than light would be a violation of causality (i.e. an effect before the cause). I think that may have been where you were going with that.

In response to your main point, you answered your own question when you said, "why are they so certain that that light had to travel over that much time from our perspective". If it is light traveling at the speed of light, then we might argue over how much time the "light has experienced" (though the passage of time is undefined at the speed of light), but it does not change how much time has passed from our perspective -- hence the relative part (i.e. the earth has experienced 5 billion years).

May I argue that point with some one?

Light does not travel what is know as the SPEED of light. If light travels in waves then what ever the wave is of; that substance does not travel at the speed of light.
Sound is the shock wave of air, the air does not travel the speed of sound, only the shock is traveling; therefore, nothing is traveling, the air is not traveling. Light is the shock wave of space, space is not traveling, just the shock wave of space, not the space.
Throw a rock into the pond, the shock wave travels about one mile per hr. The water is not traveling across the pond, just the shock wave. Nothing is traveling across the pond. There is never a speed.
Peace.

Paul –101209

 

[Letsargue]

Mistake.

 

[Letsargue]

Dick Tracy thinks you for your observation that c remains c.:dunce::duh:

What I mean to say is, no kidding light always travels at c, no matter who is observing.

The issue is whether or not it always moves that much faster than something that is moving right alongside it, at a lesser speed.

Here's something you might be able to explain to me.

What idiot though that light would travel at 186,000+1/60 miles per second if a car was traveling at 60 mph, with it's headlights on?

I, honestly, see no reason to expect that to be the case even as one who expected the relative speed to change. It only makes sense that the speed of the light would remain constant, and not gain speed. That's basic physics, isn't it?

Also, does 10^8 mean 10⁸?

And wouldn't it be easier to just type 300,000,000?

With that in mind, let's return to something I posted above, related to something you posted.

If something was moving at 100,000,000 m/s right alongside a light beam that was traveling at 300,000,000 m/s the light would still be traveling at 300,000,000 m/s, but why would it not be traveling 200,000,000 m/s faster than the thing right next to it? How is it that the light would still travel at 300,000,000 m/s faster than the other thing?

Note I did not ask how it is that the light would not travel at 200,000,000 m/s.


The only reason a good imagination would be necessary is if you need to imagine something. And you only need to imagine something if it isn't real.


Actually I misread your post initially, and after rereading it I meant to delete the "False" from my post. As you can see what I posted after that was agreeing with you, at least mostly. Sorry about that.


You haven't said anything I do not understand. Nor have you said anything I disagree with.

Now, the question was, why is it that the age of the universe must be what it is believed to be, based upon the distance between the Earth and the stars whose light is within our range of vision if time goes faster at the speed of light?

Also, if light has no mass, how does gravity have an effect upon it?


*******
I'm not suggesting it has a mass we can recognize, it clearly doesn't. But doesn't it need some measure of mass in order to be effected by gravity?

Of course if there's such a thing as gravity, but there's not.

Paul -- 101309