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On Aug 30, 4:25*am, Ollie B Bimmol wrote:
Yousuf Khan wrote: Don't think of the speed of light in terms of miles/second or km/sec. Another way to look at the speed of light is that it represents the time it takes energy to flow within the smallest unit of space in universe, within the smallest unit of time in the universe. The smallest unit of space is called a Planck Length, and the smallest unit of time is called a Planck Time. There is no length smaller than a Planck Length, or a time shorter than a Planck Time. The speed of light is 1 Planck Length/Planck Time. When you look at it this way, you notice that the speed of light is equal to exactly 1! Nothing can be simpler. And when you look at it this way, you understand why the speed of light is what it is. That sounds very simple, but how do you find a Planck length or time? For the length did you simply divide the meter unit by some number so it fits nicely? I was hoping you would go look up the numbers yourself: Google, Wikipedia, & Wolfram Alpha are your friends here. I'll give you the approximate number, you can go look it up with more precision yourself. Planck Length = 1.6E-35 m Planck Time = 5.4E-44 s These were the natural constant numbers of the universe, as discovered by Max Planck at the turn of the last century. This was one of the first discoveries that began the field of Quantum Mechanics. And why cannot you break the ruler at 1 Planck into say half a Planck? What is stopping it? We can break the atom into pieces? or is Planck length and Planck time just ad hoc? You can go down to whatever scale you like, but below the Planck scale, measurements become superfluous. It's like as if you were working in a sugar cube factory, and you measured the size of your boxes by how many sugar cubes you can stack in them. What does it matter how many fractional sugar cube units the box can hold, since you'll never get a fractional sugar cube? You should note that these Planck units are extremely small, they are as far below the atomic scale as the atomic scale is below the galactic scale! Is the Planck Length & Time ad hoc? No, they were determined by previously known constants of nature such as the speed of light, Coulomb Constant, Gravitational Constant, Boltzmann Constant, etc. All of these constants reduce down to exactly 1 in Planck units. Planck Units are also sometimes known as "Natural Units". It is assumed that should we ever meet aliens in space and we needed to explain our system of measurements to them, they wouldn't understand cm, km, miles, inches, etc., but they should understand these Natural Units. Now there is a debate raging about what exactly the significance of these Planck units represent. There's two camps of physicists. One camp thinks that space is a continuum, and that it goes forever down below this scale. Another group thinks this represents a fundamental boundary on the scale of space, that these represent discrete space- time "atoms", i.e. the smallest units of space and time possible. We probably won't have a definitive answer until the end of this century if even that early. Yousuf Khan |
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Dear Ollie B Bimmol:
On Aug 30, 1:25*am, Ollie B Bimmol wrote: Yousuf Khan wrote: .... Don't think of the speed of light in terms of miles/second or km/sec. Another way to look at the speed of light is that it represents the time it takes energy to flow within the smallest unit of space in universe, within the smallest unit of time in the universe. The smallest unit of space is called a Planck Length, and the smallest unit of time is called a Planck Time. Here Youself is promoting yet another flavor of "magic numbers". Continuous approximations to this universe start breaking down at nanometer scales and larger. No need to go "smaller than quarks" for any sort of granularity. There is no length smaller than a Planck Length, or a time shorter than a Planck Time. The speed of light is 1 Planck Length/Planck Time. When you look at it this way, you notice that the speed of light is equal to exactly 1! Not in the mks system of units, 1 planck length / 1 plank time = c exactly. Nothing can be simpler. Not playing with magic numbers in the first place, and not spreading your personal illness to a novice would be another. And when you look at it this way, you understand why the speed of light is what it is. Baloney. You did not touch on "why", nor can science, and "c" in whatever units system is used to construct the Planck units... no big surprise when you can fold it up in such a way to get it back out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensional_analysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length proportional to sqrt(1/c^3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time proportional to sqrt(1/c^5) .... which yields sqrt(c^2) = c That sounds very simple, but how do you find a Planck length or time? See above. For the length did you simply divide the meter unit by some number so it fits nicely? He imagined he did. Should we make new rulers and clocks? Seems much simpler with those units. How many cm is a Planck? It is very bad diemsnional analysis, and I've tried to nicely dissuade him from spreading his obsession. But Yousef is Yousef, and I'd not break him to try to get his attention... And why cannot you break the ruler at 1 Planck into say half a Planck? Precisely. Continuity is an illusion, and discontinuity shows up at much larger scales than planck time, length, and much smaller units than planck energy. What is stopping it? We can break the atom into pieces? or is Planck length and Planck time just ad hoc? Maybe he can hear you. He would not hear me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensional_analysis David A. Smith |
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Byron Forbes wrote:
In article , says... If E=m.c^2 then can we say that if lightspeed was to decrease, and energy in the universe was neither added nor removed, so constant, that then mass HAS to be created? Quite simply, if it's not traveling at c then it's not light, it's mass. No no, they have slowed down light, and also light travels slower if not in a vacuum. Or expanding on that, could it be that the redshift we see, comes from a decreasing speed of light, creating mass for the objects in the universe? Ollie Yeah, I like slow light but it speeds up and is all observed at c when it gets here. The redshift meant it was once slower relative to us and gained wavelength as it sped up in the aether. Then if we remove the aether then light can move faster? Ollie |
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Then if we remove the aether then light can move faster?
I think this matter has long been taken care of ;-) |
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On Aug 29, 4:35*am, Ollie B Bimmol wrote:
Byron Forbes wrote: In article , says.... If E=m.c^2 then can we say that if lightspeed was to decrease, and energy in the universe was neither added nor removed, so constant, that then mass HAS to be created? * * * *Quite simply, if it's not traveling at c then it's not light, it's mass. No no, they have slowed down light, and also light travels slower if not in a vacuum. Or expanding on that, could it be that the redshift we see, comes from a decreasing speed of light, creating mass for the objects in the universe? Ollie * * * *Yeah, I like slow light but it speeds up and is all observed at c when it gets here. The redshift meant it was once slower relative to us and gained wavelength as it sped up in the aether. Then if we remove the aether then light can move faster? Ollie Once aether is removed please store it in a gravity well. O ya TreBert |
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On 29/08/2011 4:35 AM, Ollie B Bimmol wrote:
Byron wrote: Quite simply, if it's not traveling at c then it's not light, it's mass. No no, they have slowed down light, and also light travels slower if not in a vacuum. When light is travelling through something other than a vacuum, it's simply being captured and re-emitted by particles in the medium that it is travelling through, which causes a delay in its travel time. The denser the medium, the more slowdown there is, as there are more particles in the way capturing and releasing the photons. So light is progressively slowed down more and more by air, water, and glass; dependent on their density. Yousuf Khan |
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Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 29/08/2011 4:35 AM, Ollie B Bimmol wrote: Byron wrote: Quite simply, if it's not traveling at c then it's not light, it's mass. No no, they have slowed down light, and also light travels slower if not in a vacuum. When light is travelling through something other than a vacuum, it's simply being captured and re-emitted by particles in the medium that it is travelling through, which causes a delay in its travel time. The denser the medium, the more slowdown there is, as there are more particles in the way capturing and releasing the photons. So light is progressively slowed down more and more by air, water, and glass; dependent on their density. So if light is re-emitted by the medium, then it is not the same light that came in. Then this also goes for reflection from a mirror right? So if it was to arrive at a speed faster than c, because the object was moving towards the source for example, then it would be re-emitted locally at c, and any measurement using lenses or mirrors would always detect a speed c, but a different wavelength due to Doppler of the incoming light. This is what is observed. So basically Michelson and Morley always measures c for just that reason, and light speed is not constant at all? Yousuf Khan |
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On Aug 30, 4:25*am, Ollie B Bimmol wrote:
Yousuf Khan wrote: When light is travelling through something other than a vacuum, it's simply being captured and re-emitted by particles in the medium that it is travelling through, which causes a delay in its travel time. The denser the medium, the more slowdown there is, as there are more particles in the way capturing and releasing the photons. So light is progressively slowed down more and more by air, water, and glass; dependent on their density. So if light is re-emitted by the medium, then it is not the same light that came in. Then this also goes for reflection from a mirror right? To a certain extent, depends on the mirror. If the mirror is glass coated, then it travels through the glass first before being reflected by the reflective layer below it. If the mirror is simply a polished metal with no glass coating, then it's reflecting right off of the metal. You'll notice that all mirrors are made of materials that are also good conductors of electricity, such as aluminum, silver, copper, gold, etc. That's because these materials have a loose outermost layer of electrons. When you turn on the electricity, it's these loose surface electrons that are doing the moving from atom to atom inside the conductor. It's because of this same reason that metals are good reflectors, when a photon hits one of these loose outer electrons, the electron bounces up, and bounces back down again, releasing the photon again. There's so many compliant electrons available that the photon doesn't get much chance to penetrate through the surface layers of the material, before it is completely bounced back out again. It'll go through maybe one or two atomic layers at most. Whereas when it's going through a transparent material like a pane of glass, the light is going through trillions of atomic layers, so it's speed is going to be affected significantly. So if it was to arrive at a speed faster than c, because the object was moving towards the source for example, then it would be re-emitted locally at c, and any measurement using lenses or mirrors would always detect a speed c, but a different wavelength due to Doppler of the incoming light. This is what is observed. So basically Michelson and Morley always measures c for just that reason, and light speed is not constant at all? No, I don't know where you came up with that interpretation of MMX, because that's not what happened in MMX. In MMX, the problem was that they didn't detect any kind of doppler red-shift, when they were actually expecting to detect one. If there was any kind of doppler shift, then it would've proved the aether theory. If a doppler shift were detected then it would've shown up as a shifted interference pattern in the experiment. The problem was that they didn't detect a shifted interference pattern because there was no doppler shift. The Michelson-Morley Experiment http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/cla...michelson.html And here's an animation of the experiment that you should see: Michelson-Morley Experiment http://galileoandeinstein.physics.vi...s/mmexpt6..htm Yousuf Khan |
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