Playing with E=m.c^2

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

On Aug 30, 8:11*am, Ollie B Bimmol wrote:
Byron Forbes wrote:
* * * *Light is energy traveling in a particulate aether. No aether, no light.

* * * *Same as no matter (like air or water), no sound.

Ollie

But the other poster said that they got rid of the aether?

They got rid of the original luminoferous aether, i.e. the solid 3-
dimensional aether. However, a lot of the current work seems to still
look upon space-time as a sort of material of its own, and that it can
be looked upon as a 4-dimensional fluid.

Yousuf Khan

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

YKhan wrote:

On Aug 30, 8:11*am, Ollie B Bimmol wrote:
Byron Forbes wrote:
* * * *Light is energy traveling in a particulate aether. No ae=
ther, no light.

* * * *Same as no matter (like air or water), no sound.

Ollie

But the other poster said that they got rid of the aether?

They got rid of the original luminoferous aether, i.e. the solid 3-
dimensional aether. However, a lot of the current work seems to still
look upon space-time as a sort of material of its own, and that it can
be looked upon as a 4-dimensional fluid.

Yousuf Khan

Why 4 dimensional, should that not be 3 dimensional?
Would anything sort of float in that fluid?

Ollie

YKhan wrote:

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 th=
at 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 the light emitted again from the mirror always leaves at c relative to that mirror.
I mean even if it came in faster?



So if it was to arrive at a speed faster than c, because the object was m=
oving towards the source for example,
then it would be re-emitted locally at c, and any measurement using lense=
s 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...hlets/mmexpt6=
.htm

That is a very nice animation, and makes it clear to me what they were trying to see.

Ollie

Yousuf Khan

YKhan wrote:

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

I have looked up Max Planck on wikipedia, and it looks like
he only was measuring the distance electrons were travelling if light hits a material.
And then found that that comes in quanta of energy.
Is Planck length and Planck time simply named after him, but theorised by
later physicists?
The ones who are now in that fight you mention?
I think we should separate math from measurement, because in math
one can always talk about a half Planck time or Planck length,
I think perhaps time is continuous, but our measurement of it may not be,
as it is always limited by some tick or atom oscillation or some material thing.

Ollie

On a sunny day (Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:38:13 -0700 (PDT)) it happened dlzc
wrote in
:

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

Oh, now it is more clear to me, this feels more right.
Seems to me physics is a big battle field, all these theories.
I will listen to both sides, maybe when they split a quark something
smaller will happen, how big is an electron?
I could not find that.

Ollie

Dear Ollie B Bimmol:

On Aug 30, 10:57*am, Ollie B Bimmol wrote:
....
Oh, now it is more clear to me, this feels more right.
Seems to me physics is a big battle field, all these
theories.

When building a bridge, all the structural members point in different
directions. It is OK to have lots of theories that make the same
claims, but get there in different ways. As long as the bridge is
placed under stress (in other words we test the theories where they do
not all agree), we get some more knowledge.

That is a "problem" in a discipline where the only tool we have is
DISproof.

I will listen to both sides, maybe when they split a
quark something smaller will happen,

Perhaps.

how big is an electron?
I could not find that.

Photons and electrons are point particles, and are non-composite.
They only ever interact via their field, no matter how "close" they
come to something else or each other.

Protons and neutrons suddenly change from one type of interaction to a
different type, as collisions start involving "bumpers and flying
glass". And of course, they are composite particles too...

David A. Smith

"dlzc" wrote in message
...
Dear Ollie B Bimmol:

On Aug 30, 10:57 am, Ollie B Bimmol wrote:
....
Oh, now it is more clear to me, this feels more right.
Seems to me physics is a big battle field, all these
theories.

When building a bridge, all the structural members point in different
directions. It is OK to have lots of theories that make the same
claims, but get there in different ways. As long as the bridge is
placed under stress (in other words we test the theories where they do
not all agree), we get some more knowledge.

That is a "problem" in a discipline where the only tool we have is
DISproof.

==================================================
Haven't you learnt that your bridge to nowhere has collapsed yet?
The right way to build a bridge is on a solid foundation and designed
with rigid mathematical structures, not your crackpot opinions.

On 8/30/2011 1:49 PM, Ollie B Bimmol wrote:
I have looked up Max Planck on wikipedia, and it looks like
he only was measuring the distance electrons were travelling if light hits a material.
And then found that that comes in quanta of energy.
Is Planck length and Planck time simply named after him, but theorised by
later physicists?
The ones who are now in that fight you mention?
I think we should separate math from measurement, because in math
one can always talk about a half Planck time or Planck length,
I think perhaps time is continuous, but our measurement of it may not be,
as it is always limited by some tick or atom oscillation or some material thing.

Then you didn't read far enough into his history. Planck was most
definitely the one who came up with these units. Now whether he named it
after himself is another story. Other people might have named it after
him, later. He called them natural units.

Yousuf Khan