A Questioning Thought for the Day

[Bigsteel]

wow,this went alot farther than i thought it would...... --josh

[sgtcarl1]

The earth and/or stars are HOW old??? By the measuring system many of us use, the earth is only about 7500 years old. Can science disprove that?

[deckroid]

That's an easy one...

No, they wouldn't work, and no, you wouldn't be able to see them not working because you would be in transgalactic jail for speeding and failure of use of turn signals, as they would not work either. Don't drop the soap. Those guys from Obelix 3 have rather large and furry tentacles.


Jeeze... think up a hard one next time will ya?



George

[MountainMan]

The earth and/or stars are HOW old??? By the measuring system many of us use, the earth is only about 7500 years old. Can science disprove that?

Easily. Carbon dating alone provides dates going back hundred of millions of years, and the rate of decay of Carbon 14 is solid fact.

Where does your hard data for "7500 years" come from?

What we do "know" at this point is that the light form the furthers stars observed traveled 13 billion years to reach us, meaning that the cosmos is probably somewhere around 14 billion years old by current estimates.

[MountainMan]

If you were in a car, and the car was traveling at the speed of light........would the headlights work?

dwight77

Yes...if you turned the car around. The electrons from the headlights would then be traveling slower that the speed of light - Doppler Effect - and would be "on".

[deckroid]

If you were in a car, and the car was traveling at the speed of light........would the headlights work?

dwight77

Yes...if you turned the car around. The electrons from the headlights would then be traveling slower that the speed of light - Doppler Effect - and would be "on".

Tail lights?

[ezdays]

Yes...if you turned the car around. The electrons from the headlights would then be traveling slower that the speed of light - Doppler Effect - and would be "on".

Let's assume that the car is traveling in a northerly direction. Turning the car facing south would then require the electrons to have to overcome the inertia of the wire going north at the speed of light and since electrons go at the speed of light they would have to move to the south down the wire at twice the speed of light, or at a minimum, something faster than the speed of light in order to reach the light bulb, so I'd say that theory is out of gas..

[MountainMan]

Yes...if you turned the car around. The electrons from the headlights would then be traveling slower that the speed of light - Doppler Effect - and would be "on".

Let's assume that the car is traveling in a northerly direction. Turning the car facing south would then require the electrons to have to overcome the inertia of the wire going north at the speed of light and since electrons go at the speed of light they would have to move to the south down the wire at twice the speed of light, or at a minimum, something faster than the speed of light in order to reach the light bulb, so I'd say that theory is out of gas..

Not when you stop to consider the short travel distance.

The original question is akin to the "If a tree falls in the forest and no one there to hear it..." paradox, as well as the "If a light is on but no one is there to see it..." one as well. The answer to both of those is "no", since both sound waves and light waves require receptors and specific neural connections to be perceived and translated as such.

If you turned on a light on something traveling the speed of light, the electrons would go forward at the speed of light plus, since the base speed of the originating device itself is already established. To an observer standing in front of them, the light would therefore appear to be "on", since the observer would be standing still in reference to the light source.

A few years ago, research proved that the speed of light can be varied, and there is a well-thought-of theory making the rounds right now that strongly suggests that the speed of light is not an absolute limit at all; it just requires a different approach to go faster. You cannot develop a horse that can go sixty miles an hour, but if you put him on a train and gallop the length of the freight car...? Crude logic in my analogy, but the point is obvious - by a simple trick, your horse can now gallop around 90 mph, and to an observer with a radar gun standing beside the track, the horse's speed would be scientifically verified.

Not so very long ago, it was impossible to travel anywhere because we would fall off the edge of the Earth, which was the center of our universe. After that, we knew that men could not fly. When I was a kid, it was an "absolute fact" that no airplane could break the sound barrier. Then it became "fact" that no one could get into space without massive amounts of rocket power, and then along came Rutan and the Space Plane and did it anyway.

I think the problem with human progress is that we insist on limiting ourselves.

[ngauger]

If you were in a car, and the car was traveling at the speed of light........would the headlights work?

dwight77

Yes...if you turned the car around. The electrons from the headlights would then be traveling slower that the speed of light - Doppler Effect - and would be "on".

Would it matter if the car was in "reverse" or not????

And I thought "Doppler" was sound.......

[ngauger]

The original question is akin to the "If a tree falls in the forest and no one there to hear it..." paradox, as well as the "If a light is on but no one is there to see it..." one as well. The answer to both of those is "no", since both sound waves and light waves require receptors and specific neural connections to be perceived and translated as such.

Not so very long ago, it was impossible to travel anywhere because we would fall off the edge of the Earth, which was the center of our universe. After that, we knew that men could not fly. When I was a kid, it was an "absolute fact" that no airplane could break the sound barrier. Then it became "fact" that no one could get into space without massive amounts of rocket power, and then along came Rutan and the Space Plane and did it anyway.

I think the problem with human progress is that we insist on limiting ourselves.

The "horse" is the same analogy as that bee (or fly)) in the car.. If we're all going 65 MPH.. and the fly takes off.. He's "Flying" normally, but to an outsider - he's flying as fast or faster than the car...

I Love the tree in the woods question.. You're correct by definition, it does Not make a sound, it makes "noise"... for it to qualify as "sound", you need a receptor.. microphone or an ear.

[McGillicutty]

This threads going in circles already... at light speed.

[ngauger]

This threads going in circles already.

England forever.... and Scotland a wee bit longer!!!

Yeah - We know - - that's what make it fun though..

[dwight77]

YIKES....I withdraw the thought.

But I will replace it with this one: "The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."

dwight77

[Tom]

My cat can turn on the TV

[nachoman]

Assuming that a vehicle could travel at the speed of light simply for the sake of the question, wouldn't having the lighting system inside of a vehicle moving at the speed of light negate the hindrances much like a honey bee flying forwards in the TGV? A honey bee could never achieve speeds relative to the ground of 200 mph. But, put that same honey bee inside the TGV and it could achieve speeds of 214mph in relation to the ground. Thus, to beat this horse just a little more, if you were inside of a vehicle traveling at the speed of light and you flipped on your flashlight fowards, would not that beam of light be twice the speed of light relative to a fixed point?

No, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. It is against the laws of physics. Hypothetically in a vehicle traveling the speed of light breaks the rules already, so the second question is irrelevant. For example, light leaving a star moving towards us travels...at the speed of light. it isn't the speed of light plus the speed of the star, it is the speed of light (a constant). The way the equations can work out is that time is not constant. In other words, the faster you travel, the slower time travels for you relative to outside observers.