Twighlight
Quantum Scribe
I think you are struggling to articulate what is known as Zeno's paradox...which basically arises from trying to define motion within a 'moment' of time. The use of calculus has largely made Zeno's paradox irrelevant.
light beams
- Thread starter jameswade
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I think you are struggling to articulate what is known as Zeno's paradox...which basically arises from trying to define motion within a 'moment' of time. The use of calculus has largely made Zeno's paradox irrelevant.
If each observer, headed towards, or away from each other @ light speed, and had several different frames of references, planets, moons, stellar dust, etc. could the increasing distance between them be measured @ twice the speed of light by the observers themselves?, or would it appear to the observers that neither observer is moving at all even though each observer can measure there own speed by surrounding inertial objects? /ttiforum/images/graemlins/confused.gif
Darby
Epochal Historian
Actually, no. It goes a lot deeper that what we usually discuss here because the level of the math that we use, the simple forms of the Lorentz Transformations, doesn't give the full description.
In the real full blown version of Special Relativity not only does your clock and measuring rod contract, spacetime iteslf contracts and warps "forward" in front of you. At the speed of light all you would see is a point, straight in front of you. That point is the entire universe - all the stars, planets, asteroids, dust, energy, spacetime itself...all of it. So you can't take a three point reference to gauge your relative "anything" with respect to some other object. It's all contained in that one point. You can take the point of view that at the speed of light you are smeared out over the entire universe and can instantly travel to any point in the universe. That's the upside, I guess. The obvious downside is that navigating to "any point" in the universe is somewhat trivial if the entire universe has become, from your perspective a dimensionless point. It would be somewhat problematic if you were trying to go to Dodger Stadium and ended up on Alpha Centauri or somewhere else 20 billion light years distant. A dot is a dot...it looks pretty much the same no matter how you look at it. And then there's the small issue of running into a dimensionless point that contains the entire mass of the universe while traveling at the speed of light. Hell, running into a grain of sand at the speed of light would ruin your entire afternoon.
Angleochoas
Quantum Scribe
I think I can appreciate that statement.
When I was quite young and had retinal surgery - perception and depth became very different for a sense of actuality for a time.
In this context it almost seems like taking something back to the basics, then expanding the complexity a hundred fold.
The calculations involved that revisit relativity give alot more accuracy than I once imagined. I guess sometimes the imagination, once fueled with logical process, give more than interesting results.
/ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif
When I was quite young and had retinal surgery - perception and depth became very different for a sense of actuality for a time.
In this context it almost seems like taking something back to the basics, then expanding the complexity a hundred fold.
The calculations involved that revisit relativity give alot more accuracy than I once imagined. I guess sometimes the imagination, once fueled with logical process, give more than interesting results.
/ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif
So if you were standing dead center of the big bang, instead of seeing all the elements expanding around you, like being in the center of an expanding balloon, you would see the entire thing as one dimensional from your point of view right??....I'm just trying to get a mental image of what that would look like.
Angleochoas
Quantum Scribe
Please forgive me if I'm wrong, but the perception here seems somewhat obscured to the reference of example.
From that example, I would compare asking what our perceptions would perceive if 'standing' in the middle of a tidal wave - what would the tidal wave/force look like?
Well from that analogy I can relate that perception of what something 'looks like' isn't always best if asked for the exact center when perception is focused on the form.
At least perception in the shape of the five senses, or some of those replicated in artificial detecting ways.
PS
I know that didn't really answer the question, I'm no expert, just fun speculating.
I would think if you mean viewing from extreme distances, well it is called 'the big bang' because of new space with compression, so it would seem to make sense it would be some sort of chain reaction as the process pushes and creates new space. Maybe not seemingly so at great distances because of dissipation? (Becoming more minute over great distance?).
I'd actually like to be corrected on this one, because I'm curious myself - this was just a shot in the dark.
/ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif
From that example, I would compare asking what our perceptions would perceive if 'standing' in the middle of a tidal wave - what would the tidal wave/force look like?
Well from that analogy I can relate that perception of what something 'looks like' isn't always best if asked for the exact center when perception is focused on the form.
At least perception in the shape of the five senses, or some of those replicated in artificial detecting ways.
PS
I know that didn't really answer the question, I'm no expert, just fun speculating.
I would think if you mean viewing from extreme distances, well it is called 'the big bang' because of new space with compression, so it would seem to make sense it would be some sort of chain reaction as the process pushes and creates new space. Maybe not seemingly so at great distances because of dissipation? (Becoming more minute over great distance?).
I'd actually like to be corrected on this one, because I'm curious myself - this was just a shot in the dark.
/ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif