|
this isn't chill-out material. serious stuff here, guys (pg. 13)
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Capitalizt |
mongoose, your physics is a bit off. You are forgetting the effect of time dilation at high speeds. As you go faster, your motion through the time "dimension" is displaced by your motion through the space dimension...meaning time runs slower for you. At the speed of light, 100% of your motion would be through space, and time would stop completely. Since we (on earth) are moving very slowly through the space dimension, a light beam **from our perspective** may take 4.3 years to travel to the nearest star..but from the perspective of the light beam itself, it's journey is instantaneous. Light beams don't work like sound waves or anything that we are used to seeing "flung" through space like jets. The speed of light is a completely different animal. As your velocity approaches light speed, distances along your path would shrink; evenly spaced landmarks would appear to be getting closer and closer together. In fact, signposts placed every 186,000 miles would pass by once per second (as measured by you) when you reached about 70.7% of light speed. And if you could travel at light speed, the distance between your starting point and your destination would shrink to exactly zero.
This sounds crazy but it is established physics based on relativity. If we had ships capable of reaching those speeds, the only limiting factor on us would be how much pressure our bodies could take from G forces during acceleration and deceleration. I think I read once that at a constant acceleration of 2.5X gravity (the most our bodies can reasonably take), it would take 12-ish years to reach 99.999999% the speed of light, and another 12 years to decelerate. SO..aimed in the right direction and assuming we could deflect tiny space debris so it wouldn't vaporize us (a big assumption that is insurmountable based on our current knowledge..but perhaps not for aliens), it would only take a little over 24 years to travel anywhere in the universe. :) |
|
|
| Moongoose |
| Could you point me to some material that describes that in greater detail? Im highly intrigued as i never really ventured towards relativity. Just make sure the material is dumbed down enough for an economist or it will go over my head and my physics will keep being off and i dont like that. |
|
|
| Capitalizt |
This is the book that got me started..a great introduction to what I discussed and other fascinating stuff. http://www.amazon.com/Elegant-Unive...88781439&sr=8-1
He explains it all in plain english. You don't need to learn the fancy equations to grasp concepts like time dilation. I certainly don't understand the details..but I can read the summaries of experiments done that confirm Einstein was correct. It's mindblowing stuff. :) |
|
|
| pkcRAISTLIN |
of course, you'd have to wonder about what kind of pilots would want to miss 50 billion years of their history to plonk down some big stones for a bunch of primitive mud people, but i guess that's why we call them alien!
| quote: | Originally posted by Moongoose
Could you point me to some material that describes that in greater detail? Im highly intrigued as i never really ventured towards relativity. Just make sure the material is dumbed down enough for an economist or it will go over my head and my physics will keep being off and i dont like that. |
time slows down the faster you travel, so at the speed of light time essentially stops. if time is paused, you can essentially go anywhere in an instant.
no, i dont get this either. |
|
|
| Moongoose |
Oh wait, i think i got the idea i was confused about before. From the point of the traveller, once you reach the appropriate speed time does essentialy stop to the point where travel over any distance after that is perceived as instantaneous for the traveller. But for everyone else it would still take the time it would actually take, since the observer is unaffected by time dilation. So 24 years from one end of the galaxy to the other for the traveller, 100.000 years for the people waiting for emergency rations in the far off colony world on the other side of the galaxy.
I think that even if my physics were wrong my conclusion still holds true, though a bit modified. Unless someone can come up with a way to travel 1000 faster than light and bypass relativity while at it, travel to far away worlds is just not worth it :)
Will take a look at that book though, more information is never a bad thing. |
|
|
| Jake Benson |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
That's almost exactly what Christians say about the nature of God. Hence my point. You do realise that it cannot be ruled out that God is real and merely exists in a physical aspect of reality the human brain cannot directly comprehend, and so it must be conceptualised for us in the stories of the Bible?
It's no more logical to say aliens could have an understanding of reality currently beyond our conception than it is to say God exists on a level of reality currently beyond our conception. |
Here, let me rephrase. Both aliens coming to the planet and Christianity are far fetched. I'm saying aliens coming to the planet sounds more logical than Christianity, but BOTH are at the bottom of my "what's likely to be reality" list. It's like saying which is more logical: ghosts beating up some chick? Or tooth fairies beating up some chick? I'm more likely to side with the ghosts, but both are hardly believable. |
|
|
| Jake Benson |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
While I wouldn’t rule out super amazing alien technology that can create wormholes or similar, I stop far short from saying they came here and did stuff like built the pyramids. I also don’t think that we can consider wormholes “logical, plausible” concepts until we’ve actually seen one in action. cosmologists probably disagree with me, but they’ve come up with a fair amount of weird science that turned out silly. |
Logical empiricism starts off with hypothesis, many of which become theories and laws once tested. Although there's plenty of rejected hypotheses, the fact that the scientific community is considering wormholes, and isn't thinking about Jesus Christ, tells you something: Jesus Christ is not even considered a hypothesis. Jesus Christ is not logical empiricism and cannot be tested. Wormholes can. Maybe not now, but I'm sure they will be in the future. But how can "Jesus Christ" be tested when people who aver his existence claim that he is epiphenominal to scientific study? |
|
|
| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by Jake Benson
Although there's plenty of rejected hypotheses, the fact that the scientific community is considering wormholes, and isn't thinking about Jesus Christ, tells you something: Jesus Christ is not even considered a hypothesis. |
well, there was the turin shroud. and id posit that jesus has been a fairly large hypothesis in the social sciences.
| quote: | Originally posted by Jake Benson
Jesus Christ is not logical empiricism and cannot be tested. Wormholes can. Maybe not now, but I'm sure they will be in the future. But how can "Jesus Christ" be tested when people who aver his existence claim that he is epiphenominal to scientific study? |
you're just pissed that god hates fags. |
|
|
| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by Capitalizt
This sounds crazy but it is established physics based on relativity. If we had ships capable of reaching those speeds, the only limiting factor on us would be how much pressure our bodies could take from G forces during acceleration and deceleration. |
But no ship could ever reach those speeds, because as you approach the speed of light, time dilates and mass increases. At the speed of light time not only stops but mass becomes effectively infinite, requiring an infinite amount of power to move. Once again, that's physically impossible. And don't forget that mass distorts as it approaches the speed of light.
| quote: | Originally posted by Jake Benson
Jesus Christ is not logical empiricism and cannot be tested. Wormholes can. Maybe not now, but I'm sure they will be in the future. |
Again, this is a complete leap of faith. Wormholes will probably be no more testable than the spiritual plane, because we'll simply never find a damn thing to test. You're being completely suckered by the pseudo-scientific language of science fiction. You seem to think that religious thinking is somehow more plausible if it posits a material explanation, however utterly fictional. |
|
|
| EgosXII |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
of course, you'd have to wonder about what kind of pilots would want to miss 50 billion years of their history to plonk down some big stones for a bunch of primitive mud people, but i guess that's why we call them alien!
|
:stongue: that's what i always thought too |
|
|
| Fledz |
From what I've read about string theory, new thoughts in physics and really anything that some professor can come up with, I can see some potential in wormhole travel where you bend space. The problem with light is it travels in a straight line from A to B. While we may not ever be able to travel faster than light, who's to say we can't shorten the distance?
Only a brave or foolish man would deny the possibility flat out, regardless of their knowledge of physics.
Do I believe aliens exist? The probability is far too high for them not to, or at least not to have existed at some point in time.
Do I believe they visited us 2 to 4 thousand years ago? no. It doesn't make sense to get here and then just leave with no trace. |
|
|
| Moongoose |
BTW, since this thread started on religion, there is one really important point i want to make before we continue.
Link
Suck it op :p |
|
|
|
|
