breaking the speed of light article on howstuffworks.com

We had a late breakfast out (cafe XO, the place I took Speff to; he was so jet-lagged he may not remember) so just brie and bread. The pot-o-beans is for later. It's a mixture of about 5 different kinds of beans (I posted some bean experiment pics to a.b.s.e. some time back), degassed, and simmered with a lot of onions, orange bell peppers, garlic, bacon, chicken broth. Probably serve over jasmine rice tonight, then later in the week with chicken strips on tortillas. Mo wanted beans, so Mo gets beans.

Food is good.

John

[snip]

At MIT we called it "dry lab" ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Whatcha making for lunch, John?

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Now Jim! Don't you think ~~SciGirl~~ is a little young for you?

--
  Keith

Bullshit. It is clear that you do not understand what you thought you saw.

"I think John Larkin said it best: "If there's something going faster than c, it's not a photon." And, according to the definition of "photon", that's absolutely true."

All right, so I'll rephrase that. No PHOTONS were going faster than c, but we haven't proven that tracheyons aren't (I've seen that spelled so many different ways, so I don't know if I'm spelling it right.) Is that basically saying that, if a photon was to move >c, it would have to be called a tracheyon?

"If you aim right, most of the angular momentum of the asteroid gets transferred..."

And if you don't aim right, we all die.

"If you aim right, most of the angular momentum of the asteroid gets transferred..."

And if you don't aim right, we all die.

"Conclusion: to travel beyond the speed of light, one must be able to either: a) warp space b) stop time"

This still doesn't prove anything.

Also, it's believed by many that space is warped in many areas that we have simply not located yet.

Sorry; even measuring from the 5% point of a rising input pulse, to any part (5%, 50% or 95%) of the output pulse, one will see some positive delay - even over a distance of an inch long micristrip. Light (or RF or pulses) travel about 11 inches in a nanosecond or roughly 9 inches in a coax cable. If one is using two probes so to simultaneously "see" both signals, one must first determine what distortions in waveform(s) and in time they present to the scope or other measuring device. TTL logic roughly has a 7nSec rise and fall, and delay roughly of

15nSec. For reasonably accurate measurements of all of those parameters, one should have a system with an accuracy better than 1nSec and correctable errors (time differences) that are also better than 1nSec. For measuring delay in a one inch microstrip, those values should be less than 100pSec and better be known values if that large; it helps greatly to have a rather fast rise and/or fall in the pulse that is going to be measured (100pSec or better - and the values also known).

Exactly. It's the ease of cynicism. Since everything is doomed to failure and life is a p.o.s., we can kick back and whine, sneer at people who have hope, and laugh when things go wrong. Beats working!

John

Well, that's not a very cheerful attitude. Just keep the engineering units right.

John

If I cant escape the calculus, I'll have to learn the calculus. Darn. I've been given the name of a good calculus book by someone earlier, but I need somewhere to learn precal first. I'm up to the challenge but I'll probably try it over the summer. I won't have time now, and I really doubt I'll understand much of it. I learned almost everything I know about physics between September and now, but math doesn't come that easily.

Well it's true! If someone makes the slightest calculation error we'd all be dead. I wouldn't trust someone to change the Earth's orbit with an asteroid. I'm usually pretty optimistic, but that seems... too risky.

Luckily, I won't be around then so I won't have to worry about it. I like the time period in which I live.

Yep! *SPECIAL* theory of Relativity. Proven millions of times a day by many physicists the world around. They get numbed by those facts. However... There is the theory of *GENERAL* relativity, where different frames cannot be time-wise or speed-wise related ot each other. Case in point: get a rocket starting from Earth, constantly accelerating away at some value A, and at some point, its reference frame becomes inaccessible from ours. No laws violated; just not practical to carry enough fuel to accelerate so long that the velocity (before becoming inaccessible) gets even near C. An observer in that theoretical rocket would experience what all physicists see: that the exhaust cannot get near C without using gigantic amounts of energy. But that has nothing to do with what an observer on Earth can measure about the rocket itself, or what the passenger in the ship can measure about the Earth. By definition, the thought experiment sez that the velocity continues to increase - and at some point the frames of reference disconnect. Methinks the expanding universe can show us that limit, if we look. What is it? the velocity of light. Gosh; how exact the *SPECIAL* theory of relativity is!

Maybe I just think that because I make so many calculation errors, lol.

Meaning that those that use calculus are "indecent"?

It's 'tachyon' - 'fast particle'. 'Tracheyon' would be 'windpipe particle' (cough, cough!).

lol! windpipe particle... I should have known that, it comes from trachea.

Traveling has one L, not 2. That I'm pretty sure of.

What sort of voltage does it take to get electrons to relativistic speeds? I used to know that. Maybe the voltage that, ignoring relativity, would boost an electron to C. Something roughly 100 KV, I recall.

John