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Author | Topic: What's the Fabric of space made out of? | |||||||||||||||||||
sidelined Member (Idle past 5938 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
jar
When we look at a distant object are we seeing it as it was in the past? We will take you standing in a field under dark skies {Lots of that in Texas} and looking up to view the andromeda galaxy. The light you view has travelled for 2.9 million years. This message has been edited by sidelined, Wed, 2005-03-23 09:53 AM
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5938 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
buzsaw
geometry is not a property of space, so your answer to my question is wrong. Buzsaw,stand beside one wall in your house,stretch out a tape measure and go to another wall and take a reading of the length.What is it between those walls that is being measured? Is it not the space between them? Now picture in your mind a dust mote frozen in a shaft of sunlight.To determine its location you need to measure 3 dimensions from a reference point.You are measureing the 3 space dimensions commonly known as length width and depth.If the object is in motion you must include time as well in order to specify the event at a given instant.
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5938 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
jar
{qsIf we had the capability of resolving individual units, and we returned 2.9 Million years from now, would we find that some of the individual objects were missing, and that there were new objects that we did not see in the initial observation?[/qs] That is likely yes.
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5938 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
buzsaw
Hey buddy I posted some time back to see if we could get your common sense take on this.
I know this is not in the complete context of the present direction in this thread but concerning space I was wondering if you might apply some reasoning to the following thought experiment. A train is travelling down the tracks beside a railway crossing moving at a constant speed.A man aboard the train drops a steel ball from the window of this passing train and from his vantage point on the train the ball{ignoring air resistence to understand the forces involved} appears to fall in a straight line through space to the ground moving past his train.At the same moment a man on the side of the tracks looks up to see the misdeed.He watches the ball fall arcing to the ground as a result of the combination of the forward movement of the train and the pull of gravity set it in a parabloic curve. Which is the correct path in space,the straight line or the parabola? Perhaps you would let me know how this can work from a stance of logic you are working from. And since you know you cannot see yourself, so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself, that of yourself which you yet know not of
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5938 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
buzsaw
Of course, the parabola is the correct path Then why does the man on the train view a straight path? And since you know you cannot see yourself, so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself, that of yourself which you yet know not of
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5938 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
buzsaw
the drop of the ball following the direction of that movement is viewed relative to the movement of the viewer, whereas to the bystander, the drop is viewed relative to the earth on which he stands Exactly.Now if the man on board the train witnesses a straight line between origin of release and impact with the ground while the man on the ground witnesses a curved line between those same two points {origin and impact} and a curved line by definition must cover a greater distance than a straight line what can we now say about the time it takes for each of these paths to occur?
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5938 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
buzsaw
So the passage of time is different for the two men?
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5938 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
buzsaw
As I think about it, it would seem that the dropper looking back would view a slower velocity of drop, Careful, buz,the dropper {man on the train} does not look back.He views the ball as dropping straight down from him and it makes contact with the ground directly below.
and that if the bystander and the moving (moving edited in) dropper both had stop watches, the time would be equal from drop to contact. If the time is the same then how can the length be different?{straight line and curved line } This message has been edited by sidelined, Thu, 2005-03-24 11:46 PM
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5938 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
Sylas
Apologies folks; most of you are trying to help buz with a simple Newtonian analysis Actually Sylas my aim was to show buz that common sense is not always sufficient to determine the actual state of affairs with even simple phenomena. Since it is difficult to reason a man out of the position he reasoned himself into in the first place I thought it best to allow him to meet the limitations such thinking imposes. I think that if he can see how the process of special relativity is counterintuitive then he will have a better capacity to appreciate that science is not a "he said/she said" process of one person trying to impose their version of the world on others. And since you know you cannot see yourself, so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself, that of yourself which you yet know not of
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