confusion

[Tarran]

I'm a little confused about the speed of light.

so, say you have a person thats traveling about half the speed of light. they send off a beam of light. to them, would it be traveling at the same speed, that it would be for someone at a standstill (relative to earth). is it relative to the observer?

also, is there a universal 0.. a point of no movement, that all galaxies are or can be compared against?

it seems to me (from the reading I've done) that the universe is viewed in a manner as if we were all experiencing the same mode of time. (all the galaxies and stars in the universe).. but, if, the faster an object moves, the slower its experience of time is, then wouldn't each galaxy have its own time reference?

an example of what I mean is like this. from books and talking to people, I get the gist like this. star B was formed so many billions of years ago, star B was formed such and such a period of time ago. (all references to our local time ).. a sort of linear event from the formation of the universe till you come to our current/now.

so is our current now, moving at a slower pace then, say, some point in space that may be moving at a slower sped relative to the universe as a whole?

do I have this thought right, or am I missing something in this?

[klauss]

so, say you have a person thats traveling about half the speed of light. they send off a beam of light. to them, would it be traveling at the same speed, that it would be for someone at a standstill (relative to earth). is it relative to the observer?

Ok... I'm no physicist, but let me clarify this one which I do know:
Both observers will "see" the beam move at the speed of light relative to them.
That's in fact the main "axiom" (one would say) on the Special Relativity theory. It was found experimentally to be true, and Einstain had the idea to formalize the experimental fact and see what came out of it. In fact, the whole theory is based on that single fact - everything else is mathematic derivation, no divine inspiration or anything.

also, is there a universal 0.. a point of no movement, that all galaxies are or can be compared against?

No. At least not in modern theories.
Hence "relativity".

[wirser]

Time is well ...wierd and relative
I have a book by a DR Gerald l. Schroder "Genesis and the big bang".
Basically he says there are two "times" Absolute and relative as Einstien wrote.
Absolute would be "G_ds time clock" that is outside of the universeas we know/
Relative time not only changes around massive gravity feilds but also since the big band the intervals between time "ticks" has increased relative to the absolute clock ticks.

In fact this slowing is sooooo great that Creation (the hebrew version ) and Evolution can co exsist- unchanged.

in other words at the big bang not only matter and energy were flung to the far reaches but time itself. or before the big bang ALL of time (relative) was wrapped up with all matter and energy and the further from the big bang the slower it gets. Even the math seems to work

[dandandaman]

The big thing to realise it that relativity implies that there is no "universe as a whole" to reference to. There is also no "universal time" to reference to.

When you read about the length of the universe, and the age of stars etc, the age of the universe is the age of the universe *relative to our time frame.* It will be different, and differing every moment, for anything travelling at a different velocity. (The age of stars is a different matter ... I don't recall ever seeing someone clarify, but I guess it depends on the context). It is important to note that the timescales involved may in fact be large enough that relativistic considerations are not really a big factor (at least, in some situations this should be the case ... I've not actually checked this or anything ).

The rate at which time passes for any one particle compared to another is dependent on the relative velocity between the two particles. Particle, body, whatever, the rule applied. GPS satellites in fact need to take this into account to keep their "time" synchronised with ground time. They have to run their clocks faster to compensate, as time passes for them, relative to us on the ground, at a slower rate.

Hope that makes some sense, it could make more if my brain were not swiss cheesed from studying the finer principles of induction motors all day, but you get that

Dan

[micheal_andreas_stahl]

I don't agree with evolution, but i don't want to force my ideas on other people.

[Oblivion]

I dont agree with creation, and people force ideas on me much often than I force ideas on them. lol.

klauss:

everything else is mathematic derivation, no divine inspiration or anything.

God speaks in mathematics. The first word probably was an equation. It's obvious in the way that the universe is created, that if ever God exists (which I believe he does, tho I won't bet my soul on it - hence Agnostic), he would be a divine geometer.

[klauss]

everything else is mathematic derivation, no divine inspiration or anything.

Did anyone understand that line as anything else than a random comment about einstein's work?

[GAlex]

...everything else is mathematic derivation, no divine inspiration or anything.

when I read it I understood: ...everything else it's a deterministic derivation by mathematical methods and application of proved theorems from an experimental observation (the "c" vacuum velocity) and of a new assumption (vacuum "c" velocity cannot be superated by any means by any form of matter or energy vectors), it's not some form of intuition.

in fact Einstein's theory is based upon a new assumption over known facts, and it only resembles the physic's state of the art of that times, but from a new point of view (this is one of the concept of innovation) with good use of mathematics (mainly, for the restricted relativity, the Lorenz trasformation).

no need to involve religions of any kind.

[Tarran]

I hadn't realized that satillites(sp) did have to take that into concideration. interesting the things one assumes (myself). I guess that makes sense though, I've heard that if austronauts just circling the earth stayed there for like a year, there would be a 3 or 5 second difference in thier age compaired to ours.

[wirser]

I did not mean to start a theological arguement here. I just explaining a theroy which if found correct would indeed have profound effects. Just think IF both sides of the creation/evelotion debate would have to admit they were WRONG.. It really doesn't matter because if there is no god we are doomed by our own stupidity to self destruction. If there is a god we have probably angered him enough to be eliminated anyways. Unless of course he has infinite forgiveness

[klauss]

Oh - I now see what that came from.

Well... if there's a God, I'll meet him when I meet him.

Until then, I'll stick to what can kill me - ie: a falling toilet seat from a russian space station (in this case, who's orbit decayed for failing to account lorenz factors on their control software).

BTW: I was reading on russian space missions and was amazed at how many of them suffered software failures. One would think, with their CS people's unsurpassed success on international competitions, that this kind of failure would be the least expected... yet...

[chuck_starchaser]

I guess it might have to do with motivation factors. You could be working for yourself and striving for perfection; or you can work for a company where they really make you feel part of the team; or you can be working for a company where all the descisions are made by upper management and are handed down to you, in which case you might not give a damn whether there are bugs in the code. It's "their" problem. Just thinking about this because the company I work for was like the former when I first started, but now it's become the latter, and me, like many other people around me, don't give a damn anymore. If your work isn't recognized, or if it's recognized verbally but it means little anyways, and the pretentious types that wear suits are the ones getting ahead of you, why should I care? Well, unfortunately my nature is to care, so I'd better start looking for another job. I'm not happy where I am, gotta come to grips with it.

Anyways, you know what I mean. Maybe in the Russian space program, programmers don't get the recognition they feel they deserve. That's all it would take. Industry has much to learn from open source: Recognize people publically for what they contribute, specially when they come up with ideas. That's more important to most of us than salary issues. And even more importantly: Use their contributions. In most companies I've worked for, whenever you come up with an idea, there seems to be an automated reply: "Nice but we won't use it..." followed by a justification made up on the spot. As if an idea offered by an employee was "a problem" that needs to be dealt with, instead of an opportunity to solve a problem, or a possible line of thought that might lead to one. It's like ideas *must* originate within management, or else they aren't welcome. And sometimes employee ideas are actually stolen: Once I offered an idea to one of our clients, and he said "we've thought of that and discarded it" without explaining. A few months later we get a specification including my idea, but without acknowledging it was my idea. So I told the client I wasn't going to implement it, and I didn't, and nobody else knew how, so it died. I'll be implementing it soon for one of his competitors, though (kind of like next week or so, in fact)

[klauss]

You do have a point.
It also may be poissible for the lack of motivation to come from other sources. ie: if they ask their teams to do things in an impossible timeframe and management doesn't acknowledge the "It can't be done" answer, programmers may say: "to hell with it".
There are ways to rush people, right and wrong ways. They may be using the wrong ways.

[GAlex]

@klauss: it's my case: I've been given sell budget of a specific invesitment product of 1.000.000 Euro (as well as my colleagues), but with the recommendation (as for Italian laws and internal norms on Investiments) to submit it at the attention only of "those customers of mine that are suitable for by risk profile". So I check the lists and find out (as any of my managers can do from their computer) that the amounts of "spare bucks" of those "perfect customers" totals 20% of the assigned budget. the consequence is that if I reach 100% of the target, I've only achieved 20% of the budgets, which causes the immediate reaction of the managements with letters of disappointment for the lack in propositivity and in consideration for the budgets.
only 3 choices:
1. "to hell with it" (and with my career);
2. find new customers;
3. look for another job in a competitor of my firm (and wait for their budget assignment)

I've come to the point that I have to live with it and let it be. I can't be continously under medical control for stress problems.

[wirser]

In my expereinces there are two kinds of people first are those who can do no wrong and then there are those who can do no good. Myself ,I seem to be put in the later group. The first group is almost always unable to tell truth from fiction I don't yet know why.
Time and time again I have seen "my way or the highway" turn to "OH S**t why did you do that? " . Fortunately I have not witnessed the fatal results (only the aftermath of some). I have seen millions of us dollars worth of damage and lost production. But those who caused these "accidents" never are held accountable.
My current state of unemployment was caused by such as these, those who would shoot the messenger instead of heeding the warning of the message. I've gotten to the point I issue one or two warnings then wait for my chance to yell "I TOLD YOU SO". I usually don't wait too long either.

Just my very short version of my thoughts