[yor_on]

I was thinking about something similar, using several frames, but found it to be wishful thinking Inside the 'black box' we can't get a 'triangulation'. Well, we can, but only relative ourselves (flashlights included:) inside the black box. There is no 'unmoving anchor' to define that 'frame of reference' motion against.

If the photon originate inside your frame it won't have either blue or red shift. If someone 'throw it' at you inside that 'frame of reference' our black box signifies it will get a blue shift, and throwing it away a red shift, but only as you see it, it won't say a thing about the larger frame of reference you and the photons 'share' inside that 'black box' though.

[LeeE]

...going back to the twins, why would one twin say the journey he took lasted only this long and the other twin say no it lasted longer?

It's because they, and everything else in the universe, does not travel just through space but through space-time.  This is the crux of the matter.  Even if you are standing still in space you are still moving through time.  You always and constantly move through space-time at the speed of light 'c' but you can never move through just space or just time - you must always move through both.

Depending then, on which direction the twins set out on, it'll take them longer in one direction and shorter in the other, but when you compare the sums of their vectors in both directions, for each of the twins, they'll be equal: they started together and ended together.  They've both taken different routes though, so they will both have had a different journey, which will have taken different times, and will have seen different things.

[layman (OP)]

Yes I understand that the mirrors appear to be moving slower when the observer sees them from earth and will appear to be moving correctly when he transports himself out there, but he is moving with the mirrors now and is in that frame of reference. In time dilation, when one twin even though he is on a planet circling the sun which is revolving around a galactic centre sees the other twin speeding off on a journey with a constant velocity of one g(been to Wikipedia) observes time has slowed for his astronaut brother. When the traveller returns, he "will" find his brother has expired. I don't understand LeeE's comment about the sums of their vectors equaling when you now have the death of the earth bound twin to contend with. Yes I believe space and time are a medium now referred to as space-time. Perhaps I'm thinking of space-time as a medium like air, the faster you move through air the more energy you need - hum...where have I seen that before, because you have to displace air to get through it. A moving rocket traveling at half the speed of light without reference to anything but the universe as a whole causes time for the rocket to slow(even though the passengers will experience time normally), right?


" Even if you are standing still in space you are still moving through time. "

So moving through space-time retards the passage of time?

[yor_on]

Not bad, that's a little like I think of it too, like some weird Jello with 'living things' inside it that don't see the 'Jello' at all. A little like fishes may think of water possibly?

Not that we ain't smarter, possibly? I mean dolphins can be quite annoying, laughing at you all the time. Smug Bas**s, and on a constant vacation it seems, like some streamlined freeloaders. Not to mention whales, always trying to make that impact on you when you meet them. But have they the good sense to wear a decent tie? Have they?? Naah.

Seriously, we have to be the crown of creation. Think of money, who discovered money huh..
We did
==

Well, not me specifically, although I wouldn't mind discovering some

[simplified]

One way might be to define time's 'origin' to be at all points in SpaceTime simultaneously. That is, there is no preferred 'point/frame' inside SpaceTime for defining an objective time. All points are equal in that they all have the exact same amount of 'time'. Then the arrow we observe to move will be a result of something else. Don't ask me what I mean though :)I don't really know why I started to think that way.
==

Oh yes I know.
That elusive ah, Einstein )

Your country is not imperial. Therefore you have such thinking. My country is a collapsing empire. Einstein's science only accelerates our demise. We need new discoveries. []

[yor_on]

Like the aether?

I know people have views about Einstein, but that he would collapse an Empire?
That's a mighty big undertaking, especially as he's dead?

[layman (OP)]

Yeah that one is classical JP, Baez takes it up too. If I move a mass close to the speed of light, why wouldn't it form a black hole? [nofollow]
 
from the link

The answer is that a black hole does not form.  The idea that "if enough mass is squeezed into a sufficiently small space it will form a black hole" is rather vague.  Crudely speaking, we might say that if an amount of mass, M, is contained within a sphere of radius 2GM/c2 (the Schwarzschild radius), then it must be a black hole.  But this is based on a particular static solution to the Einstein field equations of general relativity, and ignores momentum and angular momentum as well as the dynamics of spacetime itself.  In general relativity, gravity does not only couple to mass as it does in the newtonian theory of gravity.  Gravity also couples to momentum and momentum flow; the gravitational field is even coupled to itself.  It is actually quite difficult to determine the correct conditions for a black hole to form.  Hawking and Penrose proved a number of useful singularity theorems about the formation of black holes.  But even these theorems do assume certain conditions which we cannot be sure are true "out there".

hey this a pretty nifty feature this quote thingee

a little side thought based on a tv show. the piece i quoted from the link to the website to me is a fudge, so let me assume that in certain conditions a blackhole will form. this part is from the tv show - the universe is born with a bang, it grows old and is reaching it's end. however dark energy is forcing it to expand increasingly faster and faster, forever. now here's my twist all objects time clocks are slowing down as they approach the speed of light. one by one their mass eventually forms a blackhole. they are no longer emitting time, the universe finally stops expanding because there is no longer any change in the existing universe. the universe becomes highly curved and begins to fall in on itself. in spite of dark energy, gravity wins the day and the universe collapses.

night all, it's really late here

[simplified]

Like the aether?

I know people have views about Einstein, but that he would collapse an Empire?
That's a mighty big undertaking, especially as he's dead?

Ether is connected with dominant masses.

[yor_on]

I think you will need to make a new thread for that one Simplified 'dominant masses'.
And you will need to make it a question as this is the 'format' here.
As it's hard to discuss something not explained.

Do it and leave us a link here.

[layman (OP)]

I hope this okay then, I think it's related to my original question, I was just kidding with that thought, unless there's a Noble in the mail, but it does leave me wondering. When an object has reahced the speed of light does time stop for the object, and for the observer, will he see that time has stopped for the object. I guess I'm looking at it as an object here on earth experinces time as we would call normal, it interacts with other objects cooperatively, but when it acquires any kind of motion or velocity the reactions with other objects becomes adjitated, right? Not just because it is careening around but because it's rate of time is now interfering with other objects rates of time. So does an object have a field of time in which it exists at earth speeds which will decrease correspondingly with it's speed?

[yor_on]

Welcome to 'frames of reference'

I'm constantly confused when thinking of them, can't really say where one starts and the other ends. They are easy to see when extreme, like traveling close to lights speed as compared to some 'frame of reference' being 'still' relative it, (like Earth). But then you also have the effect mass make, like a black hole, all the way down to atoms for how to perceive 'times arrow'.

But one simple truth is that your wristwatch always will deliver you the same time-rate relative your heartbeats, no matter where you are, in a rocket or on Earth. In that motto time will always tick the same for you. So that 'field of time' you refer to will then be invariant. It's when comparing 'frames of reference' you will find them to differ, depending on 'speed/velocity' and mass. And it's only when you compare 'origins' in some way, as the twin experiment used Earth to define a common 'origin' that you can observe the difference. In all thought experiments you'll see they present us with either the same 'origin', or else use different origins giving different causality-chains depending on the frame they look out from. In the later case I see it as they use 'the eye of God' for presenting us the proofs of how those frames will differ 'objectively'.

Time is 'frame dependent' but always, on the personal plane, the same.

[layman (OP)]

Does time stop though for the traveler when he is whizzing along at light speed...nah thats not it. Lets say you have boson, fermion, whatever, it's really small and this particle hiccups without disturbing any of the other particles around it. 126 years later and away the observer using his super eye powers sees this, the hiccup only made the particle wobble a bit, but this little hiccup was transmitted at light speed through out the universe. The hiccup happened it was a physical event and the information of the event is transmitted but how?

[yor_on]

That's one of the really big constants Einstein built his theory on. The invariance of light, that it always will give you the same speed in a vacuum, no matter from where you send it. So you make a point called A )

A ---> 126 light years to -->  B

Are you assuming that they are at rest with each other? It really matters I think. There are several ways to explain it, either you see the 'disturbance/light' as traveling, space being the medium the wave/photon propagates in. The light intrinsically, in itself, have no defined 'distance' per year, as it is 'time-less' having no time. Without a time intrinsically it's very hard to say how it can travel at all. You can also define it as a relation needing two 'actors' A and B as the Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory does, where light only comes to be as a result of both a source as well as of a sink, and then also invalidates all ideas of a independent 'propagation' in space just depending on a 'source' (like a photon leaving the sun).

But we normally still define it as doing just that. When it comes to A and B, and how they will define those 126 years with the distance traveled, I expect it to do with their velocity/mass relative each other. Being at rest versus each other will give them one distance and with it one distance/time-frame, if B is moving away from A (that originated the 'hiccup') then the distance/time-frame will become another, and if B and A is moving towards each other you will get yet another relation.

If we decide that it will be B that does the 'traveling' then a faster movement in space-time will, (in the eyes of God that is:), 'slow down B:s time' relative A  a.s.o.. etc etc.. It becomes very intricate to reason out.

Mostly when we measure things we define them against some standard. "A light-year, also light year or lightyear, (symbol: ly) is a unit of length, equal to just under 10 trillion kilometres (i.e. 1016 metres). As defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a light-year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one Julian year."

But this is a relative truth, holding if A and B is 'at rest' relative each other, as we then can define them as sharing the same 'frame'. But if they are moving relative each other and/or accelerates, SpaceTime 'deforms' and the distances change, as well as it introduces time dilation.

In fact, if we assume that A is piece of light then from A:s side no time have passed at all, and the question becomes meaningless From B:s side watching A 'propagate' it will still be its velocity and direction relative A that will define the distance, but as A is time-less the discussion of time dilation relative each other will lose its meaning. If A had been a piece of matter instead then it would have hung on who was moving/accelerating  versus whom, that decided the distance/time dilation relative each other.

It's only when looking at it from a 'third position' Like A and B .. And Earth observing them both f.ex, that you might find a 'simpler' definition, but then also giving Earth the privileged position of being a 'inertial frame' unmoving in space relative both, becoming the final judge so to speak..

And as we then come back to how to define 'inertial frames' 'uniform moving' etc, and as that all is a matter of choice, you can as far as I understand define about any piece of matter as being an 'inertial frame', as long as it doesn't involve accelerating. The 'Principle Of Equivalence' have this to say about gravity though, that all gravity can be seen as an 'acceleration', so it becomes a little shady there. Imagine a apple falling/accelerating of a branch on Earth to see the point made here. But this type of acceleration is a very special type in that it also is a free fall, free from all gravitation, just following a 'geodesic', meaning the way gravity 'bends' space, not expending any own 'energy' to accelerate.

Normally when we accelerate something it expends energy, like transforming some fuel into a 'force' pushing a rocket. Gravity does not work that way, it do get a 'potential energy' from its 'free fall' but that's about it. And as it's as correct to say that it's the Earth 'rushing up/accelerating' to meet the apple, as it is saying that it's the apple 'rushing/accelerating down' to meet the Earth the 'energy gained' here is a relation, not belonging to any singular object, well, as I see it

And now I better stop, before I make too many mistakes )
==

Rereading it I think we should have made it A----> 0 -----> B
But I think it's possible to see any way
Yeah, I'm lazy..
==

If you really bent on knowing it this one seems quite good at explaining objects velocities and time dilations versus each other. Velocities in Special Relativity. but it sure will take some time to digest.

[layman (OP)]

" There are several ways to explain it, either you see the 'disturbance/light' as traveling, space being the medium the wave/photon propagates in. "

I have the link book marked and will get to it. So let me get this straight your/they're saying the event becomes a packet of information and can only be broadcast as either light or wave?

[yor_on]

Anything that you can observe 'wobbling' will have to send out light or radiation in some form. Without that I don't know how you could notice it. You could assume something disappearing, leaving a 'hole' in the fabric of SpaceTime of course, and then look at the way gravity adjusted for that, but that should introduce radiation too I think as other masses adjust to the changed SpaceTime, or maybe not? After all, they're not expending any energy, just following the geodesics. But you would still notice them changing orbits relative you, and that too is radiation, right

The other thing I took up was just the question if light really propagates at all. And that becomes a very strange proposal, so I just mentioned it. There are several ways to look at it I think..
==

Thinking of it it would have to introduce a radiation due to the conservation of energy, the definition we use where all assembled  energy possible of our SpaceTime is seen as being a unchangeable amount. Only getting transformed from 'work' to unusable 'work done', somewhat like the petrol getting burned up and transformed by your car. And if matter for example meet antimatter it should still be confined inside SpaceTime, I think? We have 'virtual photons' popping in and out of course, but they are said to be here for such a short instant that they are outside 'Planck Time', which is the smallest meaningful amount of time quantum-mechanically. Anything of a shorter duration stops making sense to us. (much as virtual particles do then:)

[layman (OP)]

I have this old twelve foot satellite dish and was thinking of making my own radio telescope, then found out I wouldn't quite get the images I was seeing on TV. I could still look for that elusive hiccup. Maybe I would have better chance of trying to find ET signals by joining the SETI program. Or maybe I'll just line it with tinfoil and use it as an ashtray. I have a laser pointer I wonder if I could make a LIGO type interferometer.
 
Seriously, I kinda get the feeling I'm asking the same question but in different ways but that's my problem. I don't think like most people, it's very abstract. Math has always been a foreign concept to me, it's why I never did very well in the subject, I still had the multiplication tables still written out in the back of my binder in high school. I just dated myself didn't I, today kids are allowed, even encouraged to use calculators. You know I've read Stephen Hawkings A Brief history of Time, and found it to slated for the general public, excellent book though for a layman. Read Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind twice, liked that one both times. I understood the concepts, the problem is I don't understand the math even though Penrose tried to explain it.

Then I forget - no I misplace things in my memory and when I'm thinking of, or something triggers them, they come back.

I always wondered why black holes just don't disappear and someone kindly informed me I was confusing mathematical and cosmological singularities. It still left me wondering why a cosmological singularity didn't just vanish into an infinitely small point in space, why it still had an insane gravitational effect(well) and still had mass. Then I read "Black Stars, Not Holes," by Barceló, Liberati, Sonego and Visser, which they suggested using a blend of classical general relativity with quantum relativity. From what I could gather I think they are on the right track. I guess what I'll do is read the article you suggested and some other books I have again, but this time I'll have the questions I want answers to beside me and answer them while I'm reading.

[yor_on]

Wow.

Sounds like you've been thinking about it

Yeah, the most confusing thing to me too is the way SpaceTime always will present itself as a 'whole experience', if you then look at the different ways we explain it. I like to ground my ideas in what I observe around me and looking up in the firmament I alway get one 'whole experience'. But when looking on the theories describing it they are clearly 'boxed in' into different categories and 'sizes'. That they are so makes me wonder what chaos math could do about it. Have you read James Gleick "CHAOS Making A New Science"? That book is very very interesting. Put my imagination into overdrive That did when I first read it.

I'll try to find "Black Stars, Not Holes," by Barceló, Liberati, Sonego and Visser  to see what you are thinking off.
==

Rather smart idea, if I get it right they theorize that before a singularity can form the 'star' will build up such a density that it will wrap SpaceTime into a state where virtual photons, to it, becomes like 'real photons'? In a similar way to how a Rindler observer would notice virtual photons being real due his velocity? And that those trapped 'real' photons then would act as a 'pressure' on their own, preventing the 'star' from collapse into a true singularity?

Possibly

Or they expect them to be 'virtual' but getting generated in such a quantity that they will act as a barrier that way?
I liked my first understanding the best though, ah well..

(Thinking of it I guess you might get it both ways? Both generating 'real new' photons, as well as finding a 'new' 'virtual field containing vacuum energy and virtual photons'. It should increase the amount of photons available both ways, no matter from where they expect the effect to come, as i see it? Well, depending on how you look at photons in a vacuum that is. If they are singular entities then that idea might be correct. If they only exist in their interactions it won't matter how we look at the amount, they will still need the 'interactions' to define them? Possibly.)

"In quantum field theory, and specifically quantum electrodynamics, vacuum polarization describes a process in which a background electromagnetic field produces virtual electron-positron  pairs that change the distribution of charges and currents that generated the original electromagnetic field. It is also sometimes referred to as the self energy of the gauge boson (photon). Vacuum polarization was observed experimentally in 1997 using the TRISTAN particle accelerator in Japan."

From vacuum polarization

What I don't get from reading the wiki (black star) is the idea of how the 'degeneracy pressure' is thought to work? After all, they are bosons not fermions? Able to be superimposed on each other taking no place at all? How would 'vacuum polarization' do it? like some light field around 'neutrons' acting as an barrier or?

That one was new to me

[yor_on]

Woff, that one was truly weird

Vacuum polarization is an idea used in Quantum Electro Dynamics (QED) it seems. Here you can see a description. "Among the most far-reaching developments of the recent 25 years of research into the consequences of fundamental interactions is the recognition that the true physical vacuum is a state of considerable complex and physically significant dynamical structure. While the vacuum is empty, i.e. devoid of matter, its quantum wave function can be highly non-trivial, deviating considerably from the non-interacting Fock space wave function to which the perturbative expansion of interactions in quantum field theory refers.

Quarks play an active role in shaping the vacuum structure.

Being dual carriers of both `color' and `electric' charges they also respond to externally applied electromagnetic fields. Thus, in principle, the presence of the vacuum structure related to strong, Quantum-Chromodynamic (QCD) interactions influences higher order Quantum-Electrodynamic (QED) processes such as is the photon-photon scattering, which is of course completely impossible in classical electrodynamics."

So okay, we have a perfect vacuum, classically seen as 'empty' consisting only of 'space'. In that way it's as far from the idea of an Aether as it is possible. But in QED "The search for vacuum melting at high temperature and density of matter as arising in high energy nuclear collisions is to-date the sole widely accepted method to pursue this objective. The vacuum QCD structure is due to attractive glue-glue interaction inherent in the non-Abelian nature of color charges, the naive, i.e. non-interacting product wave function of the vacuum state is known to be unstable and it is generally believed that the QCD-originating structures are the source of the confinement effect which restricts quarks to colorless bound states."

But, the aether was originally thought to be 'unmoving' relative all other, creating a 'frame of reference' giving us a 'gold-standard' of how to measure motion in the universe. So, do this QED-vacuum qualify as such? "What is the physical meaning of the vacuum condensate field? Clearly, the vacuum must be field free, so that the appearance of a field correlator has no classical analog, it expresses a Bogoliubov-type rotation away from the trivial Fock space state, induced by the interactions. The effect is often compared to ferro-magnetism since one can prove that one of the QCD instabilities is the magnetic gluon spin-spin interaction. On the other hand, the confinement effect of color charged quarks is best understood invoking anomalous dielectric property."

So QED doesn't see the vacuum energy as a 'field' then? And compare it to how magnetism 'works'. But we need to remember that it is a comparison here, not defined as being 'the exact same'. As the explanation I've found discusses 'quarks' we better take a look at them too. So, what the he* is a quark?

"In our world, forces get stronger as the objects that feel them get closer together. Drop a bowling ball off the Empire State Building, and it accelerates as it falls to Earth. Hold two powerful, opposing magnets at arm’s length and slowly bring them towards each other, and at some point they’ll leap out of your grip and clang together. This is quite reasonable, logical, and natural. But deep within the atom, the strong nuclear force that holds quarks together to make protons and neutrons behaves just the opposite: it increases as the quarks are pulled apart, as if the proton were wrapped in a stout rubber band. The harder you pull, the harder they snap back. But if the quarks are rubbing up against one another, as it were, the band goes slack."

And

"Just as electrons interact by exchanging photons—the carrier of the electromagnetic force—quarks interact by exchanging gluons, the carrier of the strong nuclear force. (Or strong interaction, as they like to call it nowadays.) Constant gluon swapping makes quarks stick together to form protons, neutrons, and whatnot, and even overcomes the mutual repulsion of positively charged protons to bind them with neutrons into atoms.


The quark color wheel. A color plus its anticolor make a colorless, or white, entity.
One blue, one green, and one red quark also add up to white, as do one of each of the three anticolors.

Which gets us to why it’s called the strong force. The electromagnetic force that keeps the proton and the electron together in a hydrogen atom is 1041 times stronger than gravity at that range. At the boundary of the proton, the strong nuclear force is stronger still—roughly 100 times stronger." And "The mathematical picture led to a physical one. Explains John Preskill, the MacArthur Professor of Theoretical Physics, “The crucial difference between the two theories is that while the photons of QED carry no charge of their own, the gluons of QCD are themselves colored particles. A quark is surrounded by a sea of ‘virtual’gluons that arise due to quantum fluctuations, and the color of the virtual gluons enhances the quark’s own color. A probe coming closer and closer to the quark is influenced less and less by the virtual gluons, so that the effective color charge of the quark seems to weaken; this is asymptotic freedom.”

And because the coupling constant increases as you separate the quarks, it soon becomes insurmountable. The rubber band snaps, but instead of spilling forth the quarks it restrained, two new rubber bands form, each binding up a new particle. The fresh quarks needed to round out the new doublets or triplets are conjured out of the energy imparted to them—E=mc2 and all that. "   Look here for more 'Quark tales' by Douglas L. Smith.

So we got us an idea of those quarks now

Hurt me head this one does. Do the vacuum consist of 'quarks' according to QED? "Many features of the structured vacuum have been studied in the past 20 years with a variety of methods, but one aspect, the appearance of a glue `condensate' field, i.e vacuum expectation value (VEV) of the gluon field-correlator, in the vacuum state is of particular relevance. Its value obtained from sum-rule methods is today not much different from values first noted nearly 20 years ago." Huh? A "glue `condensate' field" So is it a field then after all, or? Well. "The glue condensate can be thought to generate a highly variable background field for the quarks, which respond to it in the way that we see when studying quark condensation effects in the vacuum. "

Can't really get this straight in me head, either it is a field or it isn't. Or is it both a field and not a field? He* why not? It all depends on your definitions, or, and possibly 'frame of reference' it seems? Some of the quotes here I lifted from Electromagnetic Fields in the QCD Vacuum which is really interesting in its own right. And the way I put it together is all my own fault, not theirs.

So do we know what this Vacuum Polarization consists of now? Quarks was it? "The term Vacuum Polarization is descriptive of the effect. A charged particle will polarize the vacuum in a way analogous to the way a dielectric is polarized. A virtual electron positron pair in the vacuum will be affected by the charge. If the original charged source is a nucleus for example, the virtual electron will be attracted and the virtual positron repelled, causing a net polarization of the vacuum which screens the nuclear charge.

At very short distances from the nucleus, the bare charge is seen, while at long distances the screening is important. This causes the basic coupling to vary a bit with distance and therefore with energy. This polarization of the vacuum is similar to the polarization of a dielectric material. In this case, what is being polarized are the virtual electrons and positrons in the vacuum. Of course other particles than the electron can be polarized in the vacuum so the energy variation of the coupling 'constant' is an interesting subject for research."

Hubba?
==

Like this? Gluon's make quarks, make vacuum, make 'particles'?
And 'virtual photons' would then be? Where?
==

Hmm

There are some slightly confusing facts, like quarks having a rest mass? "Why are quarks heavier than electrons, even though they have less charge?" Then again, considering that a electron can be super positioned, at two places simultaneously Why let such a puny thing as the quarks rest-mass disturb us? He*, we have the Higgs boson taking care of that, right? Or gravitons? Possibly all related to one dimensional strings, closed or open, vibrating like he**, some under an enormeous pressure..

Ahh, where should place them in this scheme?
And that 'pressure'?

Is there a theory explaining 'pressure' too at that scale.

What is that? Another one I should have stayed away from I fear..
Headache alert )

[jartza]

From school and reading I've always understood that time slows as you approach the speed of light and an objects mass becomes infinite. I was wondering why time slows it must be affected by something. I'm just guessing here but does time or change travel at the speed of light? If it does, does time have energy and can it be measured?

Let's make a flywheel spin by applying a torque X for Y seconds
Then from another "frame" we stop the flywheel by applying a torque -X for Y seconds.

Energy is torque times number of rotations. So a smaller energy comes out of  the flywheel that was put into it.


 

[QuantumClue]

From school and reading I've always understood that time slows as you approach the speed of light and an objects mass becomes infinite. I was wondering why time slows it must be affected by something. I'm just guessing here but does time or change travel at the speed of light? If it does, does time have energy and can it be measured?

Time alone does not contain an energy, its more of an abstraction to be correct. However, time is an acting conjugate to energy under Noether Theorem, so in a sense it can be treated under the same light.