Relativity

Just wondering, i thought it was in a post somewhere but i cant find it :/ If you travelled at the speed of light for ten minute somewhere or over the speed of light, then came back, what would be the effect on time in earth? Does traveling at that speed do anything with time, like make it go back or forward ?

Lets say I make a conduit that is the length that light takes to travel in a minute. I then stuff it full of tennis balls so there are no gaps and all the balls are touching each other. I then push on the first ball. Instantaneously, the end ball falls out of the conduit. Is this not faster than light motion? I understand that each ball only moves the length of one ball, but all balls move together at the same time. Lets say someone is on the end of the conduit and waiting for you to perform the action. You shine a light towards the observer, but the ball would fall out before the light gets to their eye? I am sure this is not the first time you…

Is there a way to figure out the escape velocity of virtual particles? What causes them to surpass their escape velocity?why? What exactly are virtual particles? I started a thread on this same subject on another forum, but no one seemed to know what exactly virtual particles are. I learned that they were involved in quantum field theory, and they were mathematical solutions for something. :help: :feedback:

Is time quantized? In other words, is there a smallest unit of time that could not be divided into a smaller unit? Kind of like the atom used to be considered the most elementary fundemental particle, does time have a fundemental counterpart? Faf, any comments?

What do people like me do at 1:40AM? Read science articles of course! While browsing a collection of old physics articles Nature had a special on, I came across one of particular interest. http://www.nature.com/physics/lookingback/einstein/einstein.pdf Einstein himself explains how he came up with general relativity.

There was an article in CNN back in June about scientists testing the theory relativity. Any ideas on what these "new theories involving gravity and particle physics" are? I havn't heard anything about any recent theories contradicting relativity. Here is a link to the CNN article. CNN no longer carries it on their page, so here is google's cache This was already confirmed on GPS satellites where the clocks frequencies were downshifted 44.47 parts in 10^12. . Silly scientists.

This is kind of paraphrased from the current issue of scientific american. Quantum indeterminsm implies that for a particular quantum state there are many alternative futures or potential realities. Quantum mechanics supplies the relative probabilities for each observable outcome, although it won't say which potential future is destined for reality. Take for example an electron hitting an atom and bouncing off. The electron will bounce in one direction of many possiblities, and it is impossible to predict in advance what outcome in any given case will be. But when a human observer makes a measurement, one and only one result is obtained; for example, the elect…