Catthedragon

Well how can a force exist without an energy component?

I was trying to think of new age energy sources and this occurred to me. Could have sworn I read about it somewhere in that context. I'm probably wrong. I mean, to my knowledge, gravity is just there. It's a property of matter. Nothing "powers" it. By that logic it's creating energy out of nothing.

Okay. Basically what I'm asking is... why. Why is the speed of a wave independent of the speed of a source? Why is the speed of a wave a constant determined by the medium? What do you mean by "source", actually? The particles forming the wave? Or where the wave originated from? Almost nothing you said made sense without context.

Light is, to my knowledge, made up of particles that behave in a wave-like manner (just like all matter in the universe, technically). Going by that, should it not be possible to make these particles speed up or slow down? Movement is energy, and I can think of three energetic forces that might have an impact on light: 1. Heat. Higher temperatures make all other forms of matter speed up, I don't see why light would be an exception. I'm not sure whether this has been tested, but logically there should be some kind of difference in speed between the light being released from an immensely hot light source (let's say a star) and the light lost out in freezing space. Furthermore, what state of matter is light exactly? Plasma? 2. Distance. I know this is wrong, but I don't understand how waves (or wave-like particles) maintain 100% of their energy when crossing the absolute emptiness of space. Movement is energy, including wave-like movement, and therefore some of that energy should be expended. Especially in the case of mass, when it is solid, physical matter that must move back and forth. There is something going on here that I am not aware of, I'm sure. But I felt like I should mention it. 3. Force. As with any object, when light hits something, some of its energy should be transferred into the other object. According to this, light should slow down a bit each time it hits something, for instance an atmospheric molecule. Sorry to go off topic, and sorry for asking such a childish question, but thinking about point #3, where exactly does light go? When I turn the light off in my room, why don't latent photons keep bouncing around, at least for a little while? Why does light stop? What is the end of the life of a photon? Does it just rest on something, and if so, should this not cause them to build up over lengths of time? Furthermore, what is the structure of a photon? Just some things I'm curious about.

Hi! I just joined this forum because I needed to ask a question about a scientific term that I couldn't seem to find on Google. A little backstory: I'm not much of a scientist myself, really more of a fantasy writer/artist. But I do value science, and whenever I create fanciful alien worlds/realities, I can't help but take a very... "logical" approach to everything. Everything has to "make sense". For instance, when designing a system for how magic works in my world, I created an unidentifiable pseudo-plant that consumes physical matter and generates magical energy, to compensate for the fact that mages consume magical energy to conjure rocks and chemicals and such out of thin air. And I haven't even gone into how my species process magic yet, or how magic stays bound to the planet when it is a nonphysical substance. It all gets very convoluted. But then again, our world is pretty convoluted too. Anyway, to the point. Today I designed an anthropomorphic serpentine species that has the standard flexible endoskeletal spine typical of snakes on Earth. However, it has a defining characteristic in which its ribs and other bones are highly reinforced and elongated, leading them to pierce out of the body and weave around in intricate fashions, as a sort of pseudo-armor. And I was wondering, is there a scientific term for a species like this, which has a skeletal structure that is both inside and outside of the body? Neither exoskeletal nor endoskeletal seemed appropriate to me. Furthermore, I would love to hear what any of you might have to say about the logical/evolutionary advantages/disadvantages of such a creature. Right now, I'm trying to figure out how they sleep, haha. My current idea is that they are able to curl their bodies up into their bone-cages. I've taken the liberty of attaching a picture of a very, very, very early, rough sketch, to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. It was taken with a cell phone camera and it's the first time I've ever attempted to create an image of this species, so don't take it too seriously. Anyway, thoughts?