rune420

To me it seems that the minimal criteria for something to be considere alive is for it to have a consciousness of some sort.

But I guess it depends on how you define the word 'life'.

Not really a spoiler, but I whited it out just in case:

I just saw the last movie, which didn't really add much to the plot of Reloaded the way I see it... After the architect scene, it was little doubt that Zion was a part of the virtual world, and that there really was no hope... I don't think Revolutions added anything to that...

I would really like to know where you found the plot, Sayonara?

If we were to ever invent time-traveling (backwards), why hasn't anyone from the future paid us a visit?

Originally posted by iglak

wouldn't the bb transfer only the energy needed to push the boulder 100mph, and keep the rest to sustain it's movement?

No, he stipulated that the bb lost all its energy thus all it's velocity in the collision. Ofcourse, this would most propably not be the case in reality.

Originally posted by iglak

although, this could just be because of something else (a theory of mine) that i can only describe through an example:

-let's say we have a perfectly spherical planet made completely out of evenly spaced... alluminum molecules(any solid will do).

-lets say we have another perfect phere made out of the same material about the size of a boulder.

-now, lets say we have ten silos full of ball bearings (bb's).

-connected to these silos, with an automatic feed, is a rapid fire, automatic gun that always shoots these bb's at exactly 100mph, and any rate of bb's/second

-now that all of the specifics are done, we fire these bb's at the boulder.

-no matter how many we fire at the boulder, and no matter how many we fire per second, the boulder can never be propelled faster than 100mph. even if it could, the bb's wouldn't be able to hit them to move it any faster...

 

now, if nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, how will we ever find something that can to propell our faster-than-light travel? could this be the increase in mass as things approach the speed of light? if not, what could be it?

Hmmm... What if you put the gun on the boulder instead? The recoil of the gun would then accelerate the velocity of the boulder (assuming vacuum, and that the gun is positioned in such a way that it would not tilt the boulder [easier if you picture it in free space i guess]) so that you could propell the boulder beyond 100 mph, right?

Yet as far as I can see you could still never reach light-speed as a result of the lorentz-transformations (out of curiosity I read a little today, though it's not really part of the classes I'm taking right now).

Thanks, that was just what I was wondering about! I guess I should read up on time dilation a little more... Seems like interesting/mind-bending stuff!

I'll definately keep visiting this forum!

OK. I guess I'll just have to accept that then. :scratch:

Man, I can't wait to learn more about this stuff... I'm only a freshman, and the physics I had in (the norwegian equivalent to) high school were mostly classic mechanics (not relativity or QM at all)...

Hmmm... I guess you're right, there would have to be some form of push against the outer train, but what if you applied a constant force to counter this large enough for the trains to maintain a constant velocity? This should in theory be possible, right? (With massive amounts of energy, ofcourse).

And instead of accelerating the last train past c in reference to the earth, say you split this up into two huge (outer) trains, one with 5 and one with 6 trains, moving avay from each other (one with c/10 and the other with -c/10 in reference to earth)...

Then the innermost train would be moving faster than light in reference to the other innermost train, right? Would it still take to much energy to be even theoretically possible?

Hmmm... This is just a thought i had the other day, and there must be something wrong in my reasoning, but I can't seem to figure out why this wouldn't work:

Say you had a HUGE train moving along the earth with a constant velocity of c/10 in reference to the earth. Inside this train you had a smaller train moving with a constant velocity of c/10 in reference to the larger train. Inside this you had yet another train (even smaller) moving at c/10 in reference to the small train. This train would then be moving at 3*c/10 in reference to the earth.

Would it not then be possible to have 11 such trains in the same way as described above where the innermost train was moving at 11*c/10 (faster than c) in reference to the earth? What am I missing?