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dstebbins

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Posts posted by dstebbins

  1. Wow, I've heard of internet morons but this is ridiculous.

     

    That statement was in the first section, meaning I CAN'T change it. Log on and see for yourself. There's no "edit" link for the opening sections in ANY article. Idiots.

     

    And to think, no one has yet to see that. Wow.

  2. As I look here, I notice the first criteria for planethood was that it must orbit the Sun directly. Does that mean that all objects outside our solar system, which, technically, do not orbit the Sun, are automatically not planets?:P

     

    Just goes to show how non-credible Wikipedia is.

  3. Actually, I figured it out, but not because of anything you told me. When I push on my house, I am performing work, just not on the house. I'm pushing myself back away from the house due to Newton's 3rd law; therefore, work is being done, and energy is being burned. I can also force myself forward at the cost of the same amount of energy that I exerted pushing backward, to stay in a stationary position, but just because the works cancel out doesn't mean their non-existent.

     

    So nevermind. I figured it out, although on my own.

  4. Okay, time out! Time out! This is getting WAY out of hand! We all need to take a few breaths. Myself included, but you guys also.

     

    Let's come back in a few hours, shall we? Maybe then we'll have calmed down, and we can talk, not e-scream.

  5. Then you are simply measuring velocities relative to that point. It is still a relative measurement.

     

    Dude, were you even paying attention? Absolute location is a relative location, yes, but it's relative to a universal, or absolute, frame. This makes this particular relative location absolute.

     

    On a map of the earth, the global frame is the intersection of the Equator and the Prime Meridian. Of course, since all objects in the universe are in constant motion, our best bet for this absolute frame is a point in space.

     

    SHEESH!

     

    dude you CAN`T do that, it`s well known and Documented that the Universe is constantly expanding, and thus moving.

     

    as I said, find the source of Absolute Motion, then you might be in with a chance, but since that`s not possible (because there isn`t one), it`ll never happen :)

     

    You're forgetting one thing: The Multiverse. Our universe is not the only one. It says so in M-Theory. There are an infinite number of universes in the multiverse. THAT'S where the absolute frame is located!

  6. an absolute location cannot exist.

     

    you have no Absolute Motion with which to compare it with, and without a common frame of reference there can be no "absolute location".

     

    Well, I'm just saying that maybe we should make one! Designate a point in space as the origin of the Universal coordinate grid. Problem solved.

     

    Somebody tell me what's so complicated about this. PLEASE!

  7. it wouldn`t be an "Absolute" if you were in there to observe it.

     

    Woah woah WOAH! I said the absolute frame was a POINT in space! Not a 3D region! You can't be IN a point!

     

    And even if you were to rephrase that and say you could be "on" the point, that still doesn't mean anything. It's just like a coordinate point being on the origin of the coordinate grid. It has an absolute location: 0,0,0.

  8. Because work is an energy transfer.

     

    Is work the transfer of energy, or is force the transfer of energy? Think about it: Work is defined as force times distance. If you don't move the object, there's no work done. I could push on my house with my bare hands all day long, nothing's going to happen. I'm not doing any work, just exerting meaningless force, but I am still depleting energy, am I not?

     

    But if energy were really the ability to do work as the definition says, then I should be able to push and push forever and not deplete a single Joule of energy because no distance = no work, and by defnition, no work = no energy, therefore, no distance SHOULD = no energy, yet it does.

     

    So is energy really the ability to do work, or is it the ability to exert force? By that logic, the unit of energy should be a Newton.

  9. No. there is no such thing as absolute speed. Everything is relative.

     

    I had a feeling you'd say that.

     

    Is there really no such thing as absolute speed, or could absolute speed be a manifestation of a relative speed, relative merely to a universal frame? It is common knowledge that energy of motion and energy of heat are the same thing, so when an object reaches a temperature of absolute zero, it is absolutely stationary, therefore, this theoretical object would be the perfect universal frame. The only problem here is that matter as we know it cannot obtain a universal frame.

     

    However, the need for a material object to be the universal frame is bull. Who says we can't designate a point in space to be the universal frame? The "origin of the coordinate grid" if I may. Sure, even the vacuum of space has kinetic energy (about 3 degrees kelvin between galaxies), but there's no matter around for the enegy to affect. The vacuum would stay stationary.

     

    So in a sense, absolute location (location relavent to the absolute frame) can be measured, and if we can measure absolute location, we can measure absolute speed.

  10. The speed of the object isn't an intrinsic property of the object. One can only have speeds relative to something else. So the ship has a 'speed relative to observer 1' and a 'speed relative to observer 2'. These are different quantities, so they don't have to be the same. That is why it is called 'relativity'.

     

    But you see, it's this that causes the problem. Relativity speaks that there are two kinds of speeds: Absolute and relative. A material object's velocity in Relativity is relative to an observer, but the absolute velocity is the same, is it not? Light, on the other hand, has a constant relative velocity, so its absolute velocity has to change, but that's impossible.

  11. Special relativity states that the speed of light is constant for all observers, whether they're traveling at 1 m/s or 99.9% the speed of light, light travels at c, which is approximately 300,000,000 m/s. However, in my tiny little mind, this statement makes about as much sense as "afdjaojvalfjdl;kj!"

     

    Suppose for a minute that a spaceship is flying at 150,000,000 m/s relative to a planet. To the planet, the light reflecting off the ship is traveling at 300,000,000 m/s, but to the spaceship, it's traveling at 450,000,000 m/s relative to the planet.

     

    So in conclusion that means that the same light, the light being observed by both parties at the same time, is traveling at two speeds at once. That doesn't make a bit of sense. How can an object have more than one speed at one time?

     

    I'm sure this has been brought up before in the over a century that this theory has yet to be disproven, but I seem to have been home sick that day. What's the answer?

  12. Why would Einstein replace the Newtonian explanation of gravity, which was relatively understandable, with a complex theory of spacetime distortion? What's the point? The end results are the same regardless of which theory you choose, so why bother? What phenomina exist that would motivate such a radical change? There has to be a phenominon that Newtonian gravity doesn't explain that Einsteinian gravity does, otherwise he wouldn't have bothered to make the theory because Newtonian gravity would have been sufficient.

  13. As I read the Wikipedia article on torque, found here, I notice that the SI unit of torque is the newton-meter, not the Joule. Why is that? The base units for torque come out to the same as work or energy (kgm^2/s^2), and it's even calulated with the same math as work (force times length), so why is it not refered to as a Joule?

  14. Nevermind. I learned on another board I posted this that I had a misguided definition of entropy in the first place. Entropy is actually a measure of an objects tendancy to take on a trait uniform with its surroundings. In thermodynamics, entropy refers to a substance's tendency to reach the same temperature as its environment.

     

    So it's back to square one. You can all delete this topic now.

  15. Wikipedia lacks an article about black hole entropy, so I'm going to try and work it out for myself. I want you guys to help me by correcting mistakes and answering questions.

     

    It is my understanding that "entropy" is quantum mechanics talk for "information/description." So basically, when Stephen Hawking came up with the famous equation of S = (c^3*k*A)/(4*h*G), (h is actually read "h-bar," but I don't know how to type the real letter) he combined all the possible information of a black hole into one value, which he assigned the capital letter S.

     

    The units for the variables are thus: c^3=m^3/s^3, since c is the speed of light and thus is a velocity. k=J/K, or Joules per Kelvin, h=Js, or Joule seconds, and G=Nm^2/kg^2, read "Newtons meters squared per kilograms squared," and A=m^2, since it's merely surface area.

     

    Therefore, when I figure the units on the right side, cancelling where appropriate, I get a unit for S of S=(m^3*kg^2)/(s^2*K*N).

     

    Since the only variable on the right side of Hawking's equation that is not a constant is A, or surface area, then I feel it is safe to assume that all black holes of equal size are the same.

     

    The values of the constants are as follows:

    c=299792458 m/s

    k=1.3806504 x 10^-23 J/K

    h=1.054571628 x 10 ^-34 Js

    G=6.67428 x 10^-11 Nm^2/kg^2

     

    As I calculate the constants in my calculator, with the proper number of significant digits being 6, I get a final unitless value of 1.32131 x 10^46, so that means that the entropy of a lack hole is S=(1.32131 x 10^46)A (m^3*kg^2)/(s^2*K*N*m^2)

     

    And with that, I come to my final belief, that the singularity paradox is brought to life because the singularity is infinately small, and thus has no surface area, so A=0, so you're multiplying 1.32131 x 10^46 times 0, and you get zero, so at the singularity, there is no entropy.

     

    I know my logic is probably plagued with flaws (it always is), so I'd appreciate it if you could correct my mistakes and answer any questions I may have in the process.

  16. SOrry havent read all the posts, but dstebbins for the love of God, you touch exactly what I (being more a metaphysicist, epistemological philosopher) is or was rather concerned with (gave up everything with an awful predicition of neutron stars should be spinning faster than they do). Anyway, your notion is entirely right with respect to the information indeed exists in our minds or the mind of the observer. So, I would rather ask, what is the mind.. (and just completely disregard the so confused department of psychology). Obviously don't look at the relation of atp molecules and brain to mind , mind to brain relations as that goes back to what you said about putting into a computer something and out it spits a result, the black box.

     

    But just like space-time is invisible (and so we associated space with nothingness), through mathematics we saw properties of this manifold and indirectly have seen its effects, the same way I query if mind is a substance of some dimension which directly is therefore invisible as such (exceeds the 3 dimensions like space[-time] itself) but has indirect results (hey, we can think, hey we can manipulate the matter in our body, hey we create a relation between us and that which is observed , etc).

     

    In another post once I used the term epistemological physics. hehe. I know I'll get pun for this so won't at all go into this but will say I believe we will be able to make a cohesive model where such things as mind/emotions? etc will be part of a super-symmetrical manifold, which also will predict why information then becomes more real as such :)

     

    lak

     

    But what does all that in those two posts have to do with information taking on a physical existence?

  17. One problem is you are using one particular definition of information, and it isn't the same definition used by the people doing the physics at play here.

     

    You know what would be uber-sweet? If you were to read the whole thread before you post, because I'm not trying to suggest anything, but maybe, just maybe, what you're thinking could have already been said.

  18. I'm sorry... I'm not sure where to start of focus though. Also it gets a bit philosophical and that's always fuzzy.

     

    > The "information loss" refers to that *assuming the hawking radiation to be

    > thermal* total probability seems to not be conserved - ie. unitary evolution

    > seems violated. Which means the states seem to kind of step outside of

    > the hilbert spaces - in violation with QM foundations

     

    One of the postulates of quantum mechanics is that the state of the system, our information of the system, is described by one possibility out of a defined set of possibilites. One assumes as a starting point that there exists such a set that contains all the possible states, and this set is known. Which means that no matter what happens, if we sum over all possibilities we should find the state somewhere.

     

    And time evolution is considered as just moving the state around within this given set. I mean, regardless of what happens, the state of the system is not supposed to leave this set. It's constrained to this set by assumption.

     

    But if some interaction seems to suggest, that suddenly the state is found nowhere in this set, then we have an inconsistency and something is wrong. Either we don't understand the interaction (note that the black hole stuff is mostly gedanken experiments and are thus subject to possible fallacies), or our postulates set of possibilities is incomplete, or the assumption that the set of possibilities is a non-dynamical quantity in the first place might be wrong.

     

    Hilbert space is a function space, making parts of the mathematical formalism of QM.

     

    Suppose you play dice, expecting outcomes in {1..6}, but if you suddently you get 7 you'd get perplexed. Did someone manipulate the dice? Did the dice evolve another face? Is the dice alive? Or is something wrong with your vision? Maybe it will never happen again? And more importantly, how can you tell he difference?

     

    I'm just trying to provoce some questions, since you asked about what the issue was to start with.

     

    /Fredrik

     

    WELL GEE! THAT MAKES IT AS CLEAR AS TWO PLUS ****ING TWO!

     

    Dude, with some due respect, if you can't speak English, then maybe you aren't the one to help me.

  19. No body thinks that we have infinite curvature in a black hole. It is just showing the break down of general relativity and telling us that we need some new physics.

     

    Throughout the development of modern physics the presence of infinities has lead to new developments. For example, the electron's self energy led to quantum field theory. Why should we expect any difference in general relativity?

     

    Most people think that on the small scale general relativity will no longer hold and that some quantum theory of gravity will "smooth out" the infinite curvature.

     

    We also have time dilation effects to take into account as a distant observer. We never see the particle cross the event horizon. Time dilation effects means that from our point of view, it takes infinite time for the particle to reach the event horizon. (again another infinity, new physics?) But as far as the particle is concerned, it does cross the event horizon in finite time. So you need to make your statments more precise and state which observer you are talking about.

     

    So, what you're trying to say in the fewest words possible is that General Relativity is being replaced with other, more universal (no pun intended) physics?

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