Alan McDougall

Light is both a particle or a wave it depends on how it is observed.

Thank you! And it bends or distorts around a huge gravity field. In Einstein’s theory of general relativity, he put forth the radical idea that space is not just a static, empty arena in which celestial objects go about their business. Instead, he described our universe as a sort of fabric that is curved and distorted by the objects within it. Sound crazy? Maybe. But researchers at Northwestern and their colleagues within a world-wide scientific collaboration have developed ways to detect and measure these disturbances in the fabric of space. Vicky Kalogera, professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, How can we think of space as “fabric?” And what causes these disturbances? First, imagine space as an elastic membrane, spread flat. Now, set a big ball on the membrane. It will cause the membrane to sag. This is similar to how an object with mass, like a planet, affects the geometry of space. Although we cannot perceive this distortion in everyday life, aside from strong gravitational fields on Earth, it is measurable in the motion of planets due to our Sun’s gravity. Now, picture another object moving in a circle—an orbit—in this distorted, sagged membrane. This creates regular disturbances that propagate through space like a wave. We call them gravitational waves, because it is gravity that keeps objects in orbit and disturb the “membrane” of space. It’s like the ripples that follow when you throw a rock in a lake. In order for these waves to be large enough for us to detect them on Earth, they have to be caused by very massive objects orbiting around one another at speeds approaching the speed of light, like two black holes. A black hole is an object in space with a very high mass in relation to its size, making it extremely dense. For example, a black hole with the mass of the Earth would only be an inch across—very, very dense! This makes the gravitational pull of black holes incredibly strong—so strong that even light cannot escape. We know black holes exist—we’ve observed 20 of them so far, but only visually and through X-rays. Measuring the gravitational waves they produce will give us a new way to study them.

Nevertheless you need to know the mass of the kids before, or after the equation, a small difference in mass could result in a huge accumulating error over enormous distances of outer space. Nevertheless, you must at some stage plug in the numbers and they must be as accurate as possible.

Photons have energy, energy and mass are different forms of the same fundamental thing. E=MC2 Energy (Light)) is a form of electromagnetism, and effected by other force fields such as gravity, or a magnetic field itself and thus can be drawn into it. The speed of light differs between different mediums, thus it goes slower in water than in the vacuum of space. As for why it goes at the speed it goes in the vacuum of space, 1) This is just a fact of our reality that we must accept, or 2) Maybe a cosmic traffic authority set the limit or god if you like?

Space-time is not nothing, it is a fabric, that has been proved to distort or curve around the mass of a huge object. Read it up Arthur Ellington proved this in the 1910's Of course there is much more to say about this topic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity .At its introduction in 1915, the general theory of relativity did not have a solid empirical foundation. It was known that it correctly accounted for the "anomalous" precession of the perihelion of Mercury and on philosophical grounds it was considered satisfying that it was able to unify Newton's law of universal gravitation with special relativity. That light appeared to bend in gravitational fields in line with the predictions of general relativity was found in 1919 but it was not until a program of precision tests was started in 1959 that the various predictions of general relativity were tested to any further degree of accuracy in the weak gravitational field limit, severely limiting possible deviations from the theory. Beginning in 1974,

Einstein did not think of gravity as a force, he thought of it as a distortion of space time due to the presence of mass.

I statement 2 is incorrect , clock signal from B should be relatively faster because it is stationary. When we move or accelerate toward something, time immediately begins to go "slower in out personal time frame, than that of the destination target. This happens but imperceptibly, even by you walking toward a friend in the mall, if he is standing still relative to you, time is moving slower for you and faster for him. There simply at the fundamental level nothing such as standard time, the flow of time even differs from your head to your feet, because of the effect of gravity, thus your feet are always a little younger than your head.

Has there been any thought that neutrino's might have something to do with dark matter or even be dark matter itself?

I did not say the equations were hard , in fact if you read what I said the difficult part came before I mentioned equations , "you would have serious difficulty using kids" How could you write an equation, without knowing the exact mass of the object you were going to eject from your spaceship, you must plug this data into your equation first?

You would have serious difficulty using kids as mass ejection to alter the speed and direction of said spaceship. Heck they eat a lot , their mass thus, changes from moment to moment, the also excrete mass, chew mass, drink mass and come in different sizes and shapes?. How do you eject these odd shaped objects at the exact correct angle, at the exact correct velocity, do you have different ejection ports for different size kids?. Only after you have resolved those issues to exactitude, can you think of coming up with the correct mathematical equation.

That is good enough for me!

Yes even clapping your hands together, is a type of Zeno paradox! Planck length is the point at which our reality begins.

Those test of mental acuity were obviously too easy, I will come back with more difficult tests later

To test your mental acuity, answer the following questions I will give the link later! 1. Johnny’s mother had three children. The first child was named April. The second child was named May. What was the third child’s name? 2. A clerk at a butcher shop stands five feet ten inches tall and wears size 13 sneakers. What does he weigh? 3. Before Mt. Everest was discovered, what was the highest mountain in the world? 4. How much dirt is there in a hole that measures two feet by three feet by four feet? 5. What word in the English language is always spelled incorrectly? 6. Billie was born on December 28th, yet her birthday always falls in the summer. How is this possible? 7. In British Columbia you cannot take a picture of a man with a wooden leg. Why not? 8. If you were running a race and you passed the person in 2nd place, what place would you be in now? 9. Which is correct to say, “The yolk of the egg is white” or “The yolk of the egg are white?” 10. A farmer has five haystacks in one field and four haystacks in another. How many haystacks would he have if he combined them all in one field?

OK in the game they were ejecting kids to change direction, but the inertia of an object resists change, you need kids of almost any mass to control a spaceship in this way. I will return later with some maths. My statement was not literal or mathematically true, I just meant these two factors must be taken into consideration in calculating inertia, and off course you are correct. I will be more careful!

I stand corrected

Mass plus velocity!

Did they teach you to shout at people, are they good people of high morals, your dad might have the character of a Jeffery Darhma for all I know?

Thanks for your informative post! A non- mathematical solution might be that Achilles finally catches up with the tortoise where there is less space between them than the smallest infinitesimal fundamental particle. Achilles in his very long effort to catch the tortoise has also reduced to the smallest possible size of a fundamental particle, thus; Achilles cant jump over himself and reaches the tortoise in his final jump. I know this is not a solution to the paradox , Zeno had no knowledge of modern physics, however, I still want to muse around this and other fascinating paradoxes for a while.

Well you cant ignore inertia, take a fun park ride, if inertia is ignored in the design of the ride, the people could break their necks going around a too sharp corner. The spaceman could likewise die if too much mass is ejected to change the spaceship direction, resulting in maybe "a too sudden right angle change in the direction of motion" for which for the human body is not designed by evolution to withstand, killing him/her outright. Inertia is the tendency of an object to resist changes in its state of motion. But what is meant by the phrase state of motion? The state of motion of an object is defined by its velocity or the speed with a direction. Thus, inertia could be redefined as follows: Inertia: tendency of an object to resist changes in its velocity, the unlucky spaceman could be just such an object! .

Is there proof that after a black holes has radiated "all the matter and energy" that has been "sucked into them" by their colossal gravity field "over their life time", back into the universe, thus maintaining the conservation of information within the universe?. Or has the idea that a black hole "actually evaporates" have any proof mathematically or otherwise,out of the universe at large ? At one time it was thought that the stuff pulled into a black hole went elsewhere, maybe into another universe, this is/was a theory of Stephen Hawking, I am not sure if he still believes this as a possibility! Note "Evaporate" in my opinion is a bit vague!

Only space, which is mass-less, can move faster than light, there are galaxies at the edge of the universe(for lack of abetter word) that are moving faster than the speed of light, but they can only do this because they are imbedded in space. You cannot travel faster than light through the fabric of space, but you can travel with space faster than light. Within a galaxy nothing can exceed light speed, but the universe as a hypothetical cake and the galaxies as chips of impurities in the cake dough (Space) might rise very quickly, , however the chips, would separate, from each other at the rate of expansion of the cake dough (Space) The impurities/chips (Galaxies) imbedded in the cake dough/space, cannot move through the dough (Space) at greater than light speed, but the dough,(Space) having zero mass can expand at any speed even exceeding the speed of light . Take a highly advanced space ship, it could never travel through the fabric of space, between, two galaxies at faster than light speed. Summary, nothing can travel through the fabric of space faster than the speed of light. Space which has no mass can expand faster than the speed of light, and take everything embedded in it at that speed, Like a fabric of infinitely stretchable cloth, with polka dots (Polka dots=Galaxies). Some great hypothetical hand could take the stretchable fabric and stretch it at almost infinite speed, taking the polka dots with it, only the dots get further and further apart, exactly at the rate the great hand stretches the fabric. Sorry a bit long winded! Einstein once said, "if you can explain your theory to your granny then you understand it yourself"

How do you overcome the problem of inertia?

I disagree space is not being created, all the original fabric of space-time that was created in the Big Bang and this total space time fabric is being forced apart by the supposed 'Dark Energy", that has the properties of anti-gravity. The latest news on the fate of the universe is that it is accelerating and if this acceleration continues there are two likely outcome in the very far future, the acceleration will become so extreme that the fabric of space will be ripped apart stripping everything else out of the universe as well. Or it will continue to accelerate, increasing entropy to the infinite maximum leading to the heat death of the universe, But don't worry about it that could take a Googleplex of years to reach that point

Very few people are brave enough to claim they understand string theory, the father of string theory is a very bright physicist by the name of Edd Wittten, look him up! If you suppose that you could draw or think in 10 spacial dimensions, you should know this is impossible to do. It is even impossible to think in 4 spacial dimensions although a tesserract is thought to be a four -dimensional analogue of a cube