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Point me in the right direction please.. |
kenetiks
Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: November 21, 2001
Posts: 1130
From: Bandcamp
|  Posted: 2005-10-29 09:32
I've spent the last 48 hours pouring of physics models, both applicable and theoretical.
Having never dealt with physics before(other than looking up certain principles I was interested in), I find the field of theoretic physics fascinating to say the least.
After having gone through many websites on physics and applied math, there seems to be very little entry-level information into aplied mathmatics to physics, I can read and understand some of it, but the calculations are becoming more and more difficult to understand.
Any websites that anyone can think of or books that I might pickup(Physics for Dummies or calculous?) would be greatly appreciated.
-ken
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kenetiks
Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: November 21, 2001
Posts: 1130
From: Bandcamp
| Posted: 2005-10-29 11:15
And does anyone know whats up with GCQL?
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-RevenG-
Raven Warriors
Joined: March 03, 2004
Posts: 2673
| Posted: 2005-10-29 12:15
GCQL? You mean the not being able to get into DS at all? If that's the case. I was wondering also. Been like that 2 days in a row for me, always at night also.
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Ramius
Fleet Admiral
Agents
Joined: January 12, 2002
Posts: 894
From: Ramius
| Posted: 2005-10-29 12:55
I can sit down with you and talk about some stuff if you'd like.
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Ramius
Fleet Admiral
Agents
Joined: January 12, 2002
Posts: 894
From: Ramius
| Posted: 2005-10-29 12:56
I can sit down with you and talk about some stuff if you'd like.
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Bitopherous
1st Lieutenant
Joined: June 07, 2004
Posts: 264
From: Bottom of the pile
| Posted: 2005-10-29 13:02
Try The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene. He breaks things down pretty basically, and brings you up to speed using examples that involve The Simpsons, and it encompasses everything from velocity to string theory. Its pretty easy reading too. Written for those of us without Ph.Ds in Math...
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Lobo
Cadet
Joined: March 06, 2004
Posts: 4
From: Qualeesh AR
| Posted: 2005-10-29 13:48
Hiya, depending upon what branch of physics you're looking into, I would recommend an excellent book called " In Search of Schrodingers Cat - Quantum physics and reality" by author John Gribbin. My education in physics stopped in grade 11 highschool, but this book is very informative and easy to read for the layman... (me  and deals with many different aspects of physics and related fields! Hope it helps, and good luck!!
Lobo
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kenetiks
Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: November 21, 2001
Posts: 1130
From: Bandcamp
| Posted: 2005-10-29 14:44
Well, the models I'm interested in seem to actually overlap.
I don't remember what I was reading at the time but it had something that sparked a curiousity so I went about looking up Special Relativity. After hours of reading I noticed that Relativity seemed to overlap into the realm of theoretical science and let me explain. Because I went past the answer I was looking for and got deeper into the subject than I originally intended.
Because of the thoeries explanation of light traversal it brings into perspective of causal effects and various other abnormalities of space-time, it's alot to get into so I'll keep it simple.
I cannot progress further into the subject than I already am because I've hit a snag. The calculations apparently all are based by a "frame of reference" by observers.
For example, subject a leaves earth traveling in excess of c while subject b stays on earth. Both are the exact same age. Subject a returns after many years and is younger than subject b.
To my understanding, I have yet to se the point of this thought excersice in regards to Special Relativity. It seems to be a misunderstanding or overlap between the terms "frame of reference" and "perspective".
Just because ones perspective is skewed by time dialation does not mean that time changed in any way. And untill FTL travel is invented, we have no way of determining the outcome.
Say for instance, subject a leaves the earth at half the speed of c. We can watch him go away and because he is moving away at half of c we must conclude that it will take time for the light to reach him and reflect that information back to us.
Now lets say it's possible for him to make an abrupt 90 degree turn left without taking a loss in speed. He will actually not be where we see him.
Supposedly somehwere along this point(which is where I hit my stump) time slows down for one of the observers, which one is uncertain.
Everything that I've read offers no explanation of the interpretation of SR in respect to time dialations. It's simply "thats what observer in frame of reference sees, so it must be true".
It could be very well that I have the concept wrong, but we'll see, as I will continue to read into the subject.
It seems, that at least one person is thinking ahead and makes a plausable theory into the realm of reality. While it sounds of Star Trek, the theory as I understand it of the times of my reading is quite possible. It also bypasses all aplicable current physics limitations since the vessal or person is actually not moving in "local space". Alcubierre seems to have put a practical application and gave birth to discussion of actually "warp field theory" and it seems quite promising according to some theoretical physicists.
By the way, my original intent by readin up on Relativity had nothing to do with travel, I just got caught up in my reading and went slightly further into it than I had originally planned.
I also have a .pdf of Alcubierre's letter confirming warp field theory if anyone wants it.
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kenetiks
Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: November 21, 2001
Posts: 1130
From: Bandcamp
| Posted: 2005-10-29 14:50
As a footnote, it also seems I may have found a challenge in life that I had never thought of before.
Strange that I stumble upon it now. The entire times I've been going over physics, I've paid little attention to whats going on around me. For once in my life I have been extremely focused and my mind has gotten a break from the normal grind of the everyday drum.
While I have never been trained in higher mathmatics or physics, this could well become a great hobby for me as it's theories and applications are breathtaking to say the least.
Oh well, off to my new hobby.
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Ramius
Fleet Admiral
Agents
Joined: January 12, 2002
Posts: 894
From: Ramius
| Posted: 2005-10-29 17:29
You have no idea how thrilled I am to hear you say that. There are very few people who want to move outside their everyday lives in search for a greater truth that exists in our universe. I can see just by your writing that you are like me, and you move through this world with an open mind to try to perceive the world around you...
Anyways, let's begin.
So you are entering into the realm of special relativity, which is a good place to start since GR becomes far more complicated. Anyways, you are mainly concerned with causality as it exists within SR. A few points:
A. Remember the second postulate of Special Relativity, which simply states that no matter the velocity of the object, light emitted from that object will always be c. This almost seems counterintuitive. Let's take your example for instance. A spacecraft leaves Earth at a velocity of .5c. You as an observer, attempt to measure light being emitted from it. Intuitively, you say to yourself, "Ok, this object is moving away from me at half the speed of light, that means that if light is emitted from the object, it should be going half as fast when it reaches me." This is wrong. Yet it makes sense. This is simply the nature of light. No matter the velocity at which you or the object is, measured light in a vacuum will always be the same speed.
B. Your next point isn't necessarily due to any fundamental problem with special relativity. You ask what would happen the if object suddenly changed in a perpendicular direction to your observations. There is no time dilation that occurs due to this change, you simply have not yet received the information in the form of lightwaves in which to register the change. There is however, an inherent time dilation of the object itself as it nears the speed of light. I assume this is what you are getting at.
C. Ok then, lets talk about the causality of SR, as this is where you are getting stumped. These books says that SR is measured to be true no matter the reference. Well this is true. There is no absolute time nor space. This is why relativity was such a major shock to the scientific community when Einstein released his theory. Time and space are interwoven at an intricate level. Ok, with this in mind, as an object's velocity increases towards c, time dilation does occur. This is due to the fact that mass and velocity affect time-space. The clearest example was one given by Einstein. He wondered what would happen if you were looking at a clock tower as it was striking noon. As you were observing the two hands reach 12 o'clock, you instantly move away from the clock at the speed of light. The result, which he postulated, was that you, the observer, would forever see the hands in the 12 o'clock position as you travel away from the clock with the light that was emitted from it. In this way, time has stopped. This is the most basic concept of time dilation. You may have seen the following graphic before, but it is helpful to post it here:
OK, what are we looking at. Ill put this in DS terms. We, the UGTO have a fleet of ships (the green ones) on the left. We are observing two ICC ships moving in formation through space (red). They can't see us because we decided to spam ECCM. Ahem, anyways, both the ICC and UGTO respectively synchronize their clocks. At certain intervals, a light pulse is sent from one ship and sent to the other ship (the blue dot, probably shooting each other with pulse lasers taking down our ablative armor out of annoyance). We see that an entire interval of pulses (sending and receiving one) takes twice as long for the green ships as it does for the red. This is due to the movement of the ships through space. Note that as one second passes between the ICC ships, it sends a similar light signal to the UGTO ships. They are received by the UGTO ships in two-second intervals. This is because the pulses are emitted by the ICC ships at one frequency and are received by the UGTO ships at a lower frequency. Lastly, we see the roles switch to show that truly, everything depends on a frame of reference, and both UGTO and ICC can view themselves in a non-moving reference point.
So that’s all fine and dandy, but that about the effects of causality? Lets look at this:
this is a light cone: 
Say you self-destruct your ship (because like, 12 kluth Ganglias just uncloaked on your face). This would be an event that occurs at point A on a time-space reference grid. Bob, in a scout, is hanging out near you in space, and in a small amount of time he registers the information from your unfortunate event at point B. Unfortunately, Tbone, who is hanging out way far away from you, cannot register the event from happening because there hasn't been sufficient time for the information to propagate outward away from the event point. And thus Tbone is unaware of the dire situation when a fleet of like 3,000 Kluth frigs also uncloak and own him. Thus the cone, is the propagation of light (or information) away from a time-space event. Any point within the cone is within sufficient range to receive the information. The boundary of the cone is then defined by c. If you still aren't getting it, think of it like this. You throw a rock in a pond, the wave is a form of information from the event of the rock hitting the water. As time goes on, the wave moves outward, affecting a larger and larger area of the pond. Same concept. Ergo, there can be no causal connection between A and C due to the speed of light.
If you have more questions, by all means let me know!
D. Lastly, yes it is theoretically possible to break the FTL barrier. And yes, it does involve a "warp theory." First, it should be stated that there is no theoretical way to simply push a ship by conventional means past c. The reason is because as you move nearer and nearer to c the amount of fuel required to push the mass faster rises exponentially. But there are ways around the limit. They involve "warping" the fabric of space-time. This would create a "bubble" in which the inside and outside of the bubble both exist in "normal" space-time. The bubble could then travel at whatever speed it prefers, since everything within the bubble would be stationary and would not violate the FTL law. This is called a slipstream engine or "warp" engine, as they both propose something to the same desired effect.
The major application problem of this is there exists no materials in which to sufficiently warp time-space to any significant effect. Also, the bubble-field also needs to have a way to be constrained within a certain dimension, as to not affect the passengers within or too much space outside the bubble. I suppose this is the warp-field effect as well.
Although it may seem like science fiction, there are definitely steps being taken to at least discover the materials. One step is the Large Hadron Collider being brought online at CERN. This is the largest machine on the face of the planet. Its goal is to discover the sub-atomic particle responsible for "defining" the mass of an object, known as the Higgs Boson. In the future, it will be through manipulation of these exotic particles that will give rise to all these fantastic ideas that we have.
Whew, ok, let me know if you want to talk about more.
[ This Message was edited by: Doubly Assasinated Ramiusaur on 2005-10-29 17:32 ]
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c0ld
Midshipman
Joined: June 24, 2003
Posts: 342
From: UK
| Posted: 2005-10-30 01:56
http://www.physicsforums.com/ - Maths Tutorials or Physics Napster
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c0ld
Midshipman
Joined: June 24, 2003
Posts: 342
From: UK
| Posted: 2005-10-30 02:12
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/
http://www.mathpages.com/home/
http://front.math.ucdavis.edu// (ok, not exactly entry-level)
http://www.spacetimetravel.org/
[ This Message was edited by: c0ldfury on 2005-10-30 02:59 ]
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Mad Bum
Grand Admiral
ExtraTerrestrial Space Bums
Joined: March 06, 2004
Posts: 171
| Posted: 2005-10-30 02:42
at present im doing a degree in physics distance learning.
now i know who to come to if im stuck
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kenetiks
Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: November 21, 2001
Posts: 1130
From: Bandcamp
| Posted: 2005-10-30 20:05
So let me get this straight, as you seemed to have confirmed what I already thought, however the concensus seems to be against you at some point.
Instead of dealing with perplexing cones of light, etc. Lets do super simple.
1: According to what I've been reading, the closer you approach to c the more time dialation. And I do mean by that, that time actually does alter. Example, I leave earth at 3c, my twin brother stays behind. I return some years later and behold that I am younger than he.
2: According to your explanation, actual temporal distortions do not occur. The clock example is a prime one. If I left earth at c staring at a clock. The clock hands would never move. This is due to the information from the reflected light moving at the same speed as me.
Now on that second part, while it would seem that time has come to a complete halt on earth, it actually has not. It is only I perceive that no new information has reached me. Time has not really stopped for me or for earth, it is only what my eyes percieve.
Now I put you to the question. Which is the correct answer?
The reason I ask is simple. Although I do not grasp the far reaching implications of either field of relativity, I see no evidense of actually skewing of time. I can find no reasonable explanation of peoples understanding of the theories. Everyone is seems is interpretting the theory differently...
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Ramius
Fleet Admiral
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Joined: January 12, 2002
Posts: 894
From: Ramius
| Posted: 2005-10-30 23:30
Einstein was merely considering the possibilty of what happens under that situation. As for what question you want to know is right, well I'm sorry if I didn't state it clear enough, but time dilation does occur. There is no denying it.
Everything what I talked about ties together. Time is information, information is tied to the speed of light. Time is affected by velocity due to the speed of light when viewed in different reference frames.
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