Physics a new dimension ?

[xenophon]

Best fiction book on relativity and lightspeed/time travel? - "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman. Explains it all in simple terms, and manages to be an allegory of the Vietnam War (mad, but true), as well as being a banging bit of action Sci-Fi

 

[Simster]

I thought Einstein was a dog ?

That probably explains why he was never able to discover a single law that encapsulates all other laws of physics. Too busy burying bones.

I think the particular genius you're both thinking of is actually SOCCERDOG, not Einstein.

Sorry, carry on.

 

[Hungry Joe]

Best fiction book on relativity and lightspeed/time travel? - "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman. Explains it all in simple terms, and manages to be an allegory of the Vietnam War (mad, but true), as well as being a banging bit of action Sci-Fi

Sounds good.

 

[Fef]

Puts me in mind of 'The Galaxy Song'...

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

Written by M Python.

 

[Trufflehound]

I thought Einstein was a dog ?

Einstein was not a handsome fellow
Nobody ever called him Al
He had a long moustache to pull on, it was yellow
I don't believe he ever had a gal

One thing he missed out in his theory
Of time 'n' space 'n' relativity
Is something that makes it very clear he
Was never gonna score like you 'n' me

 

[xenophon]

f*** Einstein's poodle, what about Schrödinger's Cat?

 

[xenophon]

Sounds good.

Try "Tau Zero" by Poul Anderson too, total head-fucker this one, same theme - light speed/relativity

 

[Nibble]

The problem when discussing this is that we will always only ever be able to think in terms of our own understanding of theory and knowledge.

If there was such a thing as aliens and they were travelling to our system they would likely be using techniques and technology far, far beyond our understanding or even our imagination.

Or space ladders.

 

[xenophon]

Well, they better had, because from what I hear they won't be able to get a bus up North Street

 

[vegster]

Best fiction book on relativity and lightspeed/time travel? - "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman. Explains it all in simple terms, and manages to be an allegory of the Vietnam War (mad, but true), as well as being a banging bit of action Sci-Fi

I commend your choice ! I'd love to see that one made in to a film !


I loved the way society would change while he " Jumped" is switch from hetero to homo. And the battle scenes would have rocked !

 

[Hungry Joe]

Or space ladders.

 

[beorhthelm]

Taking Occam's Razor to the problem of aliens etc, meaning that the simple explanation is almost always the most beleivable - there can be but two conclusions, the universe is truly empty apart from us, and is indifferent to our puny attempts at understanding it. Second, there is life out there, but it is f***ing astronomically far away, and will never have the time or the technology to check out an insignificant little piece of rock circling a red dawrf star.

there is another reasonable conclusion, that faster than light travel has been discovered and used to visit us. still far fetched that they'd bother to come here though.

 

[CHAPPERS]

The problem when discussing this is that we will always only ever be able to think in terms of our own understanding of theory and knowledge.

.

Correct.

 

[xenophon]

there is another reasonable conclusion, that faster than light travel has been discovered and used to visit us. still far fetched that they'd bother to come here though.

Yes. There is also the window of opportunity. We have reached a level of technology where we can build something like the Hubble telescope, it took us thousands of years of "civilisation", and set-backs like the Dark Ages, to get here.

In the last 100 years or so we've made huge leaps forward, but we've also been a whisker away from f***ing it up - nuclear catastrophe,world wars. Our next problem is f***ing up the biosphere with global warming, or there could be an ice-age around the corner - not many physics papers being written when your balls are brass monkeys 365 days of the year.

A boffin, whose name escapes me, worked out that the average lifetime of a civilisation anywhere in the universe is roughly 10,000 years (his equation was brilliant, and not as daft as it sounds). He factored in everything - war, natural disaster, death of host star - really good stuff.

So, his conclusion from all that is - civilisations like ours, or completely different - i.e. not even carbon-based - are needed for the technology of space-travel, if you're in a dark age you won't have the tools to explore space. The physics is the same throughout the known universe - as are the distances, speeds required. So, you're 7,000 years say, into civilized, technological advancement, building your light-speed craft then whooooom, a war breaks out and kills nearly everyone, or an asteroid twats you, etc, etc.

Some civilisations don't get past the equivalent of the internal combustion engine before they go tits up. So, the likelihood of aliens from faraway visiting us, while we're still here to receive them, gets even more remote than it already is. Say these aliens have the means to whip across the galaxy at warp speed, but they died out while the dinosaurs where on earth, they've gone. Or their home planet is still a swirl of space dust, and they will be ready to explore the universe ten billion years from now - our own sun will be dead and the earth gone by then. It all has to overlap with us being here, slim chance.

We are truly alone, whether we actually physically are or not. That's why we should embrace the here and now - watching the Albion fanatically for instance - because the chances of us actually being able to go along to Withers are so negligible, in the history of the cosmos, that anyhting else would be rude. Don't waste your life, it took a billion million-to-one chances for it to even exist.