OT: System Clock Loses Hour

[Possum]

douglas said:
Your reference frame. To do meaningful calculations in any situation where relativity has a significant impact you will at some point simply have to arbitrarily define what is at rest. You can choose absolutely anything you want, it will all work out correctly regardless, but you have to pick something.

Somewhere, the shade of Herr Doktor Werner Karl Heisenberg is laughing heartily

[AngleWyrm]

How about a squirrel busily gathering nuts? I'm at rest relative to that.

Energy of squirrel = M*** of nuts times Chewing velocity. Squared.

Cause everyone should have a square meal.

narf poit chez BOOM said:
One thing I've wondered is, if mass is partially relative to the speed of light, what is the speed of light relative to?

That'll probably come up again with lots of jargon in it, if/when we break the light-speed barrier.

"Just cause it got from here to there and back before light did, doesn't mean it was actually travelling faster than light. Relative to itself, the photons experienced phase shifting dopplar blahzidy blah effects, so really it's not going faster. Einstein be praised!"

[se5a]

that question always confused me too narf.

[AngleWyrm]

If mass and energy are the same thing, what happens when I move my coffee cup from one side of the table to the other?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Ok, so then, what's the difference between the speed of light here and at jupiter?

Remember, the planet Earth and the planet Jupiter are moving at different speeds in different directions.

Now think about that some.

[douglas]

Zero. The speed of light relative to Earth in a reference frame where Earth is at rest is exactly the same as the speed of light relative to Jupiter in a reference frame where Jupiter is at rest. This simple fact is the basis of most or all of the theory of relativity.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I might point out that earth and jupiter are not at rest relative to each other.

Nor am I contradicting you.

It just seems to have some interesting implications.

[se5a]

nor is the whole system at rest eaither...

[Fyron]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
I might point out that earth and jupiter are not at rest relative to each other.

Which doesn't matter when you aren't comparing Earth and Jupiter.


Why are we talking about this in a windows issue thread, again?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

...I dunno.

Fyron...If the speed of light is relative to the nearest large body...Think about it.