No they don't. Sort of. It's complicated.

I don't know about neutrinos, but I'm fairly certain they don't travel faster than light. There was an experiment a few years back that seemed to suggest they did, but as far as I know it is now thought to have been an error. It did make for an interesting paradox - I'm told the experiment was only possible due to very accurate GPS, which of course relies very heavily on both general and special relativity. The ftl result undermined their own methodology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor#Science_and_the_scientific_method

"In science, Occam's Razor is used as a heuristic (rule of thumb) to guide scientists in the development of theoretical models rather than as an arbiter between published models.[8][9] In physics, parsimony was an important heuristic in the formulation of special relativity by Albert Einstein,[36][37] the development and application of the principle of least action by Pierre Louis Maupertuis and Leonhard Euler,[38] and the development of quantum mechanics by Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg and Louis de Broglie.[9][39] In chemistry, Occam's Razor is often an important heuristic when developing a model of a reaction mechanism.[40][41]"

You are pointing the finger and saying I am ignorant yet you dismiss Occams razor in ignorance of its application to the scientific method. According to the principle of parsimony I do have an argument but it appears you can't be bothered to consider what I am saying. This is an intellectual laziness which seems to typify our culture today. It is an apathetic reasoning process that sees everything through the lens of stereotypes and generalities. If I am wrong about that I will happily admit it, and you still have ample opportunity to establish otherwise.

I'm Atheist for the record, I was ONCE Mormon, nearly 28 years ago! That is what shiny feels so compelled to mention.

Yes, I MAY mention it in what I write, but he ALWAYS writes this back to me and it is this that makes me SO angry, "I'm sorry, you were a Mormon, the Mormon religion is a cult, I'm sorry you belonged to a cult; you can't understand a Christian God because you belonged to a Cult, *I'll tell him an unrelated comment*, well that may have had to do with your Mormon upbringing, etc...

And it goes on and on in that type of vein and I'm sure others have had their fair share of these types of attacks to discredit them. Because, it really is to hard to go after the core facts or logic, they are so conclusive it's scary to some. So shiny has finally made me *ignore him, I will no longer hear what he has to say to me or this community as i think it's being abused. Even after what he said to me, he continued to ask ridiculous questions some of which I ALREADY ANSWERED IN MY LONG-POST! If you don't understand general and special relativity don't keep talking like you do! Read up on it and come back! There is a very good reason why changing the speed of light won't change the value of the age of the Universe... Go find out in the first place what makes the Universe the age it is, it has NOTHING to do with the speed of light, only the state of the energy of the photons we see returning to us.

If you changed the speed of light to something else like 10 ft/s/s then things of course would look awfully weird, but how a human measures "one second" is an imaginary concept, but beyond that due to relativity energy would be conserved, we would move FAR slower and we would still be literally interacting with each other at the same "framerate" we do right now. you could say that there is something special about our view of time as it is, but everything we've tested for shows time to be a imaginary concept. It all revolves around the speed of light, literally. It may be the only thing that determines how fast we are "using" time, if we were close to the speed of light stars would begin to live their lives FAR faster than normal, BUT you will always see one second as that.

So changing the speed of light is rather pointless, again I've made this case, to hopefully explain some of general and special relativity's little quandaries. Once again, light always travels the same speed in the same frame of reference (including its mediums). THIS has to do with CONSERVATION of energy, it is due to the law of thermodynamics, and you can take it farther than even this as well! People responding are coming off as ones that do not know much of what they are saying, maybe I've screwed up a sentence or two, I may admit (I didn't proofread and won't, I'm doing this fast). I hope that this is sufficient.

#shinyblurry I'm sorry I blew up, but you should NEVER use people's old life as a way to attempt to disarm them of their ability to argue. Atheism is to me "SOMETHING", AS MUCH as is the end of a pencil eraser: I've erased my belief in God and it is gone; I may be Atheist in wording BUT I'm not an atheist in any form or manner with BELIEFS, CONVICTION, POWER, HOLDINGS, JUDGMENT, or THOUGHT! IT'S a damned word! Nothing more.

Two as for being Mormon, sure I might agree with you in many respects about what it is and WHAT it isn't, but I might also agree yours IS nothing but the same. DO NOT think that this is because I'm an "Atheist" holding this against you. This is a MAN holding it against YOU! Religion has it's own shames to answer for in every color and theater.

And now I'm done.

In reply to this comment by dannym3141:
That blurry guy is a complete cunt. Don't care what religion you are, you discuss things with an open mind and try to see the other's point of view rather than seeing them as an opponent. I'd be said if you stopped providing your input. Ignoring him is a solution - a LOT of people do.


Thanks for your response I'll think on it.

The other thing that usually drives me insane is that he'll ask questions about something I've JUST answered! BUT, his literal lack of knowledge (in this case general relativity and special relativity) is making him spout buffoon and sadly very uninformed statements or opinions, often aimed at me and my previous post (well-informed and standard--backed up with testing and experimentation); which as I said is hilarious as I already answered it in that post "right above" and he can't read between the lines to see that the answer is sitting the for all to see, he just doesn't understand the answer, nor do I think he ever will see it very soon to be VERY fair and blunt. His main issue is with telling himself the truth in the first place and he can't yet do that with simple children's stories--not to be a snob or complete snide remark, but it is merely a fact that he will not accept the truth--faith and platitudes are far more important to him in his life right now than are being able to build:

An arena that can fit 100,000 people at night and day with the top open and closed; elevators, cashiers, electricity, Wi-Fi, air-conditioning, heating, sound, seating, walk-paths and stairs, vendors--food and accessories, security, camera & video, HDTV and a HD-JUMBOTRON, housing for teams and workers/staff, office space, etc, etc, etc... Places that are amazing to behold in their construction and if you're part of the management of the construction at any level or you have to be THE manager that keeps the building going once it's done you will find out very soon that a lot of what he says is utter rubbish; especially if you are the engineer that designed this Behemoth with every life in mind so that they would NOT be die to some kind of mental lapse; this is a job (like no other really) that has a HUGE amount of pressure on it and ALL THAT you have to rely on is: Physics (and that little brain of yours + a good calculator and drafting tools ). Does he have even any idea of how incredibly smart these people are, then he comes in and mocks Einstein like he's just this buffoon that of course NEVER thought of the COMPLETELY OBVIOUS stuff. He would NEVER do that; Einstein made people that build the greatest structures on Earth look like idiot children! I'm guessing that was skipped in seminary!? That little thing he thinks is so utterly useless to talk about in the grand scheme of things is so vitally important to everything he does EVERY day (and I really wonder if he knows HOW MUCH we depend on Science and it's discoveries--I mean your whole house would basically disappear without the inventions, it's a complete joke and I really do think he takes it for granted.

It's hard to EVER have a conversation with someone that loves their God SO MUCH they have their OWN God complex! I refuse to talk to a brick wall I'm not a damn mad man!

Anyway, thanks again.

BLAARGH!!! It just gets frustrating, especially when they don't seem to be trolls--so ignore it is.

If you seriously want to get a layman's targeted definition of special relativity, read "Why does E=MC²?, (And why should we care?)" by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. It'll change your life.

Special relativity wears a helmet.

Cringe...his comment about time is just plain wrong. He was really onto something when he said "time is not absolute," but then he makes the painful statement that the object moving near the speed of light experiences time more slowly. While it is true that the object experiences time in a frame that he is moving relative to differently, he will always experience time in his own frame in exactly the same way regardless of whether he is moving or not. That's the entire point of an "inertial frame" in special relativity - one result is that time always looks the same in his frame. It is times in other frames that he experiences differently.

Also (1) I agree with jwray - the color of the sky is related to the wavelength^4 term in the re-emission of electromagnetic radiation equations, and (2) don't get me started on the phenomenological lack of specificity in the overly broad comments about how we only see the world via electromagnetic waves/photons.

>> ^jwray:

He's wrong, too. The profile of wavelengths of sunlight that get scattered and transmitted by the atmposphere would be nearly the same regardless of the existence or nonexistence of humans (except for the effect of greenhouse gasses and other pollution). And the longest wavelength of visible light is red, not violet. Then he digresses into some really wrong woo-woo around 4:10. I'll downvote this guy for being ontologically incorrect.

E = MC^2 is not a comment on the ammount of energy or mass in the universe, it is the basis for general and special relativity, the grounds for which we understand literally everything we know about the universe today.

What shit is this 'Dr.' smoking? I want some of it.

Stephen Hawking. Theres no 'S' in that. He didnt do SHIT with giving us string theory either, hes all about black holes you crazy CRAZY bitch....

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've been listening to Wolfson's lectures titled "Modern Physics for Non Scientists" and he explains this well. This is exactly what special relativity explains! I downloaded it from demonoid. I can send you an invite if you want.

It's also part of the failed Michelson-Morley experiment. They knew that light moved at a constant speed. They thought there was a fixed frame of reference that light moved through. They thought that light was a wave moving through the universal aether. They thought that by measuring the speed of light in different directions and at different times of the year, they'd see differences. It failed. They measured the same speed of light in all directions at all times of the year!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment

Special relativity explained the failed experiment. Special relativity says that all physics are the same for bodies moving in uniform motion. As long as you're moving at a constant speed, you'll always measure light as the same speed! There is no fixed universal frame of reference. Nothing can be said to be at rest, or moving. You can only say something is moving "relative" to some other object. This leads to all sorts of weird things like time dilation and length contraction. Read up on it.

In reply to this comment by Drax:
When the Klingon Bird of Prey decloaked I was like, OMG!!!1!

But seriously, this does a great job at explaining the time / space relation. It still doesn't touch on one spot I've been trying to wrap my monkey brain around for some time.

Light travels at a set speed, nothing can travel faster then this speed. It's like a big universal speed limit. That should mean that if I'm traveling on a magical cosmic space train that's traveling in a straight line at.. lets say 500,000 mph, if I where to shine a flash light in the direction I'm traveling then the light emitting from that flashlight should travel (relative to me) at the speed of light minus 500,000 mph. Otherwise the light would be traveling faster then the speed of light to someone not onboard the magical cosmic space train.

This would also imply that there is a universal speed of 0. Which would mean we could measure our planet's speed through the universe to this speed of 0 by shining beams of light in various directions from our planet and measure how long each beam takes to reach certain distances (satellites positioned in front of each beam or something). After all our galaxy is moving through space, we're spinning in the arm of this galaxy, we're orbiting a sun.. all of these -should- factor in to how fast each of one is -actually- moving, right?

This big brainy friend of a friend told me once, no.. that's not how it works. And I suspect as much, unfortunately he wouldn't explain further. So I don't understand the workings of how there can be a set speed at which light travels and nothing can ever exceed this speed, when there's no specific speed of Zero to start accelerating from. Otherwise some things could very well be traveling faster then the speed of light relative to other things.

What, did the Dag eat your harddrive?

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
Jesus, you're killing me, teach. Can I get an extension on my paper?

In reply to this comment by srd:
Hmm, ok. No stutter with other apps means that the sound subsystem is basically ok, so it isn't a driver or a hardware issue.

Flash under Linux has always been treated a bit as a lead paint chip eating "special" relative by adobe, so things flash tend to run less smoothly anyway. Thing's I've observed:
Flash is a lot more CPU intensive under linux than under windows; they seem to have implemented especially the flash movie decoding and rendering rather inefficiently. But basic CPU speed shouldn't be a problem in your case, since you have a brand new dual core machine. My EEEBox croaks on HD videos

Flash movies aren't streamed from memory, they're first saved in /tmp, then played back from there once enough is buffered there. This means you have several things going on simultaneously: the flash stream coming in from the network, the flash stream being written to disk, the flash stream being read from disk and finally the decoding and rendering. The last part should be ok. Getting the flash via the network should be OK too, since I'm guessing you can tell the difference between stutter and repeated buffering pauses

So, what we have left is (barring other CPU tasks running that you didn't tell me about): the harddisk. This meshes somewhat with your observations that the problems get worse if lots of movement takes place: the bitrate of the video goes up and more data needs to be read from the disk and processed by the CPUs.

So things you could check (Homework Paintchipboy!): is there another harddisk intensive programm running (to verify my diagnosis: start up a big program like staroffice or the gimp when you're playing a video. Does stutter get worse?)? Is the partition your /tmp directory is on full? Is the harddisk being addressed in UDMA mode (sudo apt-get install hdparm; sudo hdparm /dev/sda - sorry this is keyboard work Fire up 'top' in a console. In the third row from the top you'll see a line of CPU stats. The %wa entry would be interesting while you're experiencing stutter. That's the time the CPU waits for requested data from a storage medium aka Wait Time. You can quit top by pressing 'q'.

I'm guessing your harddisk is basically ok and not damaged because you'd have tons of other problems then.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
Sorry it took so long to get back to you - been kind of busy. Anyway I haven't noticed the problem with other apps. I've played other audio and video files, and they all seem to wotk fine. It's just Flash video that's the problem. It gets worse with with HD flash. If the images are relatively static there's no problem, but if there's a lot of motion then stuttering occurs.

In reply to this comment by srd:
Are you experiencing stutter with other apps? Playing mp3s for e.g.

Jesus, you're killing me, teach. Can I get an extension on my paper?

In reply to this comment by srd:
Hmm, ok. No stutter with other apps means that the sound subsystem is basically ok, so it isn't a driver or a hardware issue.

Flash under Linux has always been treated a bit as a lead paint chip eating "special" relative by adobe, so things flash tend to run less smoothly anyway. Thing's I've observed:
Flash is a lot more CPU intensive under linux than under windows; they seem to have implemented especially the flash movie decoding and rendering rather inefficiently. But basic CPU speed shouldn't be a problem in your case, since you have a brand new dual core machine. My EEEBox croaks on HD videos

Flash movies aren't streamed from memory, they're first saved in /tmp, then played back from there once enough is buffered there. This means you have several things going on simultaneously: the flash stream coming in from the network, the flash stream being written to disk, the flash stream being read from disk and finally the decoding and rendering. The last part should be ok. Getting the flash via the network should be OK too, since I'm guessing you can tell the difference between stutter and repeated buffering pauses

So, what we have left is (barring other CPU tasks running that you didn't tell me about): the harddisk. This meshes somewhat with your observations that the problems get worse if lots of movement takes place: the bitrate of the video goes up and more data needs to be read from the disk and processed by the CPUs.

So things you could check (Homework Paintchipboy!): is there another harddisk intensive programm running (to verify my diagnosis: start up a big program like staroffice or the gimp when you're playing a video. Does stutter get worse?)? Is the partition your /tmp directory is on full? Is the harddisk being addressed in UDMA mode (sudo apt-get install hdparm; sudo hdparm /dev/sda - sorry this is keyboard work Fire up 'top' in a console. In the third row from the top you'll see a line of CPU stats. The %wa entry would be interesting while you're experiencing stutter. That's the time the CPU waits for requested data from a storage medium aka Wait Time. You can quit top by pressing 'q'.

I'm guessing your harddisk is basically ok and not damaged because you'd have tons of other problems then.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
Sorry it took so long to get back to you - been kind of busy. Anyway I haven't noticed the problem with other apps. I've played other audio and video files, and they all seem to wotk fine. It's just Flash video that's the problem. It gets worse with with HD flash. If the images are relatively static there's no problem, but if there's a lot of motion then stuttering occurs.

In reply to this comment by srd:
Are you experiencing stutter with other apps? Playing mp3s for e.g.

Hmm, ok. No stutter with other apps means that the sound subsystem is basically ok, so it isn't a driver or a hardware issue.

Flash under Linux has always been treated a bit as a lead paint chip eating "special" relative by adobe, so things flash tend to run less smoothly anyway. Thing's I've observed:
Flash is a lot more CPU intensive under linux than under windows; they seem to have implemented especially the flash movie decoding and rendering rather inefficiently. But basic CPU speed shouldn't be a problem in your case, since you have a brand new dual core machine. My EEEBox croaks on HD videos

Flash movies aren't streamed from memory, they're first saved in /tmp, then played back from there once enough is buffered there. This means you have several things going on simultaneously: the flash stream coming in from the network, the flash stream being written to disk, the flash stream being read from disk and finally the decoding and rendering. The last part should be ok. Getting the flash via the network should be OK too, since I'm guessing you can tell the difference between stutter and repeated buffering pauses

So, what we have left is (barring other CPU tasks running that you didn't tell me about): the harddisk. This meshes somewhat with your observations that the problems get worse if lots of movement takes place: the bitrate of the video goes up and more data needs to be read from the disk and processed by the CPUs.

So things you could check (Homework Paintchipboy!): is there another harddisk intensive programm running (to verify my diagnosis: start up a big program like staroffice or the gimp when you're playing a video. Does stutter get worse?)? Is the partition your /tmp directory is on full? Is the harddisk being addressed in UDMA mode (sudo apt-get install hdparm; sudo hdparm /dev/sda - sorry this is keyboard work Fire up 'top' in a console. In the third row from the top you'll see a line of CPU stats. The %wa entry would be interesting while you're experiencing stutter. That's the time the CPU waits for requested data from a storage medium aka Wait Time. You can quit top by pressing 'q'.

I'm guessing your harddisk is basically ok and not damaged because you'd have tons of other problems then.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
Sorry it took so long to get back to you - been kind of busy. Anyway I haven't noticed the problem with other apps. I've played other audio and video files, and they all seem to wotk fine. It's just Flash video that's the problem. It gets worse with with HD flash. If the images are relatively static there's no problem, but if there's a lot of motion then stuttering occurs.

In reply to this comment by srd:
Are you experiencing stutter with other apps? Playing mp3s for e.g.

Light is both a particle and a wave. It seems confusing to average Joe, and it may seem to be a paradox, but the definition of "paradox" is: An assertion that is essentially self-contradictory, though based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises. A paradox is not a "circular statement." That is something entirely different. That may be what you are thinking of when you think "paradox." When I was studying the quantum mechanics section of physical chemistry class, I honestly thought I would go crazy. It is NOT easily graspable. The equations that Schrodinger used and others like him used are insanely complicated. In the end, I, like everyone else, forgot all the equations and only remembered the concepts and the sheer TERROR of it all. If anyone here chooses to pursue it in curiosity, I recommend keeping to the general terms and avoiding the math... unless you're a genius or some sort of servant, that is.

Anyway, relativity is easy to buy and it has been proven. In brief, they synchronized an atomic clock "stationary" on the ground (that is, it was the "stationary" frame of reference for the experiment) and an atomic clock on a high-speed jet that proceeded to fly VERY fast around the world and such. At the end of the experiment the clock on the jet was BEHIND the one on the ground. There were significant and quality controls in place that allow us to conclude that time itself was moving at a relatively slower rate on the jet than it was on the ground. Light is related to both velocity and "length" of space. A GREAT explanation can be easily found on Wikipedia.

The mind-boggling part of this is that if you are on the top of a high mountain, you are experiencing time at a slower rate than those in a valley. Soooo, if you wanna life a millionth of a second longer than the Jones's in the valley, get thee to a mountain.

Also of note, several authors have used special relativity as a key part in their works, see the "Ender's Game" series (A LEGENDARY CLASSIC) in which Ender et.al. sometimes jets off into space at HUGE speeds in order to let a HUGE amount of time pass before he returns.

I absolutely love special relativity, but it really complicates everything. Newton may have been right about a number of things, but not on a quantum level. And not in reality in fact. Chaos theory is the new Newtonian theory. Now THAT is fun stuff.

In brief? Chaos Theory is the idea that in order for one to understand an event in REALITY, one must include EVERY SINGLE VARIABLE in addition to Newtonian physical calculation. That means: the mass of the object, the wind, the air resistance, the chemical make-up of the air at that moment and throughout the experiment, the particulate matter in the air, the light amount and angle, the gravity, the velocity relative to the many gravity sources, the many gravity sources, the human error, the sensor error, and on and on and on. This is of basically impossible since it would change constantly... in other words, it would change so fast that you would not be able to isolate a single moment with everything stable. mwahahaha fun.

And all this makes Rougy's citation absolutely relevant: "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

Good quote, dude.

>> ^omnistegan:
Then what is the reference point for speed in space? For speed on Earth we can use the surface of the Earth as a reference point for speed, and in our own solar system we can use the Sun, but at what speed is the Sun moving? And in reference to what? And what does that make of the speed and direction of motion of the Earth? And us? So are we really moving? or is everything moving around us in reference to our own perception?



That has 2 answers really, a metaphysical one and a physical one.

First, let us use the physical reality in which we experience. The most modern explanation of motion is the law of relativity. The law of relativity states that each observer has a valid claim in saying the they are moving and the object in reference is staying still. So in other words. The person on the train has just a valid assertion that the train is moving and the man is staying still, as the man on the ground saying he is moving and the train is standing still. In other words, it is your observation that is true for you, and it is their observation that is true to them. Both are valid claims. One is not righter than the other.

This realization was huge for science. To quote wikipidia on the matter:

“Special relativity overthrows Newtonian notions of absolute space and time by stating that time and space are perceived differently by observers in different states of motion. “

So, in essence, there is no such idea in relativity as what is “really” moving or not moving. Everything is happening as you experience it in your own frame of reference! Mind blowing I know. This is what is known as special relativity however, general relativity has to deal with gravity and acceleration which complicate matters greatly because of time dilation and space time curvature.

Now, metaphysically speaking space and time might not be real things in and of themselves. They might be complete fabrications of the mind. There is no necessity for time to exist, the universe could exist very much like a formula which is timeless and without space. In other words, the idea of time, space, motion, and all these fundamental things could really just be a subject of the mind and not of the universe itself. I personally believe that there is not objective time, space, or motion. These are all subjects of the mind and not of the universe itself. I think of the universe as a formula and those ideas of time and space and motion only occur inside the formula; that huge equation of everything we know.

So in essence, my metaphysical understanding of the universe actually gives way to special relativity. I would say the truth of what you observe is an unshakable experience. In other words, no one can say that you didn't experience something the way that you experience it. But that experiences in and of itself doesn't point to any underlying truth of how the universe actually works. In other words, your experience with the stuff of the universe is filtered through your mind and changed from the stuff it actually is to the stuff your brain understands; it is no longer the actual but the interpreted. We have no subjective way to show any of the stuff we experience actually maps onto the actual, it just isn't possible.

I agree with Ryjkyj - the question is not whether or not this kind of crap fits both special relativity and the quantum standard model, the REAL question is - Is this in the bible?

If the answer is no, then there is no truth to it.

(Upvote)