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Sixty Symbols - Mirages, the how and why.

reiwan says...

@Tymbrwulf

I hope this makes sense, im more of a visual person, so writing it out might sound confusing...

Imagine theres individual photons of light reflecting off of the car that is giving you the information of what the car looks like. Now recall the part in the video about the angle of incidence. Parts of the car that are closer to the ground are going to reach their angle of incidence closer to the car (from where you are standing), while higher parts of the car are going to reach this point closer to you from where you are standing. So now if you imagine yourself standing there, looking at the mirage, the image will appear upside down because the varying angles of incidence "flips" the image.

Sixty Symbols - Mirages, the how and why.

reiwan says...

Both the words reflecting and mirror are somewhat misleading when describing the physics behind mirages because neither of which are actually involved with what is going on. The light is actually bending because its following the path of least resistance (through the hotter air above the road). But its described as if it is "reflecting from a mirror" because that is something that people are familiar with, but in essence is really a lie.

>> ^Tymbrwulf:

Why does it act like a mirror when it is not reflecting off of anything?

Sixty Symbols: Dark Matter

reiwan says...

I was not referring to THE standard model. I said "its highly unlikely that a fundamental understanding of something is flawed because these standard models work very well with everything else." As in - What we understand of our models of general relativity, quantum mechanics, and so on. Through simulations and mathematics Dark Matter explains the phenomenons that we're observing, that cant be explained by what we currently directly understand of the world around us. The second part of all of this is to find it, or come up with another theory that explains this phenomenon. This all falls under the disciplines contained in Theoretical Physics.

Simply saying that it doesnt exist because your current understanding doesnt work in explaining everything is a bit close minded. There's a lot of things we dont understand, and science tries to explain it the best we can, with what we know. And when youre working in the cutting edge of theoretical physics, its trial and error.

Sixty Symbols: Dark Matter

reiwan says...

Yes.

I all seriousness though, Its pretty safe to say we have a pretty good idea of how a lot of things work in physics, astronomy, cosmolgy, etc... (and a lot we dont.) However dark energy / matter is still is a theory. An explanation of something we haven't observed directly but something indirectly that we don't understand (like the orbit of stars in a galaxy) and it is a possible explanation of what we are seeing. Its not uncommon for science to put forth a theory or hypothesis of something that is proven in mathematics before its actually discovered or observed. Black holes being the most well known case of this. It was first proposed in 1783 by Henry Cavendish that there are stars so massive that light could not escape. This is different then what we know what black holes are today, but the concept is the same.

Also, its highly unlikely that a fundamental understanding of something is flawed because these standard models work very well with everything else. Its quite possible that the reason this stuff isnt visible is because it exists in a higher dimension than the 4 that we perceive. Something that gets into string theory.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

I am alone on this?

Sixty Symbols: Dark Matter

Sixty Symbols: Sir Isaac Newton

campionidelmondo (Member Profile)

Sixty Symbols - Mirages, the how and why.

Sixty Symbols - Earth's Radius (and exoplanets)

Sixty Symbols - Earth's Radius (and exoplanets)

Sixty Symbols: Explaining temp. (kelvin) and laser cooling

Sixty Symbols: Explaining temp. (kelvin) and laser cooling

arvana (Member Profile)

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