c
 

why is the speed of light independent of the speed of the observer and independent of the speed of the thing that emits the light?

Because. Just because.

Exactly!

Did your 5 year old ask you that?

"What is your favorite color"?

"Blue.....no, yel...."

Because all of the number crunching doesn't work if the speed of light is variable.

JR

The measured speed of light is relative to it's movement in the time/space continuum.

If we were driving our 911's at the speed of light, and then turned on our headlights.....

Thank you for responding after the OT equivalent of Technical's "What color should I paint my wheels" chimed in.

Can you expand on explaining the time/space continuum? Why do you think it's NECCESSARY that time runs at different rates depending on speed, and that mass increases as you go faster, and that the length of things decreases as you go faster (making these variables which, on the surface, seems completely antithetical to the human experience) all to preserve c being a wholly unique constant?

Two problems;

1) Travel at the speed of light requires "infinite" energy. Travel beyond the speed of light would require "infinite-plus" energy.

2) On the space/time continuum, travel at the speed of light would require no movement in the "time" axis. At the speed of light, time stands still. "Time" is an essential component of the measurement of relative speed.

A really elegant explanation of relativity and time dilation:

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And another on movement beyond the speed of light:

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Good stuff Moses....I'm impressed !!

There is no "Dopler" effect on light speed travel?

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

There is Doppler effect observable (i.e. "red-shifting" or "blue shifting") as entities move towards or away from one another at significant percentages of c.

Carl Sagan discussed what it might look like to travel very close to c in "Cosmos". The traveler would be viewed as highly red shifted when moving away from an observer and highly blue shifted when moving towards. The traveler would have a compressed field of vision (tunnel vision of sorts) due to their own light waves starting to pile up in front of them (similar to what happens with air as you approach the speed of sound).

I'll see if I can find a video of his brief explanation (it used an example of a guy on a scooter in the Italian countryside).

These are great. I'm off for the day, but somewhere between 5 and 6 minutes on the second video he says the Earth doesn't change its distance from the Sun due to the Law of Gravity. But since the sun is converting 4 million tons of matter per second into energy, the Earth would have to increase its distance from the Sun over time. I wonder what minimum mass the Sun would have to be to keep the Earth in orbit versus being pulled into the expansion of space.

As the sun's mass decreases the size of the earths orbit increases. At some point, the earth will be drawn to the gravitational field of a nearby heavier planetary mass and be drawn away from the present solar orbit completely.

I liked the videos, but the guy's voice is annoying as hell!

Hey! I narrated those vids... :mad:



KT :D

Funny... I was thinking the same thing. Not condescending, but like a 2nd grade teacher. Annoyingly melodic.