A Quote by Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain



Telescopes are in some ways like time machines...
They reveal galaxies so far away that their light has taken billions of years to reach us. We in astronomy have an advantage in studying the universe, in that we can actually see the past. We owe our existence to stars, because they make the atoms of which we are formed. So if you are romantic you can say we are literally starstuff. If you're less romantic you can say we're the nuclear waste from the fuel that makes stars shine. We've made so many advances in our understanding. A few centuries ago, the pioneer navigators learnt the size and shape of our Earth, and the layout of the continents. We are now just learning the dimensions and ingredients of our entire cosmoc, and can at last make some sense of our cosmic habitat.



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Saturday, May 1, 2010

An attempt to understand the "Theory of Relativity"

I found this theory very interesting. This was developed by the great "Einstein". While I was reading about it and was trying to understand it... it all sounded very unnatural(if you would!).

Example of the theory:

Assume that you(A) are sitting in car A traveling at 500 miles/hr and one of your friend(B) is in Car B traveling at 1000 miles/hr and another friend(C) is on the ground stationary. Also assume that a light beam passes you all at that instance.

Theory of relativity states that

With respect to C, A is traveling at 500 miles/hr
With respect to C, B is traveling at 1000miles/hr
With respect to C, C is tarveling at 0 miles/hr

With respect to A, C is traveling at 500 miles/hr
With respect to A, B is traveling at 500 miles/hr
With respect to A, A is traveling at 0 miles/hr

With respect to B, A is traveling at 500 miles/hr
With respect to B, C is traveling at 1000 miles/hr
With respect to B, B is traveling at 0 miles/hr

All the above is absolutely fine. Here comes the actual part. It gets a little complex when light is involved
We assume that a beam of light passes everybody at the very same instant. Let us see the observation of each of A, B and C...

With respect to A, light is traveling at c(the speed of light)
With respect to B, light is traveling at c(the speed of light)
With respect to C, light is traveling at c(the speed of light)

This means that the speed of light as observed by A, B and C is always c(the speed of light) irrespective of whether or not the person is stationary or not. This has been very well depicted in this you tube video.

A video explaining the theory of relativity

The assumption here is the relative velocity of the speed of light in vacuum is constant and what varies is the time. Time??? Ok THAT right there blows my mind off. The more that you get close to the speed of light the slower the time moves. I do not want to disagree with Einstein or something... but something looks fishy here. At this point I refuse to agree that the speed of light is constant and that the variant is "time".

more on this latter..

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