Author Topic: Speed of Light: Relative?  (Read 9711 times)

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Offline jr2

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Speed of Light: Relative?
Umm, BTW, I was wondering, how fast does a beam of light/radio wave travel if fired forwards from an object moving quite fast?  (eg, .55c?)  Normal speed, or 1.55c?

Exactly at c, of course*. In every inertial frame, too. But let's not turn this into a science debate (unless Black Wolf agrees to that); you can ask that question in own thread and I'll provide more physics... ;7


*"of course" here can be derived from two physical principles; the first being the generally accepted assumption that laws of physics must be same to everyone regardless of their inertial co-ordinates, and the second being the fact that the speed of light is a constant at vacuum.

Those two things combined will produce the special theory of relativity, which states that light's vacuum speed is constant to all observers.

I don't get it.  If you jumped off of a spacecraft traveling at 40,000 mph, and your forward velocity was 5 mph, then your total velocity would be 40,005 mph.  Why is light different?

 

Offline Nuke

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
i dont think light knows what time is. even if you manage to get up to the speed of light it will still be traveling at the speed of light (because for you time is paused). its not that lights relative to you its that youre relative to time (and lighs not).
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Offline jr2

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
Oh... I meant the light beam itself.  Obviously, it travels at 1.00c  But, it is being fired forwards from a ship traveling at 0.55c  So how fast is the beam traveling, based on how long it will take to reach a predetermined destination?

 

Offline Nuke

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
the lights traveling at 1c. if it were a bullet with a muzzel velocity of 1000 m/s and youre traveling at 10000 m/s a second, that bullet will travel at 11000 m/s. but those rules dont apply to light. we like to think in terms of distance per time. but sence time means nothing to light, its always traveling at 1.
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Offline jr2

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
Hmm, why not?

EDIT: BTW, is e=mc2 a real math equation?  ie, sqrt(e/m)=c?

 

Offline Nuke

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
the absence of mass maybe

and thats the conversion of matter to energy
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Offline jr2

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
See my EDIT above... now how about this:

e/c2=m

 

Offline Nuke

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
and that would be conversion of energy to mass (the inverse of e=mc^2, assuming the math is right)
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Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
Okay.

The most basic thing we can assume about the universe is that the laws of nature are same to all observers, regardless of their state of motion.

The speed of light (actually speed of all electromagnetic wave motion) arises from the structure of empty space. More specifically, in Maxwell's equations it is shown that the speed of light depends only about the permeability and permittivity of the vacuum. Also, since there is no universal base co-ordinates to reference in a vacuum, that indeed means that everyone will observe the speed of light in vacuum to be constant, c, since vacuum itself will appear exactly the same to everyone passing through it - you can't reference to nothingness!

Now, when a situation like what you described occurs - an observer (A) sends a light beam (or a photon) forwards while moving at velocity v in relation to another observer (B) - we can from the previous deduction simply say that both observers will see that the photon moves at the constant speed of light, c. This is a fact, and all that follows has variable interpretations and requires a bit deeper analysis to understand.

Because there is a speed difference, yet both must observe the speed of light to be constant, we can deduct some interesting things. Mathematically, you can derive the so-called Lorenz-contractions for distance and time for both observers, based on the speed difference. It all gets a bit hairy when it's written with a computer so I won't bother to start with (I'll do a copy-paste later if it's necessary). The basic idea is that when relative velocity increases, the observers start seeing things different from each other. If both were stationary, they would see all distances similarly, and time would pass at similar rate for both observers. However, if there's a large speed difference between observers, the following (and some) happens:

-when a stationary observer observes a moving target which has a clock on it's surface, he will observe that the clock is running slower than his own clock. Note that this applies to both observers - they both see the other's time is running slower than their own. It is a bit difficult to explain, but there's no paradoxes there in the end.

-same applies to the length on the direction of velocity. A stationary observer will note that a fast-moving observers' one-metre long scale looks somewhat shorter. This can similarly be inverted, since both observers will consider themselves static observers and the other one to be on the move.


Now what happens when, say, there's a velocity difference of 0.5c between observers and the other sends a photon forwards?

Observer A will measure that in one second, the photon moves about 300,000 kilometres from it's starting point. In other words, typical velocity of light, c.

Observer B will measure the same speed for the photon, but now you need to remember that from A's point of view, B's measure sticks are shorter and seconds take longer. That means that when the observer A sees that B's clock has passed one second, about 300,000,000 of B's one-metre long measure sticks will fit between B and the photon. So A can see that B also measures the speed of light to be constant.


...I've never been especially good at explaining the theory of relativity. It all gets more clear once you derive the Lorenz-contractions a couple of times based on the proven assumption that every observer measures speed of light as constant. There are many ways to explain special relativity, but I prefer first explaining why light will appear to move at constant speed regardless of the speed you're moving at (in relation to other objects and observers) and then explaining a bit what it means and what the interpretations are.


Quote from: Nuke
the lights traveling at 1c. if it were a bullet with a muzzel velocity of 1000 m/s and youre traveling at 10000 m/s a second, that bullet will travel at 11000 m/s. but those rules dont apply to light. we like to think in terms of distance per time. but sence time means nothing to light, its always traveling at 1.

Actually, the relativistic addition of velocities can be applied to bullets as well. In such low speeds, however, the result would be something like 10999.99999999998 m/s so it doesn't really pay to calculate the difference... usually. But it's there nevertheless. Obviously, in shooter's reference frame the bullet would be moving at constant 1000 m/s assuming it's a vacuum. :cool:
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Offline Nuke

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
i wonder how hard it would be to program a game with relativity physics :D
as if newtonian was hard enough :D
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Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
Well at least online games wouldn't be so severely affected by lag... :lol:
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Offline Bobboau

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
a game using relativistic physics would be imposable for multi-player, because everyone would be in a different time scale.

the thing to remember about relativity is that space and time change as you move, time moves slower the faster you go.
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Offline Ghostavo

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
Quick, someone modify IW2 to have relativistic physics!  :nervous:
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Offline Bob-san

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
I'm sure you could program a game to have relative physics... it would be easier in turn-based games where, depending on movement speeds, that your "tick" (turn) is slightly faster or slower. I think it would be very hard for the game engine to be able to calculate relative physics upon all objects in the game and match them so it is actual gameplay. Never say it's impossible ever. It may not be possible now but that's saying nothing for years from now...

There's a picture floating around somewhere of a person showing off a "home computer" invisioned in the early 1950s, saying the tech to make it won't be available until at least 2003 (iirc). Well, we beat his entire thing by 1990, and then look at the computers from 4 years ago.
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Offline Nuke

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
maybe with a physx card... :nervous:
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Offline Bob-san

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
Those are actually junk. The PCI slot simply doesn't have the bandwidth to receive and send all the physics calculations required. Now what could do it is a card on a PCI-e x4/x8/x16 slot--there would be enough bandwidth to do it all. I would say a SLI/xFire config could probably do this quite efficently.

Here are all games using the Havok physics engine...
    * Age of Empires III
    * Age of Empires III: The Warchiefs
    * Alan Wake
    * Amped 3
    * Armed and Dangerous
    * Astro Boy
    * Auto Assault
    * Backyard Wrestling: Don't Try This at Home
    * Backyard Wrestling 2: There Goes The Neighborhood
    * Brute Force
    * Crackdown
    * Crash Nitro Kart
    * Company of Heroes
    * Condemned: Criminal Origins
    * Counter-Strike: Source
    * Darkwatch
    * Dawn of Mana
    * Dead Rising
    * Destroy All Humans!
    * Destroy All Humans! 2
    * Deus Ex: Invisible War
    * The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
    * Evil Dead: Regeneration
    * Fable 2
    * F.E.A.R.
    * Freelancer
    * From Russia with Love
    * Full Spectrum Warrior
    * Half-Life 2
    * Halo 2
    * Just Cause
    * The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar
    * The Matrix: Path of Neo
    * Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
    * Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault
    * Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction
    * The Outfit
    * Painkiller
    * Pariah
    * Perfect Dark Zero
    * Pitfall: The Lost Expedition
    * Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy
    * Red Steel
    * The Punisher
    * Robot Arena 2: Design and Destroy
    * Robotech: Invasion
    * Saints Row
    * Second Life
    * Sonic Heroes
    * Sonic the Hedgehog (2006 next-generation game)
    * Starsky and Hutch
    * SWAT 4
    * Thief: Deadly Shadows
    * Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2
    * Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
    * Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
    * Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent
    * Torque: Savage Roads
    * Tribes: Vengeance
    * Uru: Ages Beyond Myst
    * WWE Crush Hour

And here are PhysX:
    * Auto Assault (patch)
    * Bet on Soldier: Blood Sport
    * Bet on Soldier: Blood Of Sahara
    * CellFactor: Revolution
    * City of Heroes/City of Villains (patch)
    * Dark Physics (Consumer Development Tool)
    * Gothic 3
    * Gunship Apocalypse
    * Kuma\War 2
    * History Channel's ShootOut! The Game
    * Infernal
    * Joint Task Force
    * RoboBlitz
    * Stoked Rider: Alaska Alien
    * Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
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Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
Detroy all humans :wtf:  Seems a waste of processor power if you ask me :doubt:
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Offline Bobboau

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
ok, look it's as simple as this, how are you going to simulate a time scale for person A which is 10000 times faster than person B were all events in both person A and person B's locality seem to be moveing at the same rate? untill you have the ability to actualy modify time, or at the very least te perception of it, it will be imposable to make a game engine with relitivistic physics and more than one player. none of you have any idea how complex or simple relitivistic calculations are, you are just assumeing they are the most mind blowingly hard to calculate things ever because you don't know anything about them, in reality most of the math in relitivity is only slightly more computationaly expensive than a very complete newtonian model.
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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
Should it really matter when most space shooter ships travel at only a few percent of c, at most? A relativistic sim of FreeSpace, for example, wouldn't matter for ships going at 80 m/s. Even in WC with speeds of (supposedly) 500+ km/s, that isn't very fast relative to c.

 

Offline jr2

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Re: Speed of Light: Relative?
@Herra:  Hmm, missing my point, but your explaination helps me understand the point you thought I was after.  :)

My wondering is:

Let's say you have a photon detector at point y, 1 ly away from point x.  You have a spacecraft travelling at .55c, and when it passes through point x traveling in a straight line towards point y, it fires a photon beam forwards at point y.  How much time will pass at the detector site before the photon detector at point y registers the beam that the spacecraft fired?  1 year?  Or 3/4 of a year?

ie, when the spacecraft shows up and says, we fired that beam two years ago, will the detector site say we detected it 1.25 years ago?

EDIT: Of course, time would be skewed for a person traveling at .55c, right?  darn this is confusing...
« Last Edit: May 29, 2007, 02:27:10 pm by jr2 »