So, You Think Your Just Sitting There in That Chair?

[JimBowie1958]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7CwbCEwT_c&feature=related]The Difficulties of Interstellar Travel, or How the Hell do I Calculate the Way Home? - YouTube[/ame]

Lol, I dont really care to think about how fast we are all really going.

But moving at 1/300th the speed of light, wouldnt that imply some time dilation? And does it really matter anyway?

 

[ABikerSailor]

Actually, there have been studies of time dialation and how that the farther you get away from gravity, the slower time goes.

 

[waltky]

Granny says sometimes she sits atta computer...

... an' time just slips away from her.

Granny says name dat tune...

Time, time, time, see what's become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please

... an' dis one too...

Time has come today
Young hearts can go their way
Can't put it off another day
I don't care what others say
They say we don't listen anyway
Time has come today

 

[JimBowie1958]

Actually, there have been studies of time dialation and how that the farther you get away from gravity, the slower time goes.

Cool, yeah I googled this

Gravity

Thanks for the comment.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Granny says sometimes she sits atta computer...

... an' time just slips away from her.

Granny says name dat tune...

Time, time, time, see what's become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please

... an' dis one too...

Time has come today
Young hearts can go their way
Can't put it off another day
I don't care what others say
They say we don't listen anyway
Time has come today

Granny sounds alot like me when I cant go to sleep when I am supposed to, lol.

 

[Old Rocks]

Yup, I can see it now. A trans-C vehicle on a Sunday excursion of a few thousand light years, and the wife yelling, "What do you mean, you didn't bring the map!!!!!!!!".

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says most people don't realize the gravity o' the situation - when dem gravity waves hit earth, dey gonna fling ever'body off the face o' the planet...

Gravity waves spotted from white-dwarf pair
29 August 2012: Researchers have spotted visible-light evidence for one of astronomy's most elusive targets - gravity waves - in the orbit of a pair of dead stars.

Until now, these ripples in space-time, first predicted by Einstein, have only been inferred from radio-wave sources. But a change in the orbits of two white dwarf stars orbiting one another 3,000 light-years away is further proof of the waves that can literally be seen. A study to be reported in Astrophysical Journal Letters describes the pair.

Gravitational waves were a significant part of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which viewed space itself as a malleable construct, and the gravity of massive objects as a force that could effectively warp it. Catching sight of an actual gravity wave, however, is a tricky business; their effects are far too small to be measured with Earth-bound experiments. But the wider Universe provides a laboratory in which the indirect effects of gravity waves can be measured.

Six-second switch

In principle, any two massive objects orbiting one another can emit gravitational waves, slowly losing the momentum of their orbits into the waves. The effect is to slightly change the size of the orbits, and the time it takes to complete them. A measurement of a minuscule change in the orbits of rapidly rotating neutron stars called pulsars garnered the 1993 Nobel Prize in physics. But pulling off the same trick with visible light has until now eluded researchers. It is the extreme nature of the pair of white dwarf stars known as J0651 - each a substantial fraction of our Sun's mass orbiting each other at a distance just a third that between the Earth and Moon - that increases the magnitude of the gravity waves.

As members of the same team reported in Astrophysical Journal in 2011, the pair orbit each other in less than 13 minutes. Since that discovery, the team has been keenly watching the pair "eclipse" one another, with each briefly blocking out the other's light as seen from Earth. Over a period of 13 months, the team saw the orbital period reduce by less than a thousandth of a second, but the effect also shifts when the eclipse time is expected to happen, and that has shifted back by some six seconds since the pair were discovered. "A lot of these indirect measurements have taken people years, mostly because the orbits are so much longer," explained lead author of the study, JJ Hermes from the University of Texas at Austin.

Mr Hermes told BBC News that he liked the idea that such a groundbreaking result was established in part by using a telescope nearly as old as Einstein's theory: the Otto Struve 2.1m telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Texas. "There have been 30 years of using radio telescopes and timing pulsars, but this is the first time we've been able to detect the influence of gravitational wave radiation using an optical telescope," he told BBC News. The team will continue to watch the pair's tightening orbit, and the expected eclipse time should shift back by another 20 seconds by next May. The results will also help guide observations from "direct detection" experiments.

These, such as the proposed eLisa project, aim to measure the tiny relative movements of vastly separated detectors as gravitational waves pass - a final, irrefutable proof that the waves are what relativity predicted so long ago. "It would be a really nice confirmation if we got one of these laser interferometer missions going - we'd know exactly what to look for," Mr Hermes said. "We've crunched the numbers, and eLisa would be able to detect this thing in about a week."

BBC News - Gravity waves spotted from white-dwarf pair

 

[Uncensored2008]

Actually, there have been studies of time dialation and how that the farther you get away from gravity, the slower time goes.

Explain "get away from gravity?"

Do you mean get away from Earth's gravity, or the Sun's?

According to Einstein's "Special Theory of Relativity," gravity is a feature of the fabric of space-time, you can't get away from it. Any body with any mass will distort the fabric of space-time, and create a gravitational pull.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Granny says sometimes she sits atta computer...

... an' time just slips away from her.

Granny says name dat tune...

Time, time, time, see what's become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please

... an' dis one too...

Time has come today
Young hearts can go their way
Can't put it off another day
I don't care what others say
They say we don't listen anyway
Time has come today

This day and age we're living in
Gives cause for apprehension
With speed and new invention
And things like fourth dimension.

Yet we get a trifle weary
With Mr. Einstein's theory.
So we must get down to earth at times
Relax relieve the tension

And no matter what the progress
Or what may yet be proved
The simple facts of life are such
They cannot be removed.]

You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.

(Betcha didn't know that song was about physics!)

 

[ABikerSailor]

Actually, there have been studies of time dialation and how that the farther you get away from gravity, the slower time goes.

Explain "get away from gravity?"

Do you mean get away from Earth's gravity, or the Sun's?

According to Einstein's "Special Theory of Relativity," gravity is a feature of the fabric of space-time, you can't get away from it. Any body with any mass will distort the fabric of space-time, and create a gravitational pull.

Actually, it starts with escaping the earth's gravity. Experiments have shown that a clock flying at 30,000 ft. above the earth is actually slower than it's counterpart that it was synched with on the ground.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Actually, it starts with escaping the earth's gravity. Experiments have shown that a clock flying at 30,000 ft. above the earth is actually slower than it's counterpart that it was synched with on the ground.

Let me see if I've got this straight, and excuse my long-windedness.

If I throw a ball at a moving care, I can calculate the velocity at impact by adding the speed of the car to the speed of the ball. But if I shoot a laser pointer at that same car, the velocity of the impact is the speed of light. Regardless of the velocity of the other object, the speed of light is constant and unaffected by other movement.

I bring this up because time dilation is normally viewed by laymen as a function of velocity - yet Einstein predicted that gravity wells would have a similar effect on time as velocity, demonstrating that space-time is an interconnected fabric. Greater velocity and greater gravity both slow time. In the space station, you have both accelerated velocity, and less gravity, so the effects would tend to cancel each other out. The lesser gravity speeding time up, and the greater velocity slowing it down. In the end, time moves more slowly on the ISS because the increase in velocity is further from the mean than the decrease in gravity - Earth has a lot of mass.

Physics has always been one of my favorite subjects. One of my all time favorite books is "Warped Passages" by Dr. Lisa Randell, it's a look at string theory.

 

[ABikerSailor]

Actually, it starts with escaping the earth's gravity. Experiments have shown that a clock flying at 30,000 ft. above the earth is actually slower than it's counterpart that it was synched with on the ground.

Let me see if I've got this straight, and excuse my long-windedness.

If I throw a ball at a moving care, I can calculate the velocity at impact by adding the speed of the car to the speed of the ball. But if I shoot a laser pointer at that same car, the velocity of the impact is the speed of light. Regardless of the velocity of the other object, the speed of light is constant and unaffected by other movement.

I bring this up because time dilation is normally viewed by laymen as a function of velocity - yet Einstein predicted that gravity wells would have a similar effect on time as velocity, demonstrating that space-time is an interconnected fabric. Greater velocity and greater gravity both slow time. In the space station, you have both accelerated velocity, and less gravity, so the effects would tend to cancel each other out. The lesser gravity speeding time up, and the greater velocity slowing it down. In the end, time moves more slowly on the ISS because the increase in velocity is further from the mean than the decrease in gravity - Earth has a lot of mass.

Physics has always been one of my favorite subjects. One of my all time favorite books is "Warped Passages" by Dr. Lisa Randell, it's a look at string theory.

Gravitational time dilation is the effect of time passing at different rates in regions of different gravitational potential; the lower the gravitational potential (the closer the clock is to the source of gravitation), the more slowly time passes. Albert Einstein originally predicted this effect in his theory of relativity and it has since been confirmed by tests of general relativity.

This has been demonstrated by noting that atomic clocks at differing altitudes (and thus different gravitational potential) will eventually show different times. The effects detected in such experiments are extremely small, with differences being measured in nanoseconds.

Gravitational time dilation was first described by Albert Einstein in 1907[1] as a consequence of special relativity in accelerated frames of reference. In general relativity, it is considered to be a difference in the passage of proper time at different positions as described by a metric tensor of spacetime. The existence of gravitational time dilation was first confirmed directly by the Pound–Rebka experiment.

Gravitational time dilation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia