From: gailpark2@aol.com (Gail Park2) Newsgroups: alt.out-of-body Subject: photon Lines: 5 Message-ID: <1998070301281700.VAA06591@ladder03.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder03.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Date: 3 Jul 1998 01:28:17 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Path: ccw.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-was.dfn.de!nntp-out.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!portc02.blue.aol.com!audrey03.news.aol.com!not-for-mail ...but isn't the reason the photon travels at the speed of light because it doesn't pick up mass as it travels? Does that mean that anything that does not pick up mass could achieve this? It's been a long time since I was in school, I might be greatly mistaken. >gailpark2@aol.com ###### Path: ccw.ch!usenet From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.out-of-body Subject: Re: photon Date: 04 Jul 1998 17:00:21 +0200 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 35 Message-ID: References: <1998070301281700.VAA06591@ladder03.news.aol.com> X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 gailpark2@aol.com (Gail Park2) writes: > ...but isn't the reason the photon travels at the speed of light because it > doesn't pick up mass as it travels? Does that mean that anything that does not > pick up mass could achieve this? It's been a long time since I was in school, > I might be greatly mistaken. > >gailpark2@aol.com AFAIK, the reason matter can not travel at light speed is that accelerating puts kinetic energy (e=m*(v2^2-v1^2), v1 speed before accel, v2 after, so long speed a lot lower than c, near c it goes up faster, as Einstein corrected Newtons formula I gave above) into that piece of matter, that makes it heavier (by m=e/c^2), requiring more energy for the next bit of acceleration, gives more weight... In the end light speed would only be reached if every single particle had aquired infinite weight, by having infinite energy pumped into it. So you run aout of energy before attaining light speed (Newton would have predicted doubled weight). OTOH photons are weightless, so the weight increase (which is an factor times "starting" weight) never takes place, instant light speed is the result. Why they won't go faster I don't know, ask ken. As for the "speed" of souls or astral bodies. I assume that is infinite, simply because they don't actually travel (!). Rather I expect them (as non-physical entities) to quasi "disconnect" from their present focus point in the physical world and then "reconnect" at an other place. Speed (distance per time) and its implication of acceleration would be as meaningless an concept for this as say for "moving" on the web, when jumping from one webpage to an other. -- private: Neil.Franklin@ccw.ch.remove http://www.ccw.ch/Neil.Franklin/ office: franklin@arch.ethz.ch.remove http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/~franklin/ WinCE car, crashing soon on a road near you ###### From: Craig Newsgroups: alt.out-of-body Subject: Re: photon Date: Sun, 05 Jul 1998 09:28:09 +1000 Organization: Deja Vous Lines: 11 Message-ID: <359EBA89.C22179E9@comcirc.com.au> References: <1998070301281700.VAA06591@ladder03.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.17.165.104 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) Path: ccw.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!intgwpad.nntp.telstra.net!nsw.nnrp.telstra.net!not-for-mail Hmmm, what would happen if we were travelling at the speed of light, and we shone a torch in the direction we were travelling. Wouldn't the light from the torch, as we see it, be travelling at the speed of light? Therefore, to a stationary observer watching us travel past at the speed of light, see the light from the torch travelling even faster than the speed of light? I'm assuming that nothing can travel at or faster than the speed of light. If so, what happens to the torch light? Craig ###### Path: ccw.ch!usenet From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.out-of-body Subject: Re: photon Date: 05 Jul 1998 20:37:40 +0200 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 36 Message-ID: References: <1998070301281700.VAA06591@ladder03.news.aol.com> <359EBA89.C22179E9@comcirc.com.au> X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Craig writes: > Hmmm, what would happen if we were travelling at the speed of light, and > we shone a torch in the direction we were travelling. Wouldn't the light > from the torch, as we see it, be travelling at the speed of light? > Therefore, to a stationary observer watching us travel past at the speed > of light, see the light from the torch travelling even faster than the > speed of light? I'm assuming that nothing can travel at or faster than > the speed of light. If so, what happens to the torch light? Nope. We would see the photons leaves our torch at light speed _relative_ to us. An observer who sees us doing light speed _relative_ to him (else we are not doing light speed) will also see the photons travelling at light speed _relative_ to him! And so standing still relative to us. Yes, totally crazy. But that is what it is like at such speeds. That is because we with ozr speed (and so also mass) have deformed space-time. BTW1 That is the reason it is called relativity theory. Because there exists no absolute speeds that can be simple added. BTW2 Trying to measure what would happen with the speed of light relative to space and an moving object (the earch) was the objective of the Michelson & Morley experiment in the late 1800s that killed off Newtonian physics after discovering above. Einstein simply developed the maths to describe the crazy stuff (special relativity theory, ca 1905) and later an cosmology based on it (general relativity theory, ca 1915). -- private: Neil.Franklin@ccw.ch.remove http://www.ccw.ch/Neil.Franklin/ office: franklin@arch.ethz.ch.remove http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/~franklin/ WinCE car, crashing soon on a road near you ###### From: Ken Czepelka Newsgroups: alt.out-of-body Subject: Re: photon Date: Tue, 07 Jul 1998 00:44:39 -0600 Organization: Sound Sculpture Lines: 43 Message-ID: <35A1C3D7.935D02A2@soundsculpture.com> References: <1998070301281700.VAA06591@ladder03.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: pm1-ppp136-197.privatei.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) Path: ccw.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!206.124.0.31!pulsar.dimensional.com!dimensional.com!beetle.privatei.com!not-for-mail Neil Franklin wrote: > > OTOH photons are weightless, so the weight increase (which is an > factor times "starting" weight) never takes place, instant light > speed is the result. Why they won't go faster I don't know, ask ken. > No need to ask, I'll volunteer. Photons are not necessarily weightless. The debate is still on about this. But this is not a problem for the simple reason that photons, during their lifetime, have always traveled at the speed of light. The postulate that states that mass increases to the point of infinity for an object accelerating to the speed of light only applies to an object that starts at some speed below the speed of light. It does not apply to objects with mass that have always traveled at the speed of light. The reason photons don't go faster than light is the same reason that they don't go slower. It is a characteristic of light to only go the speed of light. If it were to go slower or faster it would not be light anymore. You must remember that photons are only a manifestation of light that is caused by us observing it. During times when we are not observing light, light takes the form of what is called wave probabilities. While in this form, light is not a particle (a photon) and has no specific location. In fact it is neither here nor there. It has no reality so to speak. As soon as we observe it however, it instantly becomes either here or there. The actual location where it becomes real at this time is determined strictly by statistics (probability). So you see. With characteristics like this, light is a very unique animal and simply cannot be thought of as something that can go faster or slower than it does. Ken "The speed of time is one second per second." -unknown "Black holes are where God divided by zero." -unknown "Everything should be as simple as possible but not one bit simpler." -Albert Einstein