On Tue, 9 May 2000, vulcan wrote:
> > Faster than a photon (sorry, GTR/STR).
>
> for those who would welcome some help with physics.
> Jaju meant-> GTR= General Theory of Relativity
> and STR= Special Theory of Relativity
> and photons: a light beam is assumed to be comprised of
> photons, the way metal is made up of atoms.
GAD - I thought metal was made up by Jimmy Page! :)
When yo say a light beam, you are talking about the ray theory of light -
the theory we use to explain reflection and refraction.
Photons actually fit into the corpuscular or more popularly, the particle
theory of light. We could then also go into particle-wave duality, but
that gets more involved.
> it is also known as Theory of General Relativity. Albert Einstein was
> the Torvalds of this.
I wouldn't give Torvalds that much credit. He's more of a businessman -
in his current position. Einstein was a scientist to the end. Whether he
arrived at his death or his death arrived at him is a matter of
perspective.
> In a film, superman circles around the earth with speed greater than the
> speed of light, which is the fastest possible speed, though never
> attainable, as mass tends to infinity when a body nears the speed of
> light.
Incorrect. The speed of light is not the fastest possible speed. It is
simply a speed barrier - the theory states that no particle can /attain/
the speed of light because it would then be too massive to move itself.
It says nothing about the original velocity of these particles. If they
started from rest, then they could not accelerate to c. What if, however,
these particles started at a speed above that of light? Then they would
keep moving faster than light, never able to move slower. Tachyons are
subatomic particles that move faster than light albeit in two dimensions
only. (The word Tachyon comes from the Greek Tachos or something meaning
fast).
> the director must be a 12th standard fail in physics, so he had shown
get a life man. A> It's not the director, but the writer who puts that
down. B> It's a movie. Watch and enjoy.
> it has no scientific basis.
BTW, if you see the movie Frequency, there is a pretty good scientific
basis behind it. That however is the topic of another post - presumably
not on this list.
Philip
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