Light speed mysteries and anomalies

And if we take away all red, blue and green wave lengths are we left with infrared? Maybe the blue side of the star is rotating towards you and the red side away, what do you reckon. Try a 950nm infrared filter on your cam - on night shot and see what you get.

I have a red 23A filter, never used it but I will this winter! Unfortunately, here in Spain the ground temperature in summer creates all sorts of strange optical effects in my eyepiece, so I have to wait!

This puzzled me last night and kept me awake till gone 4 in the morning! I have more questions, some may sound stupid but if you don´t ask then that is even stupider!

As all actions have an equal and opposite reaction, when something is traveling at the speed of light, is its equal an opposite reaction also traveling at the speed of light therefore from the relative viewpoint of one to the other travelling at twice the speed of light or are they both travelling at half the speed of light to get that magic speed of light velocity? This may sound trivial to some of you but to me, a humble handle winder, it is rocket science!

Also while I´m here, how about local expressions that can be proved by science! ie.

Red sky at night, shepherds delight, Red sky in the morning, shepherds warning!

I think Red sky at night, means plenty of water in the air, prism effect on the light, the water forms dew, the plants grow and the sheep eat green grass. red sky in the morning means water in the air, prism effect, rain, shepherd and sheep get wet! Not a happy chappie!

Let me know if you can think of any more!

An equal and opposite reaction does not mean the same reaction. If I put one pound of pressure at a specific speed on a marble; it will not have the same effect as one pound of pressure on a building. The forces transfered are the same. For a light generator. The molecule giving off the pressure wave will lose a minuscule un-measurably small mass. The photon, as we call it, will travel very fast but the energy to move something so small compared to the generator size will move the large generator in the opposite direction only slightly.

Since the greatest light generators (stars) generate light in all directions, the opposing movement is cancelled out by opposite forces.

Also when light hits an object, Its energy will be transferred to the object. and a measurable reaction may be seen. A measurable of the opposing movement was demonstrated in Tesla's experiment in 1901 in his radiant energy experiment. see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiant_energy.

Energy will take a form of movement. Whether the movement is circular (spinning) or straight (directional) depends on the size difference and the angle of incidence. A spinning object is simply storing energy.

The Saying Red sky at night, shepherds delight, Red sky in the morning, shepherds warning was originally: a "Red sky at night, sailors delight, Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning." It was based on the fact the sunset and sunrise colours would tell you what the atmospheric pressure over the horizon was and would predict the weather.

Since the sun sets in the west and most weather comes from the west, a high in the west would mean clear skies (red sky at night) to the west and good weather ahead.

While a high in the east and a strong low in the west would cause a red sunrise, a storm was imminent from the west.

Having spent many years at sea, I can verify that it has always held.

Whether it holds on land probably depends on the landscape. Mountains affect the weather as much or more than a high or low.

There is no such thing as "the" speed of light. "c" describes the speed of light in a vacuum. Light bends - its phase changes - and light slows down as it passes through other objects.

Yes, your camera is cheap. This is the same as when I take a dark picture with mine, and examine the pixels close up - lots of color. These are just artifacts of the sensor, not reality.

More likely the lens is causing the problem.

True that.

What we see as light and color is simply an alternating pressure wave. The frequency of the alterations will determine the color. The lowest frequencies of pressure waves we experience is waves in water (below audible sound). The changes are so slow that water molecules are moved in a circular motion en-mass.

The next higher is sound, where molecules and atoms are vibrated in a circular pattern. The medium will control the speed. The generator will control the frequency.

The next higher frequency spectrum starts at radio frequencies and above. These travel at approx 186000 miles per second. The frequency depends on the generator. When we see different colours, we are simply seeing different frequencies. Some animals can see frequencies that we cannot. The difference is the make up of our sensors (eyes).

When these pressure waves hits an object, the object can do a number of things

1. it can let the pressure wave simply pass through

2. it can absorb the pressure wave, and

• keep the energy
• Retransmit the energy at the objects resonant frequency
• convert the energy to heat, or any combination of above

3. Fluorescence is where energy is absorbed , held for a period and released later.

As far as light reacting differently for different situations, here are a few general rules.

The reaction of the pressure wave is dependant on the medium it is going through.

The angle of incidence + the space between objects will determine if the wave just passes through, is deflected at an angle, or is stopped completely.

White light is the same as broadband. It is a whole lot of frequencies. A deflector will cause different angles of deflection for different frequencies because there is a size difference in the relationship of the pressure wave height and the structure of the deflector.

Different colours are not different speeds. It is a distance difference between the peaks of the pressure waves.

With your cam. What you see is the same as when you look at a rainbow. Your lens is round like a water droplet (not flat). Different frequencies are deflecting off the lens at different angles. (prism or rainbow effect)

Sound is a pressure wave. Light and radio are electromagnetic waves. They are not the same thing, or even variations of the same phenomena.

There have all the same physics of collisions and transfer of energy. The only difference is quantum size. and frequency.

The quantum measurement of pressure in an electromagnetic wave is called voltage.

Different names, same effect.

Sound waves bend in water when the density and temperature changes

Light and Radio waves bend in the atmosphere with density and temperature changes, and even more pronounced in water.

Both situations, the reaction is predictable and measurable

Cows and cars are both measurable and predictable, and behave similarly when thrown into water, but they are not the same thing. Electromagnetic waves are governed by Maxwell's equations, sound is not. Light has a dual wave/particle nature, sound does not. A 20KHz sound wave does not behave the same as a 20KHz radio wave. Pressure and voltage are not the same phenomena. The only thing that sound and EM waves have in common is that they look similar on an oscilloscope.

Hi techno.

Sound is a pressure wave that cannot propagate through true vacuum, only through matter. Light is not a pressure wave. It is an electromagnetic wave that propagates better through vacuum than through any material substance. Not he same thing at all.

Jorrie

The reason for one side of the star appearing red and the other side blue has been addressed in this forum as emanating from use of a "cheap" lens. That is true. The mechanism is chromatic abberation, and results from a simple lens acting as a prism, splitting light by wavelength, as the edges of the lens are approached.

BernieK

I don´t use the web cams lens, only the sensor! The lens was removed due to public opinion many months ago! The planets I can see, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, don´t exhibit these characteristics but the stars do! I´ve managed to destroy 4 cams so far, mostly by burning the sensor on the annoying security light my neighbour put up! One blast from that at 360X Magnification and it´s see ya later!

Mr. Truman Brain said:

The lens was removed due to public opinion many months ago!

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What are you now using for a lens? It seems very odd that only stars cause the effect you see. Perhaps one possibility is the spacing between pixels in the imager, since a star would appear as a point source with almost any magnification. In a color imager, pixels for the primary colors are interspersed. Just guessing, however.

Bernie K

Just the eyepiece of my telescope! the small plastic webcam lens was causing me all sorts of strife with focusing! I guess it was a cheap cam! Tried to get hold of a ccd cam but everything is cmos nowadays!

The coloration of the stars could very well be due to the prism effect of the atmosphere, especially close to the horizon. The sunrise and sunset color are a different effect, due to the Raleigh scattering which preferentially scatters blue (shorter wavelength) light and makes the sky blue. At sunrise and sunset, the light travels through a lot of atmosphere, and the blue light gets subtracted.

We know the speed of light, but in reality, tell me how one would detect light at a faster speed, or for that matter, slower speed - in a vacuum of course. When the black hole goes black, could it be that the light is going faster than the 'speed of light' rather than being held back by the gravity field to less than the 'speed of light"? In other words, the constant in E=MC² may not be constant and is simply undetectable, perhaps giving rise to dark matter and dark energy. Just supposed it is C^2.01 or ^1.09? Just how do we detect such a thing?

There is a great book on the V.S.L. (Variable Speed of Light) theory by João Maguejo.

"Another thing is when I attach my cheap web cam to my telescope, my screen shows a star with one side blue and the other side red! "

What is the aenith distance when you observed the color effect? The atmosphere bends light, but the refractive index of air changes with color and you could be observing this dispersion. At 45 degrees the atmospheric refraction is 58 arc seconds, at 90 degrees it is about 34 arc minutes.

Now color. At 37 degree zenith distance, the difference between red and blue light is about 1 arc second. At Mt. Wilson observatory, oberving the red star Mira spectroscopically with a horizaontal slit, the spectra is contaminated from its blue companion which is about 0.7 seconds SE. The atmosphere has shifted the blue light from the companion until it overlaps the slit.

If you still see color when looking at the zenith (directly overhead) then you have a camera problem.

Unless the star is massive and rotating a high speed, then you get a red-shift, with the red side moving away and the blue moving toward, hehehe.

The effect you are describing can be observed with spectroscopy. The observed spectral lines are broadened. The faster the star rotates, the wider the line. As stars appear as point sources, even in telescopes (unless one is using fancy techniques as speckle interferometry or interferometry between 2 separated telescopes -- and this works only for the largest and closest stars), this effect does not change the position of the star on the sky. Since the angular size of the star is less than a pixel on a camera, the color effect is not observed directly with a CCD camera.

However, the earth's atmosphere causes the a significant change in position. This is similar to light passing through a prism. Refer to this site for samples of atmospheric dispersionhttp://www.astropix.com/HTML/L_STORY/VD.HTM

Since it has been almost 50 years since I was in college, double major of physics/chemistry, and my work experience is mechanical engineering, I must take your word for it. After I retired, however, I have had the opportunity to so some reading and have tried meagerly to catch up in particle physics and have done some reading on the quantum theory and the string theory. So this brings me back to the original question I posed in this thread. If an object or photon were to obtain a velocity beyond the the speed of light (in a vacuum of course) what tools do we have to detect this object or photon?

A secondary question was posed, too, if a photon (in a vacuum) has a velocity less that the speed of light, how is this detected. I do believe, since the photon is slowed in an atmosphere and when passing trough a gas, liquid or solid, it is detected easily. However, it also produces a sensible heat trace, too. This, then is a change it the frequency to that of infrared and lower until absorption. This can be seen in the problems of global waring, since the greenhouse gases permit the passage of the visible and bluer end of the spectrum to the point of being absorbed to be re-transmitted as infrared which cannot pass the greenhouse gases, thus being absorbed as heat and warming the earth.

Part of my reading, too, has been the search for dark matter and dark energy, which is pretty much the limit of my astrophysics. One possible exception; there is a suggestion from the String, or Membrane theory that gravity is actually leaked from alternate universe(s) and that this accounts for its apparent weakness.

Sorry to get off into this tangent, but I still would like to know how to detect any object or photon that is moving faster than light. Until we can know that light speed is the limit, we will always wonder if Einstein might have made a slight error. The detection of faster than light is the proof. As an object approaches light speed, so I am told, its dimension, front to back, approaches zero and its mass approaches infinity, so what is beyond this. It is something like passing beyond the big bang, I think. I wish I were smart enough to do the math, but my age has my mind being dragged to simple conjecture.

Hi chtank,

Good questions and I can't answer them but here's something interesting you may like to take a look at. If we find evidence of events occuring before the BB just think what entire new fields of thought and knowledge that would provoke.

-John

and yes John, and if the thoughts are provoked, who can say in which universe they are provoked. Who knows which universe we may be in the next time.

Actually ch, I believe the thoughts are provoked right now as all these threads on CR4 indicate. It's only the knowledge that we're a little short on.

I think we'll probably be in the one in the next lane over next time.

Now back to your "here's something" that is of interest. The story is not new to me but does present another question I have had with all the astrophysics stories I read. If we are looking in all directions outwardly to 15 billion light years, why is it that we seem to be in the very center of our universe. Surely, if we are near one edge of the sphere of ejection from the puff, then in the short direction, the end would be somewhat less than the supposed 15 billion years of this universe's age? Gosh, either the 15 billion age is grossly wrong or by pure chance, our galaxy is in the epicenter. Come to think of it, some 1,000 centuries or so ago, wasn't the earth reputed to be the center of the universe and the sun and all the planets revolved about teh earth? And did not the earth sit on the back of a giant turtle? If were to travel too far into the sea, we would disappear by falling over the edge and into a great abyss? I do wonder where is the epicenter of the big bang and our relation to this center.

You mean you didn't know that we're sitting on a turtle's back?

I like the one showing Atlas holding the world on his shoulders. What is he standing on?

About this thing with us being at the center of the universe. I think that's a good question for Jorrie. I know he's discussed the idea on another thread. I believe he said that no matter where you are in the universe, you are still at the center. (please correct me if I mis-stated this Jorrie). It seems like a really strange and non-sensible idea but then many ideas having to do with space-time, gravity and even time itself are far beyond strange.

-John

Hi CH. You asked about us being at the center of the universe.

The short answer is that we are only in the center of our observable universe, just like you are always in the middle of your observable ocean if you are on the open seas.

The universe may be flat and infinite, flat and limited in size, or it may be closed (spherical in 4 spatial dimensions), which means finite but unbounded (no edge). There is a slight statistical tendency in observations towards the latter.

The 15 billion light years is quoted in 'light travel time distance', which is the farthest light could have travelled in the 15 billion years (statistical best buy is actually 13.7) since the big bang.

The 'real' distance to the observational horizon is more like 45 billion light years, because the universe expanded a lot since that light left the sources. There are probably a lot of universe farther out than that, but we do not know how much. If you were stuck in one spot on the open ocean without communication for life, you would not have known how much ocean there was beyond the horizon.

I've written bits and pieces on these things in my CR4 Blog, in case you haven't scanned that yet.

Jorrie

This is ineresting but quite elementary explanation, Jorrie. Some estimates of the universe age is 15 billion years, the earth being some 5 billion years. If the big bang made its noise 15 billion years ago and the particles and photons traveled outward from the epicenter at the maximum speed of light, than the furtherest any particle can be from the epicenter regardless.

We can only know that which we can perceive. What is beyond the 15 billion light years, if that is truely the universe age, 13.7 if you prefer, is not observable and thus in not perceivable. I do not know where the 45 billion light years come from, I have yet to see it mentioned in any of the astrophysics literature. However, astrophysics is not my field and it would be easy for me to miss the latest news. I am a bit more into quantum physics and mostly into down to earth engineering physics.

My main focus is on nanotechnology, nuclear fusion, and mechanical engineering. My goal is to engineer practical cost effective alternates to fossil fuels as the primary source of energy. However, I am also writing some science fiction, but want to call it science faction since I wish to present the latest advances in biology, chemistry, physics, and nanotechnology as an integral part of the story line. A monumental task which I may never complete since the advances today are out stripping my ability to absorb the information in my lifetime. Perhaps my double in an alternate universe can do it.

Hi CH.

You wrote: "This is interesting but quite elementary explanation..."

I think you understand the cosmological concept wrongly. There is no point in 3-d space that can be viewed as an 'epicenter' from where everything started moving outwards at the big bang. It was space itself that was made to expand, so that the separation between 'stationary' particles that were at opposite ends of our present observable universe increased at one tremendous rate, far exceeding the speed of light (at least 10²⁴c).

The average separation rate between such particles over the last 13 billion years was more than 6 times the speed of light, hence the ~90 billion light year real diameter (~45 billion ly radius) of the observable universe. This is not a problem in relativistic physics, because the expansion of space is not limited to the speed of light. Nothing was moving through space at greater than the speed of light.

The 13.7 billion light year 'Hubble radius' radius is measured in light-travel time (how long it took light from the observable horizon to have reached us). Because of the expansion, this cannot be the real (proper) radius of the observable universe.

The full universe must be at least double the 45 billion light years radius of the observable universe at the moment - perhaps infinitely large, but we cannot know that.

Hope this clears some of the cosmological issues.

Your focus is something I know little of - I hope you succeed in your alternative fuel quest. I'm looking forward to your 'science faction' book. Stick to the writing and do not worry about advances being too fast - you can always bring out updates.

Jorrie

Hi Jorrie,

You have really put a spanner in my universe saying it expanded at more than 6 times the speed of light! I thought when something approched the speed of light its mass increased and its size decreased to the point of infanitly small!( for example, size of a grain of sand with the mass of a million tonnes) Does this mean that the speed of light can be exceeded?

Hi Mr. Truman . You asked: "Does this mean that the speed of light can be exceeded?"

No, nothing can move through space at a relative speed exceeding c. However, the expansion of space is not governed by this 'law'. Expanding space is like a current taking matter with it, while the matter can be stationary relative to the water flow.

Yes, it requires tremendous energy to expand space with the matter in it, but that has been provided by the big bang.

Jorrie

With all our modern techniques, Do we know in what general direction BB started? If so, when we examine bodies close to the center using spectrum analysis or whatever, is there any fundamental chemical difference between these bodies and those which lie in the outer reaches of our universe and does this help us in understanding the principal elements involved in the BB? My next ponderance ( big word I know ) is when a neutron star collapses it forms a black hole! from what I gather, a neutron star is a small, highly dense mass of iron no more then about 10miles in diameter and with a very large field of gravity. When it collapses, It forms a black hole! What is at the center of a black hole, surely the word hole is only a metaphor and not a real hole which you can pass through in a futuristic space ship to another dimension? At the moment I am reading Asimov's guide to the physical sciences dated 1972 so forgive me if my questions seem dated! Can anybody suggest a new book for me? Remember, to keep my attencion, It needs very few formula and layman descriptions! KEEPIN IT REAL! Cheers

Hi Mr. Truman , you asked: "Do we know in what general direction BB started?"

As I said in a previous reply, it started everywhere at the same time. The farthest galaxies that we can observe (and our Galaxy) are all at the location where it started - bizarre as that may sound!

When we look towards the horizon of our observable universe, we look back in time and see the most distant galaxies as they were some 1 billion light years after the big bang. As far as I know, there is no chemical difference, except that stars evolved to contain more and more heavy elements as they passed through the generations.

Neutron stars are not made of iron, but rather of atomic atomic nuclei as well as electrons, not making proper atoms, like iron. I recommend reading Wikipedia's neutron stars and black holes. The articles have enough readable material apart from the equations, making them very accessible.

Jorrie

Hey Mr. Truman Brain, don't let anyone mislead you. The Big Bang is a theory, i.e., best guess based on tracing backwards in time with mathematics to the beginnings of time (space). The principle tool for this backwards journey is (was) the string theory. But now, this has even changed and is called the M-theory, or Membrane Theory, which leads beyond the Big Bang and gives rise to an infinite number of alternate universes. The best way to learn more is to type the key words, string theory, M-theory, Big Bang, alternate universe, astrophysics, etc., into your Google Search window and to start reading. The list will be long, very long. For one of the most authoritative source on Astrophysics and math and physics is our many Universities, with MIT providing free and open access to all of its courses. There are as many physicists as there are alternate universes who have their own theories but these colleges and universities do present the mainline accepted thinking of this time. Remember, theory is only a theory and must be 'proved' to become fact. Science has been, to this date, working to prove and extend many of Einstein's Theory.

Jorrie, I have read a few pages from Winnipeg and have noticed that it is true what Asimov said in his opening chapter! It goes something like this:-

The rapid advance of science is exciting and exhilarating to anyone who is fascinated by the unconquerablility of the human spirit and by the continuing efficacy of the scientific method as a tool for penetrating the complexities of the universe. But what if one is also dedicated to keeping up with every phase of scientific advance for the deliberate purpose of interpreting that advance for the general public? For him, the excitement and exhilaration is tempered by a kind of despair. Science will not stand still. It is a panorama that subtly dissolves and changes even while we watch. It cannot be caught in its every detail at any one moment of time without being left behind at once.

In his book, he talks about solid iron neutron stars and the known universe being in the region of 9000 million light years!

I think I have alot of reading to do!!

Hi Jorrie,

You said "It was space itself that was made to expand, so that the separation between 'stationary' particles that were at opposite ends of our present observable universe increased at one tremendous rate, far exceeding the speed of light".

This looks somewhat like a paradox. If empty space expands it seems reasonable that is could exceed the speed of light, since no mass is involved (?) However, for the sake of argument, lets say we could witness the BB. Further, lets say we're looking at the BB occurring directly in front of us. Initial conditions are that there are two mass containing particles, side by side. Now when BB happens the space between the particles expands RAPIDLY! Now you say that space itself expands but the net effect is that the two particles expand away from each other faster that C? That, to me, seems like the paradox.

Also, if space itself can expand it seems reasonable that it could also contract. Therefore, why couldn't the space between my home and my shop contract so that I could commute almost instantly?

The open ocean analogy to the observable universe made a lot of sense. Thanks.

-John

Hi Jon, further to what I wrote to Mr. Truman, the following on your scenario ("lets say we could witness the BB. Further, lets say we're looking at the BB occurring directly in front of us.")

The BB occurred through all of space simultaneously, so while we are inside that space, we cannot look at at it "directly in front of us"; it would have been all around us, with all particles apparently flying away from us. But any observer anywhere inside that space would observe the same thing.

Think about the old 'balloon-being-blown-up' analogy; it's still the easiest to make that clear. Just remember that the 2-d surface of the balloon represents 3-d space. The space outside and inside the balloon represents a 4th (invisible, perhaps fictitious) dimension.

Our observable universe is like a circle drawn upon the surface of the balloon and the galaxies are like coins that are 'spot-glued' to the surface. The circle expands, but the galaxies just all move away from each other. Outside the circle lies the rest of the universe, not observable by us, but possibly observable by some other civilization nearer (or outside) our horizon.

Jorrie

Hi again Jorrie,

I understand the balloon idea and it does indeed equate well with the open ocean analogy as far as observation goes.

The point I was trying to illustrate with observing the BB was just to picture two objects, anywhere, in various positions relative to each other. Now whether the two objects accelerate away from each other, OR whether the space between the two objects expands the net effect is that the two objects have moved away from each other faster than c.

But then, maybe if the two objects are on the surface of a balloon...hmmmm. I think maybe I'm catching on here... Even though the objects are farther apart, they, themselves, haven't violated any laws of physics. Yes? Still a difficult idea to grasp though.

I think maybe I'd better get your book!

-John

Hi John, yep, you've got the right idea!

It doesn't have to be a balloon. Look again at the picture I've posted here.

The universe may be flat like in the 'infinite lattice' and display the same thing. If every blue bar (space) extends at just a smallish rate, there must be a distance where two red cubes (many bars away from each other) apparently recede from each other at larger than the speed of light, while they are not moving relative to their local bars.

The universe appears to behave somewhat like this.

Jorrie

hummmm, now show us the math!

Hi CH, you said "now show us the math!"

Its right here on CR4 and the posts before and after that.

Jorrie

I looked up dispersion. The index of refraction (n) at 400 nm is 1.000300 and at 800 nm is 1.000291. Dispersion is related by (n-1), so over the stated color range the dispersion is about 3%. I also read that for the visible eye the dispersion was about 1%. The atmospheric color effect would be larger for a CCD camera (depending upon filters) than using the telescope with a visible eyepiece.

Simply multiply the atmospheric refraction by these percentages to obtain the observed color. At 45 degrees the atmospheric refraction is about 1 arc minute or 60 arc seconds, so the color dispersion for the eye is about 0.6 seconds and from 400-800 nm the dispersion would be 1.8 arc seconds.

George