Practical observation of relativity?

This looks like one for 'Jorrie'.

Never mind that, but I cannot even visualise what's being asked here.

Am I a freak?

I guess it would depend on how dizzy the observer behind first base was. I definitely would be dizzy sat on a speeding, spinning baseball.

So, what's the "spinning electron" bit about?

Don't think the elctron is spinning. Its sat on the baseball which is spinning.

As in: "what would the world look like, if I sat on a baseball, the size of an electron, spinning with it?"

O.K, and:

...would an observer seated behind first base "observe" the time period between the release of the ball and the reception of the ball by the catcher, the same as I would?...

?

Perhaps if you were the size of an electron then the very small amount of time that it takes for the ball to travel to the catcher from the observers point of view may seem like an age to the electron sized you. Bit like when you were a kid, an hour was a long time but now there aren't enough hours in a day

The main thread and it's subthreads seem to rehash the "hollow earth" conjecture.

How about the "hollow head" conjecture?

If you sat on a baseball, I don't think the world would look very good at all. I would think you'd be spending most of your mental energy trying to figure out how to remove it.

I sat on a baseball once. Uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as squatting on my spurs.

...squatting on my spurs...

Is this some Texan ritual? A technique?

I sit an a baseball every day, three times a day, to hatch (for breeding).

An Israeli ritual, nevermind that, but never did I squat on my spurs.

What is it for? Can it improve my breeding process?

I usually manage to sprout about three balls a day, and my very near competitors manage twice my output.

I do need some improvement. Can you help?

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do...

In Reply To Post # 53 by Yuval:

"never did I squat on my spurs. What is it for? Can it improve my breeding process?"

Quite the contrary, Yuval. The Texan ritual of squatting on one's spurs has been proven to severely jeopardize the breeding process of the average male. However, your next statement:

"I usually manage to sprout about three balls a day"

leads me to think that perhaps spur-squatting, in your case, would make little difference.

Mark

You're probably right. Shortly after posting this, I rushed to test this assumption, not even waiting to europium's reply.

Only a day later and, I can feel some improvement. Still in the three ball range, but it feels as if more on the way, daily, that is.

Maybe europium is such inspiration, that mere asking him, may improve the situation, or, I already knew the answer down-deep, only needed to raise it in public, to give it the initial push required.

This or that, Thing have improved now, and I feel much better.

So, still three balls a day, but looking much, much better.

Isn't this site beautiful?

100 mph is too slow for relativistic effects. Even spinning it will not create a relativistic effect.

So, any difference in time measured by the two observers can be attributed to the difference for the outside observer from the release and catch points (assuming they are not equal and there is a time delay for the light to reach that observer's eye) and measurement error for both observers.

A bigger problem would be for the observer on the ball. There are two possibilities here. 1) the observer may be on the back side of the ball when it hits the glove and not be able to see when the catch was made. 2) the observer is on the leading edge of the ball and the batter strikes the ball before it is caught. The second scenario is far worse for the observer on the ball. SPLAT.

so size differences have nothing to do with perceptions of relativity between object and observer, only velocity?

Size matters.

If the environment that is being observed is of a fixed size and rate, then the perception of the rate of motion that is taking place would appear to go faster as the mass of the observer increases and it would appear to slow down as the mass of the o observer decreased in mass. Distance and time are relative to the mass and the frequency of the observer.

so this is only in observation and not in actual relativistic effect?

It might be detectable if both the electron and the observer in the stands each had a cesium clock with them. But, then that's just silly, isn't it.

Oh no it's not.

ericwarner speculates: "If the environment that is being observed is of a fixed size and rate, then the perception of the rate of motion that is taking place would appear to go faster as the mass of the observer increases and it would appear to slow down as the mass of the o observer decreased in mass. Distance and time are relative to the mass and the frequency of the observer."

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Eau contrare! All the fat guys in my office move slowly.

In response to #10 above:

By this reasoning, it becomes apparent that fat people have adventurous lives, but thin people live longer.

That must be what is meant by a practical observation of reality.

Mark

No. 100 mph is such a small fraction of C and the retina has a reticence of 1/20th of one second so the miniscule shift would be completely imperceptible. I doubt it could even be measured with state of the art instrumentation since the difference would probably be below the level of random noise.

.

Motion is such a strange thing to understand. For instance if you travel towards the point of the supposed big bang are you then slowing down? And if your traveling out in the direction of universal expansion, are you then speeding up? It seems to me that our experience of the universe is a dualism between motion and plane geometry that when brought together give us the perception of curvature which appears to make up the bulk of our experience when observing the universe.

Yeah, I would have to admit, I feel a universal attraction to curves...

Boy we've beaten this one to death...

There is no observed direction for the expansion of the Universe, except for your own location. In other words, when we try to detect where the Big Bang happened, all observations put us at the point of the Big Bang. Alternately, any other species on any planet in any other galaxy sees themselves at the point of the Big Bang. Why? Because the Big Bang created space. It did not happen in space. Because we all came from the same point at one time, as we look for the source and, in effect, look back in time, we all seem to have been at the center of the expansion.

So, you can't really slow yourself down with the respect to the expansion of the Universe. There is no reference frame.

Oh dear, then would that mean that the Catholic Church was right about earth being the center of the universe. Scary. I hope they aren't right about too many other things or I'm in a lot of trouble.

Hi rcapper, scary as it sounds, it's true about us being at the center of the universe! OK, the observable universe. In fact each of us, wherever we are, are always literally at the exact center of out own "private" observable universe!

And yes, as pointed out above, base balls are too slow to observe any relativistic effects whatsoever. That is, unless the external observer happens to be a muon that streaks past the baseball at 0.99c.

-J

...literally at the exact center...

Yet, apparently not as the omnidirectional red-shift applies, but in the unique geometry of the perceived universe?

Can you please explain?

Excuse my off-topics here, only this one has always troubled me.

See my game post to ozzb.

Hi Yuval

You asked on my statement: ...literally at the exact center...

"Yet, apparently not as the omnidirectional red-shift applies, but in the unique geometry of the perceived universe?

Can you please explain?"

Not quite "perceived universe", but "observable universe".

All I meant with may statement was that when CMB photons reach us from every direction at a specific time, they all come from the same distance. This is obviously only true in a perfectly homogeneous and isotropic universe, as used in the global models.

It's like being on the open ocean: ignoring differences in weather and wave heights in different directions, everyone is literally in the exact center of his or her own piece of "observable ocean" ...

-J

Gee Whiz Jorrie, We let Einstein use near light speed trains and elevators without buildings. Can't this guy have a hypothetical thought process with a baseball? I know the subject said "practical" but that went away when he got to be the size of an electron.

Why don't you try being an electron sometime, yes? Einstein uses trains and elevators because they've got some heft and don't have to spend their lives dodging air molecules, atoms, ozone - I hate ionized oxygen molecules, they're always soooo positive - and whatnot (okay, so I'm a little negative. What of it?) Hey, it's a crowded, busy world at my scale, you know? Gawd, I'd give anything to be just a baseball moving at 100 MPH. You can bet I'd throw my weight around and kick some o' these snotty nitrous oxides in the mass! And yeah, there are relativistic effects at 100 MPH, but they're so minute you can't measure them without some bulky precision timer/counters and other such nonsense. Besides, who moves that slowly anyway? And you call that pokey rotation the pitcher puts on a baseball spin? You ain't seen spin, Pal. Now that's one area in which I really excel - except that I'm not actually turning. Go figure that one out, Brainiac! hehehe.

-e

That's why in another post on this subject, I said "And all the ghosts that haunt the Vatican are shouting 'We told you so!!!' "

Mankind is very self-centered. But then, so Andromeda, the Virgo Cluster, Alpha Centari, even Eta Carinae. The Holy Roman Catholic Church ain't got nothin' on these guys!

Welcome back you crackpot. Been busy eh?

Hi Vermin,

Besides, Stephen Hawkin says so! (just getting around to reading this forum so forgive me if I contribute to the beating of a dead horse).

John

Johnjohn, I post here because not only can you learn something, but one can frequently get an odd, but good natured laugh, as well.

I concur completely!

John

ericwarner notes: "For instance if you travel towards the point of the supposed big bang are you then slowing down? And if your traveling out in the direction of universal expansion, are you then speeding up?"

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What's really gonna bake your noodle is this: Everywhere you look is the point of the supposed Big Bang.

Isn't that like you being on a planet observing me on my planet hurling through space. My planet spins as it does. Now look at the stars and answer the question your self.

Yes, yes, ozzb. You see one set of starts and I see another. Now let's play a little game, shall we...

You're a Fnark living on the planet Og, while I'm a human living on Earth. Let's say our respective planets are separated by 100,000 light years. You create a device that allows you to turn back time for the entire Universe. You decide to send me one, too, via Trans-dimensional FedEx. Why, Fnarks are like that. They like to rub in the fact that Fnarks are smarter than us "monkey-boys" as you call us.

Anyway, according to the instructions, I'm supposed to turn mine on so many hours after it arrives and via FedEx. You'll know when to turn yours on because you have the tracking number from Trans-dimensional FedEx, so we are in sync. So, "click" we both start our Universal time machines. Both of us see the Universe start to change. We start to see things in the Universe moving backwards. All of a sudden we both feel a jolt as our respective planets join in on the backward regression of the Universe.

As time passes for us, we see stars, galaxies, dust clouds, etc. shooting by and you and I both see that we're going along for the ride. We don't worry about the fact that our environments are beginning to change, because you had the foresight to include an impenetrable bubble shield into our Universal time machines (good thinking).

So we start looking around and dang! We both see that our respective views of the Universe seem to be getting smaller; and it's also starting to heat up! Whoa!!! We're heading back toward the Big Bang with the rest of the Universe. Suddenly, as we're approaching "Event One" you spot something out of the corner of your eye. Hey! It's me. I'm waving frantically at you and trying to mime the question "How do we shut these things off!" You just look at me and say, "Stupid monkey-boy." and we bang together violently as we both disappear into "Event One." But, just before the lights go out, you say to yourself "Huh. That's why if we track it all backwards, we both see ourselves at the center of expansion."

"Damn monkey-boy!"

Very insignificantly. Your spin and size will not matter. The spin and the speed of the ball are so slow relitivisticaly. - let us say you were at the side of the ball moving fastest toward the batter spinning at a remarkable 600rpm this would mean you would be traveling at 101.278 miles per hour toward the batter. This would mean alpha (time dilation) would be 1.0000000000000114038527463483889.

ok, then one more question, does a bullet traveling at 4000 ft/sec. increase in size, however miniscule, due to the effects of relativity?

Nope, but it gets flatter. It shrinks ever so slightly in its direction of motion - from a stationary observer's viewpoint, that is.

There was a young fencer named Fisk,
Whose moves were exceedingly brisk,
So fast was his action,
That the Fitzgerald Contraction,
Turned his rapier into a disk

Hi David, as Europium already pointed out, a bullet traveling at 4000 ft/sec does not increase in size, it decreases in size, however minuscule, but only in the gun's inertial frame, not in the bullet's inertial frame.

The cause of the crime is Lorentz contraction, which is essentially just a measurement effect and not "real", whatever that may mean!

-J

To us, it wouldn't increase in size, it would appear shorter. Again, the speed of the bullet is not enough to "really" see any relativistic effects whatsoever.

Try something that travels several percent the speed of light.

Also, the bullet gets just a tiny bit heavier. But guess by how much?

Einstein says it gets heavier by the kinetic energy of its motion. So if you calculate the kinetic energy of the bullet, and plug that into E=mc², that's the amount of the mass increase... Not much!

Hi vermin.

You wrote: "Einstein says it gets heavier by the kinetic energy of its motion. So if you calculate the kinetic energy of the bullet, and plug that into E=mc², that's the amount of the mass increase... "

Loosely speaking, you are right, of course. I guess you know that speaking "heavier" and "mass increase" is inviting misconceptions about the relativistic situation.

One should rather talk about momentum increase here, where with "increase" we mean above the Newtonian p=mv, where m is the rest mass of the bullet. The relativistic momentum is p = mv/√[1-(v/c)²].

This is sometimes interpreted as if the mass of the object has gone to: m = m₀/√[1-(v/c)²], the "moving mass" or "dynamic mass", where m₀ is the rest mass, but this has gone out of favour for good reasons. The symbol m is currently used to simply indicate rest mass, because it is a coordinate independent quantity. The "moving mass" depends on who's measuring it.

-J

Point taken. Yep!

You would have to have a much smaller watch

With a quarkz movement...

What does your size have to do with it?

Objectivity!

When really big people say things, people tend to agree more, right or wrong.

Thats pretty subjective.

You could be right.....how big are you?

It's you who should know it best.

Oh... I see... - A rhetorical question.

Mine increases with every in-stroke, then contracts and stretched, with every out-stroke.

Well, just to be on the safe side, I would say it may somewhat depend on the counterpart side to this interaction.