Re: Fantasy "physics" - it's magic :)

>From: George LaValle <flamebringer@???????.com>
>
>Not that I mean to be picky, but one point in your discussion seems a tad
>off to me. The speed of light being 186,000 miles a second, how is 4
>million
>miles an hour a substantial fraction? not that I know any particular
>definition of what makes a fraction substantial, as such...

In physics it is commonly held that anything with a speed below c/100 is
non-relativistic as Galileian relativity works with a very high precision.

>
>Seeing as light travels 669.6 million miles an hour, that's lss than a
>fourth of a percent, yeah? I mean, hey, the earth is travelling fast enough
>as it is...I should think we'd be experiencing time dilation.
>

Well, there was such an experiment. Two atomic clocks were synchronized.
Then one was flown around the world on a jet airplane (so we're talking no
more than 300 m/s, when c is 300000000 m/s). And at the end of the trip, the
clock on the airplane was some minuscule fraction of second slower than the
clock fixed to Earth. So time dilation works even at very small speed.


>
>"So let me get this straight...You want to fly on a magic carpet to see the
>King of the Potato People and plead with him for your freedom, and you
>think
>you're completely sane?"
>
>Rimmer, Red Dwarf
>
>

Totally off topic: we don't get Red Dwarf here in Italy. Sob.

Silmacar Halfelven
Captain of the Guards of Cardolan

"Since this Galaxy began, vast civilizations have risen and fallen, risen
and fallen, risen and fallen so often that it's quite tempting to think that
life in the Galaxy must be
a) something akin to seasick - space-sick, time sick, history sick or some
such thing, and
b) stupid."




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