boriz

Sorry about the music.

*cross post* Sorry. Granted. You feel no pain. And now your canines are pointy. Unfortunately your hunger is only satiated by human blood. I wish Dr Who could be about time travel and character, not 'inclusiveness'.

Content. Is 0.999r < 1?

1. The Kraken wondered who was next.

Flatogumpf. All the so-called 'evidence' that flat-earthers vomit.

... your hanging Tie-fighter chasing X-wing models always annoy you a little, because they are from different manufacturers and slightly out of scale from each other. And you have the same issue with your Dr Who figure and Dalek, and with your Vader and Storm trooper ...

Sir did order the crunchy soup. Waiter! There's a TARDIS in my soup.

3: Telescopes reveal that the stations lights are flashing on and off in Morse code.

About a quarter past three. Why is the sea next to the shore?

Introducing, the new Dr Who and companion...

EyeBoing. A mod that adds to the Kerbal expressions by making their eyeballs pop out on springs when they are surprised.

Banned for scaring me.

The first Mun landing went perfectly, then Buzz Kerman, while admiring the view from the porthole, noticed something moving.

Ok. That would explain it I suppose. Thank you for indulging me. Next question: Is 0.999r < 1? If so, then 1/3 = 0.333r and 3*0.333r is 0.999r. So 1/3*3 is <1?

Sorry, poor choice of words. Precisely proportional would be better. The GPS network only works because the clocks compensate for the slowing of time here in earths gravity well. If you imagine a long wavelength GW passing through the earth, it would cause the whole planet to 'bob up and down', in 4space, alternately making the clocks slightly to fast, then slightly too slow. It would average out (like any AC signal), but the peaks and troughs would be perfectly synchronised to any measurable physical distortions, such as the measurements made at LIGO. The magnitude of displacement that LIGO detects is less than the width of a proton, so even a tiny amount of time dilation could be sufficient to cancel it out. You can't separate space and time, it's one thing. Isn't it?

LIGO works by measuring the time it takes for a LASER to travel between two distant points. It uses mirrors, many 'bounces', and interference to make it extremely precise. Am I correct? Then it shouldn't work. Gravity waves [GW] 'squeeze' spacetime, so any change in the distance between the mirrors is accompanied by a precisely equal change in the local 'rate of time'. The time it takes for the LASER to travel remains locally constant, even when squeezed by a GW. A shortening of the tunnel is accompanied by a slowing of local time and a proportional slowing of the local speed of light. It's like you are using a ruler that changes length exactly in proportion to the thing you are measuring. Huge candidate GW's should pass through the instrument and remain undetected. What am I missing?

Rimworld, Minecraft, SpaceChem and 7 days to die. Mostly. Does anyone else find it odd that in 7 days to die, the symbol for being encumbered is SpongeBob proudly holding a ball?

Thanks sevenperforce, you've been very helpful. I'll take my Nobel prize money in Bitcoin please I have other questions you might be able to help with if your up for it.

You're saying that, although the analogy works as a representation or model, reality could be more complicated/subtle and one should not be mistaken for the other? I couldn't agree more, but doesn't that apply to all scientific theories? Or did I misunderstand you? (Having not studied physics formally, I often find terminology is my biggest sticking point.)

Light follows the geodesic in distorted spacetime, making it appear to bend when it's actually following a straight line (shortest path). It doesn't spread the spectrum since it acts equally on all frequencies. Diffraction is an interference phenomena, spreading out the spectra as it passes an edge. Did you ever fly a drone on a sunny day and notice that it's shadow had a bright halo? Or a similar effect when you look out of an aircraft window at it's shadow? That's diffraction.

IIRC the great Carl Sagan described it thus; Imagine you have an infinite source of sticking plasters, and you began making a ball with them. As the ball grows, the curve of the surface decreases until once the ball is half the size of the universe, the curve is zero (flat). Then if you continue, the curve becomes negative and you eventually find yourself in a confined spherical chamber, running out of space, with the rest of the universe solid sticking plasters. I have often said, the only difference between the inside and the outside of a box is it's size, and that the angles of triangles add up to more than 180 degrees. Indeed, if the triangle was big enough, it's angles would all be 90 degrees. A hypersphere is exactly how I picture it. Where did I go wrong?

"If you can get people to believe absurdities, you can get them to commit atrocities." - Voltaire.