Recent content by Baggins101

Thank you for your help - I think I have the answer now. Photon interaction with electrons en-route to us causes a "fuzziness" in the elemental "fingerprints" in the light, a "standard deviation" as a consequence of the random nature of such collisions. Additional interaction with electrons...

Thanks, Drakkith. Interesting: so the reason glass is transparent is the same as the reason why different elements absorb different wavelengths of light. However... I understand the basic working of red shift (having watched Brian Cox on "Night with the Stars" :smile: ) I am sure my...

Hi. In light of that ridiculous Ham / Nye debate I have someone trying to explain away the red shift of light from galaxies by suggesting it could be due to the photons interacting with electrons or other subatomic particles en-route, thereby loosing energy and increasing their wavelength...

Is this not exactly what Susskind has already proposed? Is Hawking merely agreeing (at last) with Susskind or is he proposing something notably different to Susskind? It seems that Hawking is being given credit for Susskind's work in the press simply by admitting Susskind was right.

I do realize time dilation and length contraction are not the same as ftl travel, however I'm sure that you can see that from my viewpoint, as a traveller intent on a one way trip to settle on a distant planet, the effect is the same as ftl travel: i can get to a planet 100 light years away from...

How many planets smaller than Jupiter had been found 5 years ago? How many planets of any description had been found 20 years ago? To dismiss any possibility of future interstellar migration on the basis that we have only found one possible candidate beyond our own to date is disingenuous as it...

Establishing a permanent colony on the moon and mining minerals in industrial quantities is a very different scenario from the US moon landings however the point I was making is that time dilation and the contraction of space make interstellar migration to habitable (terra formable) planets...

Surveying the moon with a view to establishing a base for the extraction of minerals. http://mobile.extremetech.com/#/extreme/3338-chinese-rover-begins-its-journey-to-monetize-the-moon-with-video

Thanks. I'll take a look.

The Chinese are doing that as we speak, surveying for minerals. I also suspect the pressure of resources will eventually lead to mass migration, but not in my lifetime.

If the aim is human migration in human timescales then the effect is exactly the same.

Yes, it is this that surprises me: how small the Universe is, in theory at least. To be able to cross the Universe, even in theory, in human timescales is quite amazing. Is the effect a parabolic curve? How close to the speed of light, for example, do you need to get before the foreshortening...

Indeed, you are right. Yet here I am in sandles and shorts a hundred light years from Earth and I only waved goodbye to my boss yesterday. I didn't break any speed limits but the end result is just the same. Its cheating really. The rules say you can't travel faster than light yet by going...

Thanks. I do get it though. My point is that it really is irrelevant what happens to space and time while I travel (assuming this is a one way trip!). The end result is the same: me on a planet 100 light years from Earth and me only one day older than when I left. It might be a one way only...

Semantics. I will be sunning myself on a planet a hundred light years from Earth just a few of my hours after waving goodbye. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...