Recent content by Gary Boothe

Thanks all, for your illuminating comments.

I would like to make sure my interpretation of special relativity is correct. Is the following valid? An astronaut is traveling away from Earth at 95% of light speed. She turns on a headlight in the nose of the space ship. Question 1: How fast does she measure the light traveling from the...

Sorry to be unclear. Consider the mechanical vibrations of a tuning fork. In one reference frame, say the Earth's surface, the frequency of the vibration is a certain value, depending on the properties of the tuning fork. To an observer far from the Earth, is the frequency (measured to, let's...

If light was being produced in an intense gravity field, would the light be of higher or lower frequency/energy to a distant observer? I understand that the light escaping the gravitational field would be red shifted, but that is not what I'm asking. I'm asking about the relativistic effects on...

Thanks for the comments. Regarding mass variance in gravitational fields: Clocks on Earth run slower than clocks in outer space, and meter sticks are not the same, so I assumed that due to general relativity, there would be a slight mass difference that would depend on elevation. Am I wrong in...

Dark Matter, Dark Energy. Is it possible that dark matter and dark energy are illusions caused by the fact that the equations of physics are only approximations? For example, in the falling body equation, F = mg, F (the initial weight of an object) is assumed to be constant, but in fact the...

I understand that because galaxies are receding from us due to the expanding universe, that we see a red shift in the light from these galaxies. If there is a red shift, the light loses energy, but where does this lost energy go? Is it that in the photon's reference frame there is no change in...

Thanks, Peter, for the excellent reply.

On the ISS, special relativity dictates the station's clocks run slower than clocks on Earth because of the high velocity, but general relativity dictates that the station's clocks run faster than clocks on Earth because of the lesser gravity. Which effect is predominant, and do the station's...

If you want a job in the "real" world as opposed to academia, I would go with physics because physicists are frequently hired to do basic engineering work. I know this because I was a hiring technical manager for 40 years, with state, federal, and private industry, and I hired hundreds of...

A GEDANKEN EXPERIMENT REGARDING BELL'S THEOREM AND NONLOCALITYLet’s say I have four boxes with three compartments in each one, and each compartment contains either a white sock or a black sock. This is analogous to photons having spin components either clockwise or counterclockwise (black or...

Hoku; Glad you finally understand the double slit experiment. I will go on to other things.

Hoku and Lost Conjuate: When photons or electrons go through any slit ONE AT A TIME, there cannot be interference because a single particle can't interfere with itself, the particle doesn't split (what would half of an electron be like?) and furthermore particles do not form interference...

Hoku: Richard Feynman said, "The basic element of quantum theory is the double slit experiment." Indeed, if you really want to understand quantum theory, you need to thoroughly understand the double slit experiment and its implications. I believe I can help you understand it. First of all, the...

The question asked by Deepak is a very good one, and one that I have asked myself. I suppose the obvious answer is that gravitons are not affected by gravity because their exchange is responsible for the gravitational force (in accordance with a quantum theory of gravity, which of course we...