Recent content by RisingSun361

I noticed the post was from 2011, but I'm interested in this topic anyway; so instead of creating a new thread, I just replied. A discussion in this thread will still be helpful to me. I have already bookmarked Dr. Susskind's lecture.

I recently watched an episode on the Science channel where some scientists stated that they believe we might live in a hologram. How can this be? I can feel and touch objects around me. They look 3-dimensional. How can the physical world be just representations of information?

I was drinking a bottle of tea the other day, and I noticed the cap had a claim that two metals of the same type will stick together in space. Why is this? Edit: "Why" do metals...

Did Aristotle advance Western science? I know he was a geocentrist, but I'm looking at science before him, and there isn't much of anything there. The fact that he wrote down his ideas, in and of itself, seems to be an improvement in science. The fact that he was thinking, and talking, and...

Based on this type of picture, I was guessing the x-rays were coming from the center. Doesn't look like they're coming from the disk.

How is possible for x-rays to be emitted from a black hole, but not light?

Kepler's 1st law states, "All planets move about the sun in elliptical orbits, having the sun as one of the foci". But the orbit must also be barycentric. So, technically speaking, is the center of mass of the system actually at the focus, rather than the sun? And the sun itself orbits this...

[FONT=Verdana]According to this Wikipedia article on OGLE-TR-122, the lowest possible mass for a star is estimated to be around 0.07 or 0.08 solar masses. So, if a star had a mass of 0.07 suns, and the gas giant had a mass of 0.06 suns, it sounds possible that they would be in a binary orbit...

I was doing some research on the findings of the Kepler space telescope this morning. I noticed that some of the stars it has found are quite small, and some of the planets in other systems are quite large. Is it theoretically possible for there to be a situation somewhere in the universe where...

[FONT=Verdana]I'm currently reading Relativity: A Very Short Introduction. One part caught my attention: [FONT=Verdana]Does this mean that the future is already embedded in spacetime?

Thanks everyone for your replies. I went over the relevant section in the book, and it specifies spaceship acceleration rather than gravitational acceleration. All of this brings me to the following understanding: Suppose I go to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and drop an atomic clock...

[FONT=Verdana]I'm currently reading https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199236224/?tag=pfamazon01-20. The book claims that, according to the equivalence principle, acceleration and gravity have the same effects. So if gravity slows down time, shouldn't acceleration also slow down time? The book seems to...

The following is my understanding of how light travels: [FONT=Verdana]I’m driving my car at 0.8 c, and turn on the headlights. The light comes out at 0.2 c, producing a net speed of exactly 1.0 c. I see it as 1.0 c, and an observer on the side of the road sees it as 1.0 c, although the light...

If the fabric of the universe is made of both space and time, and curving spacetime affects time, then I'm guessing it also affects space. I'm aware that an object shortens in length as it approaches the speed of light. But in the case of gravity, is space relative like time? Does an object on...

When I was in school, I learned only Newtonian physics. Recently I have discovered that what they taught me was wrong, that gravity is not a force, it doesn't occur simultaneously, blah, blah, blah Anyway, based on my study of Einstein's relativity, I was wondering if it's possible to slow time...