Can a simple wooden stick be used to send instant messages across space?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion explores the concept of using a long wooden stick to send instant messages across vast distances, such as from Earth to the Moon. Participants examine the feasibility of this idea through various perspectives, including theoretical implications of rigidity, wave propagation, and the nature of communication across distances.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Technical explanation

Main Points Raised

  • One participant humorously suggests using a long wooden stick to send messages instantaneously, referencing subatomic particle behavior and the holographic universe theory.
  • Another participant counters that a floppy stick would not transmit motion instantaneously, emphasizing that movement would propagate as a wave rather than instantaneously across the length of the stick.
  • A participant argues that when moving a pencil, the ends do not move simultaneously due to the limitations imposed by the speed of light and the nature of atomic movement within the pencil.
  • Further clarification is provided that the movement of the pencil's ends is not instantaneous and is instead limited by the speed of photons transmitting the motion through the material.
  • One participant references Einstein's rotating wheel to illustrate the impossibility of transmitting motion faster than light.
  • Another participant emphasizes that all materials transmit movement at sublight speeds, with specific examples of sound transmission speeds in different materials, such as steel and diamond.
  • A later reply expresses appreciation for the detailed explanations and acknowledges the misunderstanding regarding the transmission of motion faster than light.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally disagree on the feasibility of using a wooden stick for instant communication, with multiple competing views on the nature of motion transmission and the implications of physical laws.

Contextual Notes

The discussion highlights limitations in understanding the transmission of motion through materials, the dependence on definitions of rigidity, and the unresolved nature of how subatomic behavior might relate to macroscopic objects.

tomtom637
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A funny thing I have been thinking about and probably a lot of other people.
How would I do to send an instant message to anywhere like, for instance, to a distance as far as the moon from earth.
Easy, only by using an object that covers the distance :p A long wooden stick that I would point toward the moon and knock on it. All I need is a long tree in which get the wood and big muscles to wield it lol.
As I've just copied it from somewhere on the internet "under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them" Why wouldn't they be the same object same thing as the wooden stick.
The distance to cover and the space to cover are two different things. Withing a same object there is no space to cover and if my friend on the moon grab my stick and pull it down I would feel it instantaneously. Well the article I have taken it from is about the holographic universe theory which I advise those who don't know about it to read :) In this theory they say that these particles would be the same object, or rather, different display of the same broadcast particle.
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/hologram.html
 
Physics news on Phys.org
rigid rod FTL communication

Forget what you read "somewhere on the internet" about instantaneous, and now imagine if your long stick was really, really, floppy (like it was made out of rubber hose). You could shake one end, but the other end wouldn't move instantaneously, in fact you could watch the movement go like a wave across to the other end.

But you're thinking of a rod that is as straight and stiff as an arrow? I guess you've never seen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuHW8InB5tk"! That's right, compared to the speed of light, nothing is rigid.. and that's why you can't send an instant message from Sydney to Tehran.
 
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If you take a pencil and move it from left to right like from that [..__...] to that [...__..], won't both the ends of the pen move in the same time ? That's my point, no matter the length of the pencil and no matter its speed or acceleration but if there was people at both the ends of it, they would have the pencil slip off their hands before they even see the other end moving wouldn't they, because nothing can travel faster than light but light has to travel anyway. The pencil doesn't, both its ends just go a very short distance to compare with the distance the light has to cover. I may be wrong in which case I am sorry
 
tomtom637 said:
If you take a pencil and move it from left to right like from that [..__...] to that [...__..], won't both the ends of the pen move in the same time ? That's my point, no matter the length of the pencil and no matter its speed or acceleration but if there was people at both the ends of it, they would have the pencil slip off their hands before they even see the other end moving wouldn't they, because nothing can travel faster than light but light has to travel anyway. The pencil doesn't, both its ends just go a very short distance to compare with the distance the light has to cover. I may be wrong in which case I am sorry

This won't work. When you move your end of the pencil you're really moving the atoms of which the pencil is composed. The ones closest to your finger move first, then photons from them move the other atoms further away, and then they move atoms further away, ... until eventually the other end of the your pencil moves. So the other end of your pencil does NOT move instantaneously and is in fact bounded by the speed of the photons that move it. It may look instantaneous to you, but if you were to see it in slow motion you'd see that the process is slower than just shining a beam of light from one end of your pencil to the other. Both processes are facilitated by photons, but moving the pencil takes longer.
 
Look at Einsteins famous very large rotating wheel where the outer perimeter should move faster than light - but of course cannot, so the whole thing bends.
 
No need to over-complicate the issue with Einstein's wheel.

All objects made of atoms are not rigid. The hardest material - even in theory - will still only transmit movement down its length at a sublight speed. In fact, significantly slower: it will transmit movement down its length merely at the speed of sound in that material.

The speed of sound through steel (from here: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/sound/souspe2.html#c3) is about 6.4km/s. Waving rod made of steel that stretches from Earth to Moon will take about 16 hours to get there.

Diamond, the hardest substance known, will have a delay of a little less than 8 hours.
 
wow men :smile: thanks for the detailed answer I can really see how wrong I was. Non object can transmit the motion faster than the speed of light indeed.
 

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