Anything goes in The Snug, General Discussion's rebellious little brother. An off-topic den of iniquity where any subject not covered elsewhere may be discussed. Well, anything except golf, Star Wars and Arsenal.
Ok, I feel that this is a monstrously stupid question but it's ****ing with my head.
Right.
Lightspeed is the universal speed limit and takes roughly 8 mins to travel from the Sun to the Earth.
If I could set up a rope between here and Sun (so 93 million miles long) and arrange it so it was just short of taut (and I mean infinitesimally short of that state) so that to pull it tight from the Earth end took 1 second and pulling it tight was distributed evenly along the rope.
Would someone at the Sun end feel the rope go tight immediately? If they do, aren't you sending a signal along the rope faster than the speed of light?
I appreciate that I have been gone about a year and for this to be my second post after returning is a bit odd. The first being some transbender bashing on the non-binary thread and technically I've only wanted to know this for about 2 weeks.
White Goodman wrote:Ok, I feel that this is a monstrously stupid question but it's ****ing with my head.
Right.
Lightspeed is the universal speed limit and takes roughly 8 mins to travel from the Sun to the Earth.
If I could set up a rope between here and Sun (so 93 million miles long) and arrange it so it was just short of taut (and I mean infinitesimally short of that state) so that to pull it tight from the Earth end took 1 second and pulling it tight was distributed evenly along the rope.
Would someone at the Sun end feel the rope go tight immediately?.
Being pedantic, the 5,600 degree Celsius temperature on the surface of the sun may affect their ability to feel anything.
White Goodman wrote:If I could set up a rope between here and Sun (so 93 million miles long) and arrange it so it was just short of taut (and I mean infinitesimally short of that state) so that to pull it tight from the Earth end took 1 second and pulling it tight was distributed evenly along the rope.
Would someone at the Sun end feel the rope go tight immediately? If they do, aren't you sending a signal along the rope faster than the speed of light?
No, the longer the rope, the longer it would take to feel the pull, at the other end & your rope is 93 million miles long! It would take far more than 8 minutes to feel the pull of the rope.
I'll let warp explain the mechanics though..
A complete guess but I think 'Tu' is French for 'You' so maybe those words are derived from 'You x?!#x' ?
Interesting theory, but the French language has very few words that in fact begin with a 'w'; there are some, but not many.
However, older styles of English - which is made up of several languages, such as German, French/Latin, Greek etc - retain the 'tw' as a means of starting a word: twixt, twain etc...
Lightspeed is the universal speed limit and takes roughly 8 mins to travel from the Sun to the Earth.
If I could set up a rope between here and Sun (so 93 million miles long) and arrange it so it was just short of taut (and I mean infinitesimally short of that state) so that to pull it tight from the Earth end took 1 second and pulling it tight was distributed evenly along the rope.
Would someone at the Sun end feel the rope go tight immediately? If they do, aren't you sending a signal along the rope faster than the speed of light?
that would require the rope to be almost completely rigid. so basically a stick, and a bloody stiff one at that. in that case, yes, all the atoms of the object would move coherently and instantly.
however, a material of perfect rigidity does not exist and cannot exist, as this would mean that the speed of sound in that material would be infinite, hence faster than the speed of light, which creates some relativistic issues. but i digress...
tension propagates at the speed of sound in that medium, because the interaction between atoms is elastic and when you push the end of a stick what happens is that atoms push on the next ones and so on, taking some time.
basically, whenever you push a stick you compress it and it decompresses by moving the other end. a bit like an earthworm.
that would require the rope to be almost completely rigid. so basically a stick, and a bloody stiff one at that. in that case, yes, all the atoms of the object would move coherently and instantly.
however, a material of perfect rigidity does not exist and cannot exist, as this would mean that the speed of sound in that material would be infinite, hence faster than the speed of light, which creates some relativistic issues. but i digress...
tension propagates at the speed of sound in that medium, because the interaction between atoms is elastic and when you push the end of a stick what happens is that atoms push on the next ones and so on, taking some time.
basically, whenever you push a stick you compress it and it decompresses by moving the other end. a bit like an earthworm.
warp wrote:
that would require the rope to be almost completely rigid. so basically a stick, and a bloody stiff one at that. in that case, yes, all the atoms of the object would move coherently and instantly.
however, a material of perfect rigidity does not exist and cannot exist, as this would mean that the speed of sound in that material would be infinite, hence faster than the speed of light, which creates some relativistic issues. but i digress...
tension propagates at the speed of sound in that medium, because the interaction between atoms is elastic and when you push the end of a stick what happens is that atoms push on the next ones and so on, taking some time.
basically, whenever you push a stick you compress it and it decompresses by moving the other end. a bit like an earthworm.
Does anyone on here remember MISA the Millwall site? Nothing like that was ever posted on there........
Wasn't there a bit of a cross over of posters between them and here? I seem to recall a football match as well at one point.
It could be quite funny on there but as you say a lot of it left a bit to be desired.........
delbert wrote:Wasn't there a bit of a cross over of posters between them and here?
I did see 'a poster from here' threaten 'a.n. other poster from here' in no uncertain terms, but that must have been 15 years ago. Effin sad when you can recall things like that but not your password on a works computer
