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Does Electricity travel at the Speed of Light?


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1 hour ago, saac said:

I like that.  I've often thought what if we could discuss matters with the good and the great that have since past on.  Would Einstein,  Newton, Shakespeare, Beethoven be anxious to find out about what has progressed in their respective fields, would they still be eager to push back the boundaries .  I think they would have laid all of that passion down and would be more interested in the more human experience; going for a walk, a nice meal, conversation with friends.  It does make me wonder why we get so passionate about some things and not pay more attention to others that matter more. 

Jim 

The definition of "gerund" as it's applied to the English language has never changed, Jim.

What has also never changed is that "past", while being a noun, adjective, adverb and preposition, has never been a verb form. You mean "passed". 😆😆😆😆

Edited by cajen2
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2 minutes ago, cajen2 said:

The definition of "gerund" as it's applied to the English language has never changed, Jim.

What has also never changed is that "past", while being a noun, adjective, adverb and preposition, has never been a verb form. You mean "passed". 😆😆😆😆

So are there never any new ideas in grammar, is it truly fixed?

Jim 

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2 minutes ago, saac said:

So are there never any new ideas in grammar, is it truly fixed?

Jim 

Oh, plenty, Jim. The biggest debate in grammar is 'prescription' v. 'description', i.e. whether grammar should tell people what they should say or describe what they really say. I'll leave you to guess which one holds sway currently.

In the case of gerunds, this debate is irrelevant, as both are applicable.

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8 minutes ago, cajen2 said:

Oh, plenty, Jim. The biggest debate in grammar is 'prescription' v. 'description', i.e. whether grammar should tell people what they should say or describe what they really say. I'll leave you to guess which one holds sway currently.

In the case of gerunds, this debate is irrelevant, as both are applicable.

Heady stuff ;)  I suppose no peer review paper settles the debate rather the court of public opinion; what woks is used and wins outs.  Wait, is that not natural selection?

Jim

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25 minutes ago, saac said:

Heady stuff ;)  I suppose no peer review paper settles the debate rather the court of public opinion; what woks is used and wins outs.  Wait, is that not natural selection?

Jim

Yes indeed, Jim. For example, everything American is suddenly fashionable. Almost overnight, the past participle of 'get' (for centuries in Britain 'got') for 90% of the population is 'gotten'. Why? Because that's what Americans say. It makes my teeth ache, so I'll never use it, but I've never tried to be fashionable..... I could bore you with a list of other recent Americanisms, but I won't bother. Having said that, if anyone answers "How are you?" with "I'm good", I always think "I wasn't asking about your sexual prowess". 😄

Edited by cajen2
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My pet peave in modern language trends is adding “tated” to the end of a word. For example people now say orientated instead of oriented. I know it has now been added to the Oxford dictionary but that doesn’t make it correct.

Edited by johninderby
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4 minutes ago, johninderby said:

My pet peave in modern language trends is the trend to add “tated” to the end of a word. For example people now say orientated instead of oriented. I know it has now been added to the Oxford dictionary but that doesn’t make it correct.

Actually, 'orientate' has been used since the 19th century, so it isn't exactly Johnny come lately...

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Just now, cajen2 said:

In true SGL fashion, this thread has gone from the speed of electricity to the history of modern English in no time! 😆

Yes,  it travelled around the outside just like current through a cable :) 

My pet hate is the use of utilise when a simple "use or used" would have been fine. 

Jim 

 

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13 minutes ago, cajen2 said:

In true SGL fashion, this thread has gone from the speed of electricity to the history of modern English in no time! 😆

Although electricity was used to transmit the post and then light from the screen to reach my eyes. 😁

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2 minutes ago, cajen2 said:

Sure you don't mean 'electricity was utilised'?

Nope, that was its intended function.  Now had the  message been conveyed by Speckled Jim , the famous World War 1 carrier pigeon, well then "utilize" would have been apt.   Don't you just miss Blackadder?

Jim 

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1 minute ago, saac said:

Nope, that was its intended function.  Now had the  message been conveyed by Speckled Jim , the famous World War 1 carrier pigeon, well then "utilize" would have been apt.   Don't you just miss Blackadder?

Jim 

Oh God, yes. Comedy classics that I can watch over and over again until I can repeat the whole script, yet still enjoy.

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On 30/01/2022 at 19:29, cajen2 said:

The next time I'm travelling at 90% of the speed of light, I'll let you know....😄

 

But if there are already galaxies travelling away from you at 99% the speed of light then they will see you as travelling at that speed.

And the Battle of Jutland wouldn't have happened yet.

( I know I shouldn't start sentences with "and or but"...  I don't care ).

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17 hours ago, cajen2 said:

If there are already galaxies travelling away from me at 99% of the speed of light, they won't see me at all.....I won't have been born yet either!

We can in fact see galaxies moving away at up to about 3c !

"Speed" due to expansion of the Universe is not like kinematic velocity and this can exceed the speed of light.

Of course the lesson of relativity is that there is almost certainly something moving relative to you at all kinematic speeds up to the speed of light.

Regards 

Andrew 

Edited by andrew s
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1 hour ago, cajen2 said:

Thanks for that, Andrew. I'll add it to the fat and rapidly-growing file: "Things that make no sense to Clive".

It all points back to absolutes cajen2.  There is nowhere in the universe where you can stand, plant your flag and say "I'm not moving, I am a fixed point" .  Even your beloved gerunds are built on shifting sands :) 

Jim 

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3 hours ago, cajen2 said:

Thanks for that, Andrew. I'll add it to the fat and rapidly-growing file: "Things that make no sense to Clive".

A few years ago, I wrote a (somewhat technical) elaboration on the ideas about which Andrew has posted.

 

On 22/08/2018 at 10:41, George Jones said:

Because of spacetime curvature between "over there" and "over here", it is difficult to define the speed of an object "over there" with respect to us "over here" in a way that respects all of our everyday experiences with speed. This leads to a first explanation for the possibility of recessional speeds greater than the speed of light.

Special relativity prohibits speeds greater than the speed of light. Cosmology, however, is governed by the curved spacetime of general relativity, to which special relativity is a good *local* approximation. Consequently, we will never see anything moving faster than the speed of light in our local neighbourhood, where special relativity is a good approximation. Stuff at the edge of the universe is not in our local neighbourhood, and thus is not governed by the laws of special relativity.

Alternate (more technical) explanation for recessional speeds greater than the speed of light.

speed = distance/time, so if different definitions of distance and time are available, we can have have differing definitions of speed. The definitions of distance and time used in cosmology lead to cosmological recessional velocities that correspond not to velocity in special relativity, but to something different called rapidity (sometimes called the "velocity parameter"). In special relativity, there is a relationship between velocity and rapidity, which, for some reason is not used in cosmology. If this relationship were used in cosmology than a recession rapidity of 3.4 corresponds to a recessional speed of 0.998 times the speed of light.

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31 minutes ago, Kev M said:

The problem is that to measure the speed of light we use.......light.....!

Its always going to give the same constant result.

 

 

 

In a sense it is a circular measurement as it is expressed in units (m/s)  where the metre in turn is defined by the speed of light .  In reality when we measure the speed of light we are really measuring the resolution of our instruments.  All measurements are really subject to this same analysis really as it is not possible to measure anything in our universe from an external reference point, hence truly independent property.   On a more flippant take on it, I like measuring the speed of light using the microwave and chocolate button method - you get to eat the experiment at the end  which is always good :) 

Jim 

Edited by saac
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It's not circular.  In the modern SI system the derived units are as far as possible expressed in terms of fundamental constants.

In the case of the meter we combine c and a hyperfine transition of a Cs to define the meter. The value if c is given by definition, it could be any value, but was picked to best match the previous accepted value. 

All the gory details are here

Regards Andrew 

Edited by andrew s
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OOk so not circular Andrew, in retrospect a poor choice of wording.  I’m sure this question on the “integrity” of the speed of light is a recurring theme on the forum.  I think it stems from what some see as a cross contamination of the measurement by the units.  We have the derived unit of speed ( m/s), with the metre itself being reliant on the speed of light  (the path length travelled in  1/299,792,458 of a second).  Hence I suppose a sense of contamination – not sure !   I may have got it wrong but I think it’s this and the one way path issue that causes the confusion.  We could of course easily remedy the unit issue by using a completely different standard for the metre not reliant of light (not advocating that really) and that would at least remove that argument.  We would still see the speed of light measured as a constant. Not sure how to get round the one way path measurement though.

Jim

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