Musing About Nothing
Hmmm. Okay. Today I'll write about things I find interesting.
There were a couple of things that puzzled me when I was little (women puzzled me when I was older.) I eventually solved one, but the other is still a mystery. If anyone knows the answer to it, I'd appreciate your telling me.
When I was a kid, I read that Einstein's theory of relativity said nothing could go faster than the speed of light, but it was theoretically possible for something like a space ship to go within the tiniest fraction of the speed of light.
At first, I thought, what if you were on that space ship and you threw a rock off the front end? What would the rock do? Would it just sit in your hand and refuse to leave? I asked people like teachers and other folks, but they basically said, "Shut up, kid, ya bother me." Obviously, I didn't ask any physicists or I would have gotten an answer. I might not have understood the answer though. It's been my experience that physicists speak in a language only intelligible to other physicists.
That didn't stop my quest for what happens though. When I learned a little more, I refined the question. I made it a cannon firing a projectile off the front end of the ship, and I added another firing another projectile off the back end at exactly the same moment to correct for any equal and opposite direction stuff.
I went along wondering about that for quite a while. Finally, I figured it out all by myself. The answer lies in the fact that, according to Al's theory, things get flatter from front to back when they travel faster. They get incredibly thin when they almost reach the speed of light. That means that, compared to our thickness here on Earth, the cannon ball really would just sit there. But, on the space ship, we'd see it fire away just like it normally would since we wouldn't be able to tell how thin we and it were so it would appear to fire the same distance at the same speed as a cannon ball here on Earth.
The other thing that still puzzles me is this. When I was little, people in Sweden drove on the left side of the road like they do in Britain. Then, for some reason, the government decided to switch everyone to driving on the right side. So, one night they switched all the road signs in the country to the other side. In the evening, people drove on the left. In the morning, they drove on the right.
Well, that's a pretty good accomplishment, but here's what puzzled me when I heard that. Before they made the change, they drove on the left. But Norway was right next to them and they always drove on the right in Norway. There was at least one road that crossed the border between Norway and Sweden.
What did they do before the change when they came to the border? In one lane, they met head on and, on the other side, they only drove away from each other.
Did they intertwine like the Shriners do on their little motorcycles in parades? Alternating one car one way, another car the other way? Was there a sort of overpass for one lane so they'd go over the other lane and come down on the other side? Or was it just an all-out destruction derby with a huge pile of wrecked cars on the side of the road?
It's one of the mysteries of life.
I like to play snooker. For those who might not know, it's a billiards game similar to pool except the balls are smaller, the pockets are smaller, and there are more rules to learn. I've been in Mexico five years now and I haven't found anyone who can beat me. Actually, one guy did beat me three games out of about two hundred, but I think that was because I'd had a few glasses of wine those nights and he didn't drink. I scratched so many times that I beat myself.
I like to run too, although right now I have tendinitis in my left hip and can only walk. Here in Mexico, they believe that races should be as hard as possible to run. They always throw in long steep hills. There's one totally insane 10K race where, for no good reason, they finish it going down an almost vertical set of concrete stairs. The risers must be about two feet. Aside from that one, almost all of the others finish up a long, steep hill.
Nowadays, I try to keep up with the latest that theoretical physicists come up with. It's not easy. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of string theory, they moved on to branes and the idea that the beginning of our universe wasn't really much of a beginning at all -- just a couple of branes bumping into each other. Then there's the possibility of teleporting and time travel which of course means multiple realities. In one of those alternate realities, I may know what happened when cars met between Sweden and Norway. I wish I'd tell myself.
There were a couple of things that puzzled me when I was little (women puzzled me when I was older.) I eventually solved one, but the other is still a mystery. If anyone knows the answer to it, I'd appreciate your telling me.
When I was a kid, I read that Einstein's theory of relativity said nothing could go faster than the speed of light, but it was theoretically possible for something like a space ship to go within the tiniest fraction of the speed of light.
At first, I thought, what if you were on that space ship and you threw a rock off the front end? What would the rock do? Would it just sit in your hand and refuse to leave? I asked people like teachers and other folks, but they basically said, "Shut up, kid, ya bother me." Obviously, I didn't ask any physicists or I would have gotten an answer. I might not have understood the answer though. It's been my experience that physicists speak in a language only intelligible to other physicists.
That didn't stop my quest for what happens though. When I learned a little more, I refined the question. I made it a cannon firing a projectile off the front end of the ship, and I added another firing another projectile off the back end at exactly the same moment to correct for any equal and opposite direction stuff.
I went along wondering about that for quite a while. Finally, I figured it out all by myself. The answer lies in the fact that, according to Al's theory, things get flatter from front to back when they travel faster. They get incredibly thin when they almost reach the speed of light. That means that, compared to our thickness here on Earth, the cannon ball really would just sit there. But, on the space ship, we'd see it fire away just like it normally would since we wouldn't be able to tell how thin we and it were so it would appear to fire the same distance at the same speed as a cannon ball here on Earth.
The other thing that still puzzles me is this. When I was little, people in Sweden drove on the left side of the road like they do in Britain. Then, for some reason, the government decided to switch everyone to driving on the right side. So, one night they switched all the road signs in the country to the other side. In the evening, people drove on the left. In the morning, they drove on the right.
Well, that's a pretty good accomplishment, but here's what puzzled me when I heard that. Before they made the change, they drove on the left. But Norway was right next to them and they always drove on the right in Norway. There was at least one road that crossed the border between Norway and Sweden.
What did they do before the change when they came to the border? In one lane, they met head on and, on the other side, they only drove away from each other.
Did they intertwine like the Shriners do on their little motorcycles in parades? Alternating one car one way, another car the other way? Was there a sort of overpass for one lane so they'd go over the other lane and come down on the other side? Or was it just an all-out destruction derby with a huge pile of wrecked cars on the side of the road?
It's one of the mysteries of life.
I like to play snooker. For those who might not know, it's a billiards game similar to pool except the balls are smaller, the pockets are smaller, and there are more rules to learn. I've been in Mexico five years now and I haven't found anyone who can beat me. Actually, one guy did beat me three games out of about two hundred, but I think that was because I'd had a few glasses of wine those nights and he didn't drink. I scratched so many times that I beat myself.
I like to run too, although right now I have tendinitis in my left hip and can only walk. Here in Mexico, they believe that races should be as hard as possible to run. They always throw in long steep hills. There's one totally insane 10K race where, for no good reason, they finish it going down an almost vertical set of concrete stairs. The risers must be about two feet. Aside from that one, almost all of the others finish up a long, steep hill.
Nowadays, I try to keep up with the latest that theoretical physicists come up with. It's not easy. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of string theory, they moved on to branes and the idea that the beginning of our universe wasn't really much of a beginning at all -- just a couple of branes bumping into each other. Then there's the possibility of teleporting and time travel which of course means multiple realities. In one of those alternate realities, I may know what happened when cars met between Sweden and Norway. I wish I'd tell myself.
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