Elevator to Emptiness?

Hello dear reader. Today’s topic has been one that I have questioned a long time ago, and then forgot about it. Quite recently my housemate has shown me a cool internet tool called “Stumbleupon.” Even more recently, I stumbled upon a site that talked about the topic of Space Elevators.

So the goal for the space elevator is quite obvious. We are looking for an efficient method to travel back and forth, to and from the Moon (and other planetary bodies). The proposed method is using nano-carbon rods (these are quite strong and hard to break) to make a cable and then attach it to the moon. From this plain description, you may have found the problem. “Let’s attach this cable to an orbiting body!”

If we attach such a thing to an orbiting body, there will be adverse effects. When you attach two bodies, especially one that orbits the other, you are changing the orbiting pattern. Thinking about it, we would probably create something like a binary system. There is no real solution for that, except not to create such a device. Earth has more mass, thus, we would be swinging the moon around, which could probably knock it out of its original orbit.

As the moon is a key factor to the tide of our oceans, there could be some very adverse effects concerning our oceans. Fishing will become harder in some areas and easier in others. Sediments would be harder to for with heightened activity. Think of the “natural” disasters that would occur; Floods that seem to get stronger.

Depending on the placement of the cable attachment, we would be creating an artificial “North” and “South” pole. A new axis as to where it spins. This would change the speed in which the moon rotates. Moon gazers would notice that the dark side of the moon appears less often and the waxing and waning process is a lot slower, if not null.

We are going to find a different way to travel back and forth to parts of the solar system. We would be easily be destroying one of the only visually pleasing objects in the sky that people can see, even in light polluted areas (such as Toronto).

Problems with Time Travel (PT. 1)

I know I have broken my New Years promise, everyone does it though, so get over it. I know this is the first post in over a month and this one will be kept short, in order to study for my exams (I have one tomorrow -_-)

This topic has come from a quiz I was looking over to help study. Light was traveling faster than light. So I immediately thought about time travel because something that travels faster than light, is said to be able to travel in time.

So what happens if we build a machine that is capable of traveling in time but the actual machine doesn't move? I became quite curious and came up with this postulate. If the machine is stagnant and travels back in time, then it must exist at the same spot, at all times. That is, if it travels back in time to an era before the invention actual was constructed, then it must stay in that place for all time in between.

For example, this time machine is built in 2020 (this is highly unlikely) and I want to travel to my birth year. I will end up in the same place but on the date of my birthday. Where should this machine be built, because the past didn't have access to it? Also, think about this, if built in public, how would the population respond to you sitting in this machine traveling back in time? What if you got shot while on the machine right before the crowd disperses (or while just assembles by your point of view), when would it happen? Near your beginning of the travel or near the end?

As I said this is a short post and hopefully thought-provoking.

Radiation From Within

Hello reader,

Can you classify the Sun and a steel ball in the same category? What do you think? I think so. I know the Sun isn't metalic, but it is shiny... right? Right? Historically, this is the mother of Quantum Physics. The very beginning. Plank did well.

Anyways, the Sun and the steel ball can be categorized as... A Black Body! Do think of it the wrong way, think of black body as a scientific object. Let's dissect the word first, then we can check other fun properties.

Black: it's a shade in our "colour" scale that as my grade 8 art and grade 9 science teachers put it, "Absorb all light". White is different. It reflects all light. So if a perfectly black object absorbs all light, it is unable to reflect any light. Using this defintion of black, we can then define Black Body as an object that absorbs all light directed at it without emitting any light back (reflecting light).

The Sun can be considered a black body (Before I go any further, there is no such thing as a perfect black body in our known universe. There is only what we can approximate to be black bodies.). But you ask, why are we able to see white light emitted? This is what puzzled physicist Maxwell Plank. Not only that but with old models, we would have the Ultraviolet Catastrophe. So what changed?

Maxwell looked at the Sun (not for very long though) and thought that maybe what is being seen, was thermal energy. Energy, in the form of heat, was being converted to electromagnetic energy (light). So he figured out that the old models were wrong, and that his new formula and idea of light packets (or quanta) would help explain the empirical (experimental) data (as shown in the picture).

This new model indicated that at certain temperatures, there was a maximum intensity for a given wavelength. As the temperature increases, the maximum intensity of the wavelength increases. If you take the integration of this curve, you get infinity. The area under the curve is the energy per unit volume.

This was the problem with the old model. When you integrated the curve from 0 to infinity (wavelengths) it would say that you get infinite energy! Most of this energy was in the ultraviolet spectra. This was cause for concern! How could something forever be emitting UV radiation. This did not get picked up by health critics because they did not know of the adverse affects of UV radiation at the time.

So in all, a black body is something that emits thermal energy in the form of light and light like radiation. Oh and by the way... The steel ball, it is considered a black body at about 1000 K or 1273 degrees Celsius.

Spacetime is Kinky

*tiny post*

That's right, I said it. Dear Reader, Spacetime is Kinky. What I mean is the more kinks in your path, the less time it takes for you to reach your destination.

The reason for this is because we get out of Euclidean Geometry (what we are used to seeing) and go into Minowski Geometry. This is where we subtract values instead of adding. This only occurs with speeds comparable to light.

They Are Both Right?

Hello Reader,

So to continue with Einstein and his theory of Special Relativity, there are problem with classical physics that seem to be problematic. As we said last time, light is a constant. It onlychanges when it passes through different mediums. Keep this in mind.

Now picture a moving walkway. The wide, flat ecalator that moves in one direction (can be seen in airports). If you step on it and stand still while it moves, you are moving at the same speed as it is. but if you decide that you want to go faster, you walk, and the 2 speeds are added to give your new speed.

Classical Physics Failure #1

This is not true when you decide to shine a light while you are moving. When you shine a light while in a rocket moving at the speed of light (only hypothetical right now), then the light does not shoot ahead of you, but is matching your speed. You don't get to see any light.

Train Paradox

In this paradox we will show how 2 referance frames mystically can be right even though the conculsions are different.

Imagine a train with a passenger in the middle is moving at a constant velocity. There is another observer in the middle of a platform. As the train passes, lightening strikes both the front and tail of the train simultaneously. This occurs when the passenger and the platform observer (Joe for short) are lined up. They are both in the middle of the train.

The light reaches Joe at the same time, because he knew they were equal distances apart, he concludes that they happened at the same time.

Classical Physics Failure #2

Joe thinks that the train observer, Jane, will see the front flash first because of the speed of the train. And she does. But she has a totally different conclusion, the flash in the front occured first. If she sees it first, the event happened first.

Who is right?

Einstien said that if there are different frame of referances (perspectives) than there will never be agreement about simultaneousness of events. Therefore, both Jane and Joe are correct, in their own prospective.

This property is also involved with Length Contraction. This is the property where 2 measurments can be accurate because of the frame of referance. When I say measurements, I mean measuring anything in 1D, 2D or 3D space. NOT SPACETIME.

If you measure a desk, and you are at rest, you get an accurate measurement of the desk. Because both you and the desk are at rest. Now think of a small rocket that is able to take measurements. If it flew by with a high speed, would it get an accurate measurement? No! How could it? It can't just whip out a meter stick and measure.

Ahh.. But Time can measure distances, so is this accurate? Nope! The rocket actually is going to pass it faster than it can get an accurate measurement. The rocket will not get a proper length even though it will get a proper time for 2 event to occur.

See and Be Seen

Hello Reader,

As a society that really wants to be seen, make a scene and individuals wanting to be noticed for something, we seem to be putting a bit of effort for the opposite! Ever wonder if not being seen is possible? Reader, I'm talking about invisibility. Using a device to hide oneself from other people's vision. Kind of like the Invisibility Cloak from Harry Potter.

*key idea: you need 2 main things for vision to occur. Object to be seen and an observer. Without either one, nothing can be seen*

For invisibility to work, the material being used must not be seen by the observer. As shown in the picture to the right, the material has to be able to reflect of the material, hit another above the object and bounce off the back. Unfortunately, this is very hard and maybe even impossible to do (have something follow you from above).

Let's take a step back for a second though. Light is an electromagnetic wave (we also know now, that it is a particle). That is, it changes from an electric field to a magnetic field very quickly. We know this thanks to James Maxwell. He also had thoughts about invisibility.

We know that most liquids and gases are "invisible" (transparent), but why is that? Atoms in higher excited states (due to heat, pressure or a bigger volume) have more spaces between them. This is a key role for such visibility problems. If the spaces between the atoms are greater than the wavelength of the light, then light is not given off. What about diamonds? Why can I see right through them? Some solids have special properties.they are called Lattices'. The atoms are arranged so that there are equal spaces between each other and is organised!

So how do we use such properties to become unseen? New materials are being worked on in laboratories called Metamaterial. These are materials that can bend light waves. So far, we are able to bend microwaves (smaller than infrared).

Light have a property called the index of refraction. If you have ever gone fishing and saw a fish in the water and decided to put a net over the fish, you know that you didn't catch it. this is because the index of refraction is responsible for the bending of light. This concept needs to be applied to an invisibility device. Metamaterial is special, in which it actually has a negative value for the index of refraction (everything you can see will always have a positive value).

This is quite close to the concept of Fibre Optics. In a fibre optic tube, light is bent at a 90 degree angle so nothing passes through it but stays contained in the tube. The US military has a device that uses fibre optics for an "invisible" cloaking device. this is the closest we are to such a cloaking device.

In Michio Kaku's book, Physics of the Impossible, he rates invisibility a class 1 impossibility. This means that it is not possible now, but will be in a matter of a decade.