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June 10th, 2013, 09:24 PM
Just a few I've wondered about: How far can a particle decay, is there a limit? Will decaying particles eventually disintegrate into nothing? Does anti-matter decay faster than matter? Is Dark Energy composed of decayed matter?
I have to edit in one more: If a universe consisted entirely of decayed matter then is there a way to un-decay it, return it to a former state?
Err, I have no experience here, but, I would imagine that particles would degrade infinitesimally.
For cryin' out loud, look it up.
Particle decay - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I prefer to sob surreptitiously.
Why have a science forum? No one Alex,except me, can be sure those are my questions. I could be asking on someone else's behalf. You wouldn't know if I have already suggested your answer or looked it up myself.Originally Posted by AlexG
Discussion leads to additional information you may not have looked up. It provides access to resources to help clarify any answers you may have looked up.
It can provide encouragement and guidance, as well. It can provide different wording, even, that may have more of an effect than one simplified definition might.
Why do particles decay anyway? They are not "alive" .
Because they're unstable.
What makes them "unstable"? I mean that in an honest way for I do not know why a particle could become unstable to begin with if it starts out stable.
It doesn't start out as stable and then become unstable. It's always metastable, which means it's stable enough to hang around for a period of time, sometimes a long period, but will sooner or later will decay. That's what radioactive decay is all about.
Well then, as this thread looks just about over and done with can I ask a question dumb question which I cannot find an answer to, if you don't mind Zinjan?
To answer the OP, unstable particles decay until they become stable particles.
Ask away, andy.
Do ants cast a visible shadow?
Fire away Andy. I hope my dumb questions get some more air time but in case they don't, I would welcome more of the same.
There aren't any dumb questions - there are only dumb answers.
Heh, well, he asked questions and then provided his own dumb answers, didn't he? :P
Frikken ants.
Does the speed of light have a length?
In 2D.
Any Dimention
I've come to my own conclusion how to make the ants on the 2D sphere acceptable to me.
And we have another meaningless question. It's not even dumb. It doesn't rise to that level.
Am I suggesting a measurement has its own length?
Go back to the ants.
How heavy is 1 kilometre?
That canyon is a 100 years across.
Anyone trotting this out has clearly never been involved in bringing up a 7yr old boy.
Or traded posts with AndyThomasTheKey.
So once again there is no helpful answer from the SF defence league
Does the speed of light have length relative to us? On paper maybe it does, I don't know :/
Andy seems to have some very basic problems with physical dimensions and units. I wonder how color he walks at.
Exactly. If that makes sense to you, there is simply no hope. It's a sign that your neural wiring is so broken that our answering will not be able to fix it.
How much does green weigh?
Could Han Solo really have made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs (post-hoc rationalizations by Star Wars fanboyz don't count)?
Is my car's top speed 100 or 110 miles?
And finally, how many seconds in a kilogram?
All speeds are distance covered in a certain time. The speed of light is measured in metres per second. There is your length.
I was going to write its length is 299792458 meters but it didn't seem right.
Its 299,792,458 metres per second.
So, in 1 second, light travels 299,792,458 metres.
Simples!
I think the word 'per' is screwing Andy up.
No need to get per-sonal!
If energy is mass travelling at the speed of light then how do I measure it up to a speed of 299,792,458mps? I cannot see energy so I am assuming as soon as mass reaches the speed of light it suddenly disappears :/
Andy doesn't have a clue.
Now the real question, in my mind, is he really that stupid, or is he a troll?
A common enough problem, actually.
It's not traveling at light. Light is E.M. radiation and light is limited to a particular constant in regards to its speed through spacetime.
That constant is "c."
That constant is not composed of light. The speed of light does not define the constant but the constant does define the speed of light.
Everything is limited by that constant, not just light. Light is just the only commonly thought of thing that manages to max out at that speed.
Mass cannot travel at the speed of light. Only massless particles can travel at the speed of light.
You cannot watch light travelling, as you can only see light if it hits your eyes. Light can only be detected when it hits something that can detect it - you cannot measure it whilst it is in transit.
How you measure the speed of light is to shine a light at a mirror and time how long it takes before you see the light reflected back from the mirror. If you know the distance to the mirror, and know the time between the light being sent at the mirror and the light coming back from the mirror to your detector, you can calculate the speed of light.
Last edited by SpeedFreek; June 13th, 2013 at 05:22 PM. Reason: typos
Thats cool, if something was to travel faster than the speed of light would that be our new constant?
"If the speed of something exceeded the absolute speed limit of something, would that new speed be constant?"
Do you think before posting, or do you just post?
For something to travel faster than light, it would have to have less than zero mass. This seems to be an impossible situation.
Wouldn't it have to have imaginary mass? (Which sounds even more impossible.)
That is not what defines the constant in any case.
Or something we are over looking.Wouldn't it have to have imaginary mass? (Which sounds even more impossible.)
fiveworlds seems to be giving andy a run for the money as stupidest poster.
Indeed.Wouldn't it have to have imaginary mass? (Which sounds even more impossible.)
E=MC2
Energy is equal to mass travelling at the speed of light, which is nothing.
Note that it says, "Squared."
That's a formula for 'at rest.'
"c" is the constant. "c" does not represent "light."
At rest is it not E0 = m0c2
Hold on... 2D ANTS drive you crazy but you want to go there?!
Ha ha, in a way.
So if what your saying is right about "c" being the constant does that suggest that C never moves but we do.
A constant is a figure that is constant. In this case, it is a "Speed limit" of propagation in spacetime.Ha ha, in a way.
So if what your saying is right about "c" being the constant does that suggest that C never moves but we do
Hypothetically;
So C is the limit of the motorway,
Mass is the car,
Energy is the fuel?
Yeah, I guess.
Cool. So it doesn't matter how much energy I put into the tank of the car as I am not beating the limit set by the motorway unless I start to cheat. I could reduce my mass to very little and even alter the energy the car consumes but I will never break the limit of C unless I was nothing, or a ball of energy?
Yes. But... ball of energy?
I'm so used to you saying things wrong that when you say something that makes some sort of sense- it throws me off.
Its a British thing!
I can't see energy, only the results of it.. I can only break the limit of C if I were nothing or pure energy?
Quite a contrast, that.
If you were nothing, you wouldn't break anything.
'Nothing' can break the speed of light after all!
You cannot cheat. You will never beat the limit of c, even if your mass is ZERO. All massless particles can ONLY travel at c, but they cannot break that limit and move any faster than c.
I took "cheat" to refer to a concept like Warp drive, which sidesteps relativity, rather than physically exceeding light.
I know, just because I cheat doesn't mean I will win.
No, it definitely isn't.
Energy is equal to the content of the constant c2?
You forgot the mass part.
You mean nothingYou forgot the mass part.
No, I mean energy = mass x
Then I didn't forget mass, I called it content.
No, you didn't. Mass is NOT "the content of the constant c2"
If you multiply the mass by the content of that constant, squared, you get the energy. This is not the same thing.
But you don't know what that constant is or do you? NF said it isn't the speed of light so it must be the constant relevant to the matter in question therefore the content of the constant c2 is energy.
e=mc2
energy is equal to mass travelling at the speed of the constant2?
No.
e=mc2
energy is equal to mass travelling at the speed of light2?
So why don't YOU help me and try to explain, in simpleton terms how this equation is translated please because if e = energy and m = mass and c2 is the constant then what is it I am writing about so wrong?
And how can I troll in a stupid question thread, surely your the troll.
So you were taught in maths class to read X = 2Y as X equals 2 travelling at Y?
Or did you just not bother with learning?
it's supposed to be written as e = mc2. e equals mass times the speed of light squared.
Lets put different variables in there to simplify it.
assuming that z = 5
b = az2
meaning b = a times z squared
b = a times 5 squared
5 squared = 25
b = a times 25
b/25 = a
Any better?
The same as you. I learned that if 2 is next to y I need to multiply 2 by y. In relative terms terms though if 2 represented mass and y represented speed then I would multiple 2 by what ever the speed is.
So..
Energy = mass x c2.
Thanks seagypsy.
PhDemon is right. When looking at any equation, you are simply taking numerical values and adding/subtracting/dividing/multiplying them. There is no implication in any equation that one variable represents movement or any other process dealing with another variable other than mathematical processes. Variable are simply place holders for numerical values that will eventually be mathematically processed.
Andy, perhaps this will help.
Beautiful Equations (BBC) - YouTube
You really should watch the whole thing, but the part from 3:20 onwards deals with
Andy, c2 is not c x 2. It is not twice the speed of light. It should be c2 , meaning c squared. It is NOT a velocity. It is a constant, whose units are meters squared per seconds squared. When that constant is multiplied by mass,( i.e. kg), you get kg/m2/sec2 , which is the unit of energy, Joules.
Normally, I would let the answers provided stand upon my return. It's quite often that others explain it better and with more knowledge.
But I suspect that AndyThomasThekey will keep this one going for a while. He always does. In the end, we'll never be sure if he got it, or not.
As noted, repeatedly, "c" is a constant. Another constant is π (pi).
You would not say that a circle is traveling at π, would you? That would be nonsense.
E=mc2 is an equivalence at rest.
Sorry for late reply.
Seagypsy you were right I wasn't taking any notice to what you said
I agree with the equation and appreciate the help to understand it.Variable are simply place holders for numerical values that will eventually be mathematically processed.
As well as E=MC2 being the universal equation for working out potential energy I also believe it suggests what happens to mass if it reaches the speed of the light, as you all know
But the equation shows me that no mass can do this, simply because the constant is pi. NF thanks for bringing pi into it, very helpful in showing me what is implied by a constant, an endless number that is relevant to the equations success.
Troll, or the worlds dumbest poster?
I just can't decide.
There is no place in mathematics for beliefs. There is no suggestions implied or otherwise about what happens to mass if it reaches the speed of light. What part of the equation do you think suggests anything of the sort? Equations and formulas do nothing but process numbers. They do not suggest cause and effect. The purpose of mathematics is to find data. It does not interpret that data. It only identifies it.Sorry for late reply.
Seagypsy you were right I wasn't taking any notice to what you said
I agree with the equation and appreciate the help to understand it.Variable are simply place holders for numerical values that will eventually be mathematically processed.
As well as E=MC2 being the universal equation for working out potential energy I also believe it suggests what happens to mass if it reaches the speed of the light, as you all know
The equation shows no such thing. It is simply a tool for manipulating numerical values. A constant is just a variable who's value never changes. It does not imply that the value of that variable must be a number that can not easily be written down due to the infinite precision of countless decimal places it would require. A constant can hold the value of 3 or it can hold the value of 3 x101000. There is no rule that states a variable representing a constant must be some huge difficult to comprehend number.
Also, NF did not bring pi into the E=mc2 equation. he mentioned pi as an example of another constant. The constant in Einsteins equation is c. It's value will always be 299,792,458 metres per second(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light). They use c in the equation because it is easier to write.
As Einstein himself said, if you had cared to listen to the short vid, small matter moving near to the speed of light can turn to huge amounts of energy.
I did say that the equation tells me that nothing can reach the speed of light."near the speed of light" is not actually the speed of light.
There is no rule that states Energy needs a number, Mass needs a number or c needs a number. Just because the equation has been tailored to meet our mathematical needs doesn't mean the buck necessarily stops there. Right now E=MC2 is the same as 0=0x0, until I start adding values but what if I have no numbers to replace the 0's with? It doesn't matter because the equation, by itself, is enough for me understand the universal law "nothing" is going faster than the speed of light other than pure energy but then energy isn't matter so "nothing" can go faster than the speed of light.There is no rule that states a variable representing a constant must be some huge difficult to comprehend number.
Before you go, one last question?
Did Einstein know the constant existed before he made the equation?
andythomasthekey is banned for a month for trolling and derailing a thread. Since there's tid-bits of science in the thread I'm leaving sending it to general rather than trash.
And you know this because....
...he is educated.And you know this because....
...it is the only way to satisfy the relativistic energy-momentum relation for all observers. Also, because that is precisely what we observe for the two types of massless particles in existence, photons and gluons. There are other reasons related to quantum mechanics ( the Dirac equation ) and the geometry of space-time itself, but I won't bother going into that since you wouldn't understand it anyway.
This relation is true only for particles at rest.E=MC2
What constant ?
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