Light

If light cannot escape a black hole why is it said to be the fastest thing in the universe?

 

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Hum,
It is thought gravity waves move at the speed of light.

Your question is a bit like saying a formula one car is the fastest thing on the road yet it cannot drive up Mount Everest.

Light is fast, but given a steep enough gravity slope it cannot climb up...

 

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It does, it's just that the Singularity forming the Event Horizon (the black part of your average Black Hole) is so gravitationally dense it actually bends space itself - meaning your light particle, as far as its concerned, is travelling as fast as it can away from the Singularity, but the space its travelling through is causing it to constantly head back the way it came because of its shape.

Consequently the Event Horizon marks the boundary where space itself is being bent in wards and so light on the inside doesn't progress across the threshold, simply because the threshold doesn't extend beyond the boundaries of the Event Horizon itself.

Just the effects of its presence.

Probably the most luminescent objects in the galaxy, Singularities unfortunately like to hide their light under a bushel of their own making.

 

I know this but it still means its not fast enough, a faster car will break away. Bottom line the resultant force does not go the way of the car and the tree's force on the earth is more than the car's. I'm speaking in terms of force here because anything moving carries with it force anyway, in fact nothing can move without a force acting on it in the first place. So am I right? Cool..anyway how are gravity waves produced again I've heard this before.

 

How do gravity waves travel faster than the speed of light? I was under the impression that if the sun suddenly disappeared, the Earth would continue on it's orbit and bask in it's light for a further few minutes before the darkness and gravity disturbance reach the Earth at the same time.

 

I think there should be actual and potential speed. Speed is just a measurement, its root is based on "force". If the universe where finite then it will be acceptable to have only actual speed(D/T). But our vast universe is infinite so why is it official to say something is going 4,000,000,000m/s considering that there is actually no limit to speed, because its just a mere measurement of force. Thus I think for the sake of this arguement things don't have to move for them to have speed, at least potential speed. After all speed is all force. So if the black holes possesses force you might as well claim its the fastest thing in the universe. Everything at rest has some force or the other acting on it, which can be distributed in motion to what we call speed.

Aristotle

 

Guru what he ment was, if gravity travels at the speed of light, then if say our sun disapears, the light and gravity from it will take the same amount of time to reach us, 7 minutes, so the earth will continue as planned for 7 minutes before we are plunged into darkness and thrown into outer space. and that just dosnt seem to work. Ill also say that since no one has found a particle responisble for gravity, or even a reason for it, no one can say what speed it travels at, since there is no way to measure it.

 

There is a limit to speed, and the limit to speed is the speed of light. and S=D/t is not used outside the "perfect world" in the world we use reletivistic velocities and reletivistic energy. If two objects are traveling at eachother with a certian speed, their maximum relative velocity is the speed of light as shown by Lawrence's formula v = (w - u)/(1 - wu/c^2) (or rearanged for objects traveling with eachother) w = (u + v)/(1 + uv/c^2)

I also dont understand why you consider speed to be force, speed is velocity, and the force possessed by the object (Ek) is a product of its reletovistic mass and its reletovistic velocity.

 

True at least thats what we were thought in school, but then why light cannot escape black holes if its the fastest? At least in terms of force. And doesn't relativity has to do with speed; at least time, therefore speed as well? Thus is the speed of light the same in every part of the universe? Also do black holes really swallow other black holes?

Put it this way everything whether at rest or in motion has some form of force acting directly on it, usually a number of them, and the resultant force if larger than the objects mass causes the body in motion. Remember first law of newton. Hence no force no speed and force is directly proportional to speed. Hence the theory of "potential speed",i.e the speed at which a body at rest is capable of; not necessarily in motion, think potential and kinetic energy for better understanding. The whole universe is constantly moving anyway so that pen on your desk is moving along with it whether we like it or not, which gives support to my theory on "potential speed"

Yaba yaba doo!

 

"why light cannot escape black holes if its the fastest? At least in terms of force"

A black hole has a mass so large that its gravitational feild can affect the path of a photon. The photons that get affected by the gravity of the black hole are take in by it, but they constantly try to escape, they shoot out from the black hole, but at a certain point, their path curves, and curves, untill they return back into the black hole, the point where light curves back in is called the event horizon, photons are constantly stuck in this orbit from the singular point of the black hole, and it's event horizon.

As far as force goes, its not whats relevant in quantum mechanics.

"And doesn't relativity has to do with speed, at least time, therefore speed as well? Thus is the speed of light the same in every part of the universe?"

Im afraid I dont understand what you meen. Relativistic motion covers the topic of speed if thats what you meen. And the speed of light varies, its not the same in different substances.

 

Yes

no no no no. the resultant force will put the object into motion irrelevant of its mass, aslong as there are no other forces counteracting it, mass plays a role on the momentum the object possesses as it is in motion.

Newtons laws are not used in this manner, Lawrence's formulae are used. The pen on my desk is moving yes, it has nothing to do with potential speed, it is already traveling, for this reason we dont use newtons laws, we use newtons laws in the perfect theoretical world.

 

That topic is filled with too many contradictions, but at least it thought some of us there is no absolute. If the speed of light varies then it cannot be the fastest thing in the universe because gravitational fields as that of black holes move even faster in terms of potential speed. There is a direct relationship between force and speed whether we like it or not, take away the force and the speed decreases. Speed is just the measurement of the force at a certain distance in time. What do you think? I ain't know physics expert but this one is quite a no brainer. The universe is infinite in distance and time but the speed of light is not, that just goes to show you that speed is just a measurement of the powerful and beautiful force of motion, unless we assume there is somethign as fast as infinity itself.

 

Agreed. Lawrence formular or not speed is dependent on force but force is not dependent on speed, so speed should be best reserved as a mere measuremnt of the force in motion. Force comes first and that is that, hence its anbigous to say light is the fastest thing in the universe. All depends on your point of view I guess. There are two kinds of motion, the one you can see in motion and the one you can't. Pretty eh?

 

Just to clarify:
Matter cannot travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum - the amount of energy required to accelerate a mass to c is infinite. Also, c is a constant in every inertial frame (although some evidence suggests that the value of c has changed). Information has been transmitted faster than light, I believe.

Odin'Izm - the transformation you're looking for is the Lorentz transformation. And unless you're talking around 0.1c, then Newtonian mechanics is a fine approximation.

 

Thx geo, thats what It was. But ill disagree that newton mechanics work in this manor.

 

For the love of Mary can you explain Lorentz transformation in lay man's terms, just can't figure the crap.

Which?

 

I realise I may have been a little unclear. What I meant to say is that above 0.1c, you have to use Lorentzian mechanics to get accurate answers but below that, Newton's equations provide a perfectly reasonable estimate. I wasn't trying to suggest that the Newtonian worldview is the correct one below 0.1c!

Devils_Reject: Uh, can't remember, I saw it in New Scientist a couple of years ago, I'm sure. I'll have a quick look.

[EDIT] A quick search of the New Scientist archives turns up a possible suspect on 18 Oct 2003, but you'll need a subsciption to view it. A short summary - a guy called Nimtz transmitted Mozart's 40th Symphony at 4.7c, and retrieved sufficient information so that it was recognisable. However, other experiments have shown that different parts of a pulse of light can travel faster than c, but the identifying part of the pulse travels slightly slower than c. Also, there is no clear definition of information, so that talking about the speed of information is somewhat premature.

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Before I try and explain Lorentz transformations - you understand inertial frames?