English

[Illuminatus]

Stop HongHu! This has finally become a really useful thread to everyone.

[GeoModder]

/me edited this post...



for the hidden message...

[Illuminatus]

Don`t do it! ...... Fool! You have no idea what you have just set in motion here. You have just ensured destruction of your world.

[Snowflake]

Who me? Ok I'll stop. Ok I have stopped. I'm not going to do it.

Phew so close.

[Illuminatus]

Not you! Geo has almost set the ultimat evil in motion.

To get back to previous topic: anyone read that book, how is it named: Light of other days by Clarke and another writer whose name I cannot remember at the moment

[Hercules]

Wow Just happened on this thread because of (atm) lack of posting elsewhere.

1 First: Yes the English of non native speakers at 'Poly' is excellent: Take Kassi for example.

2 Jamski's avatar. I can understand the reference to music (that's Mahler isn't it) but the nodding sheep, I don't get. (I presume there is nothing (terribly) ontoward).

3 Time Travel:As S. Hawkins postulates It could only happen when we build a time machine. You could only travel back to the year when it first became possible to travel in time at all. A bit like the PSI gate.

Hey and the 'Back to the Future' series was not bad on logic

[Maniac]

Originally posted by HongHu
The key here is that the twin brother has to come back to earth. Before they meet (or supposed to meet) again time is normal to each of them in their own relative frame (or whatever the English word for it). But when the twin brother come back to his brother's relative frame, the earth, it is appearant that it is the spaceship that had travelled at high speed.

Why is that apparent? Why can't you say the Earth was travelling at high speed relative to the spaceship?

Originally posted by obstructor
It is relative to another location, but not relative to the starting location. You need a third location to determine that, and that can be any star.

But the spaceship, the Earth and the stars are constantly moving "through space". Heck, AFAIK space itself bends along with massive objects. So I wonder: when looking at the larger picture, does "starting location" really have any meaning in a non-Euclidian universe?

[Mr. President]

Originally posted by HongHu
I recommend you all to read some of Isaac Asimov's books.

The robot novels and short stories are the best. Foundation started off pretty good but the ending wasn't great.

[Flubber]

This was a very very odd thread

[Kody]

Don't look at me!

[Mart]

This thread is like chain reaction

[Snowflake]

Or how ones thought goes from one place to another. But yes Kody gets the credit for threadjacking.

Originally posted by Maniac

Why is that apparent? Why can't you say the Earth was travelling at high speed relative to the spaceship?

Because when he came back to the earth the relative reference frame again became the earth.

Strange thing is that if the brother that stayed on earth actually stepped on the spaceship to meet his brother when earth meets spaceship again, theorectically it should be that he is the younger one because from the relative frame of spaceship it is him and the earth that went for high speed travel. How come he never lived long enough for the spaceship to come back?

[Enigma_Nova]

An accelerating frame of reference is unsuitable to apply the laws of special relativity.

If a spaceship goes away and then comes back, it had to do some accelerating.

[Jamski]

Strange thing is that if the brother that stayed on earth actually stepped on the spaceship to meet his brother when earth meets spaceship again, theorectically it should be that he is the younger one because from the relative frame of spaceship it is him and the earth that went for high speed travel. How come he never lived long enough for the spaceship to come back?

We don't know why! But it works! Many experiments have been done with two identical watches and moderatly fast rocket travel (most famously during the moon expeditions) and every time the watch that had flown to the moon and back had less elapsed time than the one that remained on Earth.

Physics at a high level ceases to be logical.

-Jam

[binTravkin]

Physics at a high level ceases to be logical.

Maybe they are physics no more?

Regarding those post bout Isaac Asimov - have read much of him too, especially I liked that story where a robot (AI) logically proved that there is God, that humans as lesser beings as him couldnt have created him so there's certainly some higher being(-s)...
When looking at humans situation is very similar - they didnt believe that they have been monkeys once because monkeys are lesser beings and thus a higher being was needed to create humans..

Maybe the whole concept that lesser beings cant create higher ones is wrong?

Im certain it is!