Can't find the fly theory anywhere, but it works for smokers!
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3715
The other evidence that time is as "slow" or "fast" as you observe it (although the effects are the same - no trying to cheat aging!) is sleep. Never feels like 7 hours to me...
thats to do with the perception of time though, not, as herulach said earlier the relative frame. isn't it?? im confused
umm, isnt it more that while human eyes refresh at 30 times a second, flies are more like 120 times a second?
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Originally Posted by this_is_gav
Pigeons have such acuity of eyesight that a normal film running at 25 frames a second looks like a very slow slide presentation. It would need at least 250 frames a second to create the illusion of movement for a pigeon. - Another QI topic.
So perhaps flys have a similar set up, ie they can react quicker to their environment although I suspect that this is not true because I've swatted loads of the buggers inflight and resting although I do hold the notion that a fly jumps a bit backwards before it takes off.
Edit: for being stupid.
What is also strange is that your mass increases the faster you go. In order to break the speed of light then you would need more energy than that which is available in the entire universe. I did have a good equation that I wrote in pencil in a maths text book in 1991 after it was explained to me but I can't find the equivalent with a quick google search.
Last edited by iranu; 13-07-2007 at 09:39 AM.
"Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be." Frank Zappa. ----------- "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." Huang Po.----------- "A drowsy line of wasted time bathes my open mind", - Ride.
E = mc^2
Kinetic energy = mc²/(1-(v²/c²))^(1/2) - mc²
As v tends towards c, kinetic energy tends towards infinity.
"Well, there was your Uncle Tiberius who died wrapped in cabbage leaves but we assumed that was a freak accident."
iranu (13-07-2007)
^ thanks that's the one.
"Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be." Frank Zappa. ----------- "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." Huang Po.----------- "A drowsy line of wasted time bathes my open mind", - Ride.
but how?
Because. When you get right down to it it's either because god made it that way, or something to do with super strings (possibly, although it could be something else)
if v=c then v²/c²=1, therefore (1-1)^1/2=0. mc²/0 can't happen because the answer is infinity (you can't divide by zero), hence as v approaches c then KE becomes infinite.
Edited to add. KE=1/2mv^2. and v=c where c is a constant then KE is proportional to m. If KE is infinite when v=c then m (mass) must also be infinite.
Last edited by iranu; 14-07-2007 at 12:28 AM.
"Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be." Frank Zappa. ----------- "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." Huang Po.----------- "A drowsy line of wasted time bathes my open mind", - Ride.
Question then......
In theory:
Could you potentially die from the time-dilation effect that occurs on a your body while near a ( very strong ) gravitational field.
Assuming you don't get killed by the field it's self. Could you for example lose all feeling in your legs because they age slower as they're closer to the gravity field.
If you held your arm near to the gravity field, could your watch tick a second while you age a year ?
Hold the other arm out, would that age 2 years... you age 1 year... the arm and watch a second?
Could you then, for example. Make a device that never aged if you could keep it in a controlled area of 'hyper' gravity?
If we ever found a way to make artifical gravity, could it be used as a weapon against enemies... slowing down their progress without the knowledge of the affected countries?
Just to point out that gravity as every one is discussing is pathetic at manipulating time compared to that of light. Light can have a much greater influence on time than gravity can when co-ordinated correctly...Theres a scientist that is trying to build a time machine using lasers arranged in a spiral pattern. Due to the concentration of light flowing around in a circle he believes he can influence time within the circle of lasers. My memory of what I saw on TV about it is vague since it was last year. It is very interesting stuff.
My final word is that time paradoxes are probably the most confusing yet intriguing phenomenon that the human brain can think about - so I try not to.
EDIT: As luck would have it I found a clip from the show: here
EDIT2: Another video that explains what has previously been said (about time slowing as you get faster): here
Last edited by Dorza; 14-07-2007 at 02:39 AM.
You owe it to yourself to click here really.
30 times a second?
You have to be kidding me! our eyes can perceive 'frames per second' differences in an external source such as a monitor well into the hundreds (perhaps 1000's)
Then again, saying the eye can see X amount of FPS is not strictly true . The way that eyes work means that there is no 'frames per second' between the eye and the brain at play really - Its all to do with discrete measurements.
http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frame...humans_see.htm is well worth a read.
Edit - I also believe the reason a fly can move so fast is due to the way its body can detect the smallest changes in pressure / air direction around it. So by the time you have started to move your hand towards it, its felt the change and moves.
This is back to my GCSE days though, so don't take that as gospel and check it
To further complicate things, I'll add this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time
And yes, I guess time does exist in the ways expressed by the posts above.
Just a thought about gravity, I read and watched that gravity is so weak because these theoretical particles predicted by M-Theory (String Theory or Super String Theory, doesn't matter what name) called gravitons emit gravity waves and is massless (Massless because it must have infinite range, our Earth has mass but its gravitational field does not extend that far). And that these gravitons actually "leak off" our Universe because our Universe is on a Brane floating in high dimensional space. (Think of a Brane as a blanket sheet). And that these gravitons leak off into higher dimensional space and into other Branes.
IIRC, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) will be used to see if these particles exist and to see if they leak off, among thousands of other experiments.
And another thought, what about time in the Quantum World? (the atomic and subatomic world)
Yes, gravity is a very weak force. Consider your mass compared with that of the earth then jump up in the air. Your puny human muscles have just conteracted a huge mass. However, gravity does have effect over very large distances.
"Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be." Frank Zappa. ----------- "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." Huang Po.----------- "A drowsy line of wasted time bathes my open mind", - Ride.
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