The ideas that physics can come up with, on any given day… Are more fantastical and just out-and-out more wonderful than anything Hollywood could ever come up with in the little fevered imaginations.
However, besides the fact that on its good days?
Physics is pretty hard for the average man to understand…
Most people see its crazy theories as extremely UN-applicable to life, and therefore pretty darn useless.
So for the most part THIS (below) bits of awesome gets ignored.
(Phys.org) — Philosophers have debated the nature of time long before Einstein and modern
physics. But in the 106 years since Einstein, the prevailing view in physics has been that time serves as the fourth dimension of space, an arena represented mathematically as 4D Minkowski spacetime. However, some scientists, including Amrit Sorli and Davide Fiscaletti, founders of the Space Life Institute in Slovenia, argue that time exists completely independent from space. In a new study, Sorli and Fiscaletti have shown that two phenomena of special relativity – time dilation and length contraction – can be better described within the framework of a 3D space with time as the quantity used to measure change (i.e., photon motion) in this space.
The scientists have published their article in a recent issue of Physics Essays. The work builds on their previous articles, in which they have investigated the definition of time as a “numerical order of material change.”
The main concepts of special relativity - that the speed of light is the same in all inertial reference frames, and that there is no absolute reference frame – are traditionally formulated within the framework of Minkowski spacetime. In this framework, the three spatial dimensions are intuitively visualized, while the time dimension is mathematically represented by an imaginary coordinate, and cannot be visualized in a concrete way.
In their paper, Sorli and Fiscaletti argue that, while the concepts of special relativity are sound, the introduction of 4D Minkowski spacetime has created a century-long misunderstanding of time as the fourth dimension of space that lacks any experimental support. They argue that well-known time dilation experiments, such as those demonstrating that clocks do in fact run slower in high-speed airplanes than at rest, support special relativity and time dilation but not necessarily Minkowski spacetime or length contraction. According to the conventional view, clocks run slower at high speeds due to the nature of Minkowski spacetime itself as a result of both time dilation and length contraction. But Sorli and Fiscaletti argue that the slow clocks can better be described by the relative velocity between the two reference frames, which the clocks measure, not which the clocks are a part of. In this view, space and time are two separate entities.
“With clocks we measure the numerical order of motion in 3D space,” Sorli toldPhys.org. “Time is ‘separated’ from space in a sense that time is not a fourth dimension of space. Instead, time as a numerical order of change exists in a 3D space. Our model on space and time is founded on measurement and corresponds better to physical reality.” [Read More - Mind. Blown!]
But, maybe…
Due to THIS (below) piece of applied physicist madness?
Physics will one day be recognized as the superpower it darn well deserves to be seen as.
[via Gizmodo] Scientist Uses Physics to Escape a $400 Traffic Ticket
When encountering a tricky problem, it always pays to play to your strengths. Like a scientist from UCSD who was issued with a traffic ticket for failing to completely stop at a stop sign. His response? A four-page paper describing how the ticket defied the laws of physics.
Using his understanding of angular and linear motion, Dmirti Krioukov was able to argue to a judge that the police officer who issued the ticket only thought he saw the car failing to fully stop. Krioukov explained to NBC:
“[M]y argument in the court went as follows: that what he saw would be easily confused by the angle of speed of this hypothetical object that failed to stop at the stop sign. And therefore, what he saw did not properly reflect reality, which was completely different.”
Uhuh. If that needs clearing up, his argument is based on relative velocities: to an observer—like the police officer—the car could appear to be moving at a certain velocity in a particular direction as a result of the observer’s position and velocity. If you want to read the full paper, it’s here. [Read More]
Because in truth?
Little is more awe-inspiring, at the amazingness of the inner workings of the Universe…
Than is physics.
