Degaussing and the ship was called USS Eldridge not philadelphia. Also the myth never says anything about Australia. The ship was allegedly transported to Norfolk, Virginia.
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The Staff of SOH
Black Holes and FTL; my thoughts
- Thread starter Lionheart
- Start date
Thats true on the name. Why on Earth is it referred to as the Philidelphia experiment? Perhaps its like the 'Manhatten' project. Who knows.
I had watched a couple of documentaries on TV about it. They showed the actual ship which at the time was still docked in mothballs at a yard in very rough shape.
The part on the soldiers was read at a website which had a copy of a newspaper article on the guys going transparent.
Bill
I have been working in the field of gravitational research for 10 years now (in a senior outreach position, not as a scientist - my maths is to weak for relativity) but my job is to communicate the hard science to the general public.
So maybe I can recount some info I have collected on black holes over time:
- it is correct that a black hole does not release anything it manages to attract into the event horizon (except maybe Hawking radiation - I suggest googling that) but a black hole is not a real hole in the sense that things drop into a weird dimension.
- to all intents and purposes a black hole is indeed just a cosmic body (similar to a neutron star) made up of very dense matter. It just concentrates the force of gravity for the collected matter into a small area.
- a black hole will grow as it "swallows" stuff that falls in, adding instant credibility to the idea that there is something there which it can be added to. It becomes heavier and larger as the event horizon is pushed outwards. A black hole also does not swallow another black hole - when two black holes collide, they form a larger single black hole.
- the event horizon is defined as the zone of a black hole beyond which a light particle will inevitably "fall into" the black hole.
- so the black hole does not release any light it has captured (that is actually why it is called a black hole) because light has mass and gravity acts on mass. Again, this phenomenon happens only because gravity around the black hole is so concentrated - all matter attracts light but the force is mostly not strong enough to be noticed.
- the real problem with black holes is that they also do not release information (think of information as observable causality here) so ordinary physics don't work in a black hole. A black hole has a singularity in the centre in a mathematical sense - all sensible numbers rocket off to infinity. So the state of physics in a black hole is not understood.
By the way, the phenomenon of light bending around large masses is well known in astronomy because it can be seen in far-off galaxies: scientists can actually see what is behind them because light is bent around them! Google for Einstein ring or gravitational lens.
A couple of good interviews on black holes can be found on this site: www.scienceface.org.
Best to start with Kip Thorne and Cliff Will.
An interesting fact which you may have picked up: our own galaxy has a supermassive black hole in the center! 3rd interview on scienceface.org!
Now if you were to ask about gravity that would be a REAL toughie!
Sascha
So maybe I can recount some info I have collected on black holes over time:
- it is correct that a black hole does not release anything it manages to attract into the event horizon (except maybe Hawking radiation - I suggest googling that) but a black hole is not a real hole in the sense that things drop into a weird dimension.
- to all intents and purposes a black hole is indeed just a cosmic body (similar to a neutron star) made up of very dense matter. It just concentrates the force of gravity for the collected matter into a small area.
- a black hole will grow as it "swallows" stuff that falls in, adding instant credibility to the idea that there is something there which it can be added to. It becomes heavier and larger as the event horizon is pushed outwards. A black hole also does not swallow another black hole - when two black holes collide, they form a larger single black hole.
- the event horizon is defined as the zone of a black hole beyond which a light particle will inevitably "fall into" the black hole.
- so the black hole does not release any light it has captured (that is actually why it is called a black hole) because light has mass and gravity acts on mass. Again, this phenomenon happens only because gravity around the black hole is so concentrated - all matter attracts light but the force is mostly not strong enough to be noticed.
- the real problem with black holes is that they also do not release information (think of information as observable causality here) so ordinary physics don't work in a black hole. A black hole has a singularity in the centre in a mathematical sense - all sensible numbers rocket off to infinity. So the state of physics in a black hole is not understood.
By the way, the phenomenon of light bending around large masses is well known in astronomy because it can be seen in far-off galaxies: scientists can actually see what is behind them because light is bent around them! Google for Einstein ring or gravitational lens.
A couple of good interviews on black holes can be found on this site: www.scienceface.org.
Best to start with Kip Thorne and Cliff Will.
An interesting fact which you may have picked up: our own galaxy has a supermassive black hole in the center! 3rd interview on scienceface.org!
Now if you were to ask about gravity that would be a REAL toughie!
Sascha
Bjoern
worst developer ever
Bill, is this tale about the magnetic fields for cities related to those Nazi UFOs?
http://greyfalcon.us/restored/VRIL.htm
I wonder why we didn't win the war when we had the resources to get all these fancy technologies...
http://greyfalcon.us/restored/VRIL.htm
I wonder why we didn't win the war when we had the resources to get all these fancy technologies...
Because you didn't have the manufacturing capability to bring it about. Factories, fuel terminals, power stations, everything needed to run a war machine was being bombed on a regular basis.
Under those conditions, it is hard enough to keep the war machine supplied with existing equipment, much less gear up for something new. Not to mention many prototypes got blown up or captured before they could even be built.
-James
An important distinction to make when talking about FTL particles is that we currently think it's impossible to go FTL in a vacuum.
However, FTL is possible in other substances, such as water. When this happens, you get Cherenkov Radiation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation
However, FTL is possible in other substances, such as water. When this happens, you get Cherenkov Radiation.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation
Excellent post.
http://www.ted.com/
Check that out for some really neat stuff - like stellar spectroscopy.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/garik_israelian_what_s_inside_a_star.html
And some other stuff.
http://blog.ted.com/2007/12/murray_gellmann.php
(note - these vids can't be seen if you live outside the USA last I heard
)
Bjoern
worst developer ever
I was being sarcastic in regard to those "UFO technologies", James.
I understand, but that was the case with a lot of more "conventional" projects like the "Amerika Bomber," the V-2, and the Me-262.
Had they been made earlier in the war, and in greater quantities, they could have turned the tide. But, by that point, it was too little, too late. They didn't even have the fuel to run their conventional armed forces.
-James
Wing_Z
Charter Member 2011
Reading down your post, I thought: Ha! Here's someone who could cast some light on my question, then!
Until I got to the last line, that is.
But I"ll pitch it anyway: everybody knows the effects of gravity, but are we any closer to knowing What it is?
Ghostrider
Charter Member 2012
Hey Lionheart, the first thing to realize is that "matter" that you and I see from day to day is mostly space. The only matter in an atom is in it's nucleus - protons and neutrons. They have mass, and are "matter". But take the whole atom, including it's electron orbitals, and it's like a postage stamp in the middle of a football field, with the only matter being the stamp.
When you strip away the electrons, and condense matter into protons and neutrons, and no space between them, you've got mind-boggling density.
Think: a teaspoon of this stuff weghs more than mount Everest. That's what is postulated at the center of a black hole.
I still think Sagan had the best description in Cosmos (the book).
Like I said in another thread tonight - "Gravity's just a theory - but I wouldn't bet against it."
When you strip away the electrons, and condense matter into protons and neutrons, and no space between them, you've got mind-boggling density.
Think: a teaspoon of this stuff weghs more than mount Everest. That's what is postulated at the center of a black hole.
I still think Sagan had the best description in Cosmos (the book).
Like I said in another thread tonight - "Gravity's just a theory - but I wouldn't bet against it."
Lots of different things I've heard about gravity. About the only thing I've heard anyone mostly agree on is that it's some sort of particle we've not discovered yet. Hello LHC!
Ghostrider
Charter Member 2012
Wing_Z
Charter Member 2011
Well that clears up that question, and I'm jolly glad I asked.
Ghostrider
Charter Member 2012
There have been several experiments proving that Einstein's theory of special relativity (which states that time on a moving object slows relative to an outside observer) works in the real world exactly as Einstein had predicted.
In one case, an atomic clock was flown around the world twice on a jet aircraft (once westbound, once eastbound), after which it was compared to the reference clocks at the US Naval Observatory. When compared, the "traveled" clock was off by a few nanoseconds from the stationary ones, which was exactly what Einstein's theory had predicted would happen.
More recently, the atomic clocks on GPS satellites (which move far faster than jet aircraft) require signals to reset themselves on a regular basis, since the speed the satellites travel in orbit is enough to induce relativity errors capable of rendering GPS useless if they're not corrected for.
The time dilation effect increases with speed, to the point where an observer inside something moving at the speed of light would have time completely stop relative to the outside world.
As for why FTL is impossible without using wormholes or something like that, it's all down to E=MC2
If you have an object with any mass, simply accelerating it to the speed of light requires an infinite amount of energy because the mass of the object becomes infinite as it reaches the speed of light. Since infinite energy is impossible, reaching the speed of light is therefore impossible, let alone breaking that speed limit.
Experiments with electrons (which have an incredibly small mass) in particle accelerators have proven the equation correct, since scientists have gotten an electron incredibly close to the speed of light in a vacuum, but have never been able to reach it.
The sound barrier really isn't a good comparison for the speed of light. Despite the problems in reaching Mach 1 in an aircraft, it was obviously possible to exceed that speed (bullets did so without ill effect), whereas we know of nothing with mass that's capable of reaching the speed of light, let alone exceeding it.
I've read the Revelation: Space series (fiction) and the main idea on that was they used a device that created a field that removed inertia from matter within the field to allow them to accelerate to withing a few percent of the speed of light.
I think that's a rather neat idea - don't know how feasible it is.
I think that's a rather neat idea - don't know how feasible it is.