Keeping young

I had a dream that people lived longer lives and kept themselves appearing young by travelling at great speeds in space. Due to relativity, they aged less quickly than those who were planted on earth. I believe it was mainly used to extend life, i.e. living more than 100 years. But I imagine that it might be one of those futile things we try to get more time out of life. In order to "live" longer, you would have to spend a great deal of life aboard a space craft traveling at great speeds. Our technology is not there where we can approach great enough speeds to really slow down time for the traveler in a short amount of invested time. Invested time being the relative time aboard the traveling vessel.

This dream got me thinking of another thoughts about relativity and light. How do we calculate the speed of light? Would we not have to know our absolute speed in the universe to make that calculation? I mean, we are on earth that is rotating on an axis. Our earth is rotating around our sun. Our solar system is rotating around our galaxy. Our galaxy may have a rotation among a group of other galaxies. The there is our "outward" speed inside the universe. That is a lot of movement. How can we calculate the real speed of a universal constant and not be calculating the relative speed?

OK, lets get some more stuff out there. To a photon, traveling at the speed of light, little or no time has appeared to have passed since it started it's outward journey from wherever it was created. When our universe started all the energy exploded outward. At the time that photons were made they have traveled outward at a constant speed. Take into account that there is gravity on all sides there should no bending just traveling at constant speed outward. Does that means that the universe has been expanding at the speed of light? Unless there is bending somewhere. I would like to get a better picture of the universe as a whole. I'm sure that I'm still thinking of our universe like people thought of the earth before they knew it was round.

But if we, and by we I mean the stuff in the universe, used to be traveling faster than we are now wouldn't we have to take that into account when calculating the age of the universe? We use numbers like 13 billion years. Can we really think that way? If there is a center of the universe that is where we can say there is absolute time. If everything in the universe is slowing down from it's expanse from that point, then it had to have been moving faster. To the center of the universe a lot more time would have passed, relatively speaking, that the stuff moving outward.

Here is a puzzler for me. If we have absolute speed in the universe in a specific direction, would photons that are created perpendicular to that motion not appear to have an arc? If not, there is an issue. Because from where it is formed it is traveling at the speed of light outward on axis x. It is also moving along axis y at the speed from where it was formed. If you were to stop at that point in the universe and watch that photon traveling on axis x and y it's speed would be greater than the speed of light. If the line from both x and y is z, and it is traveling at the speed of light in that direction, would it not appear to arc to an observer traveling on the spot that the photon was created? Also it would appear to be traveling at less that the speed of light if you could not take the y axis speed into account. Actually either way there is an issue. To me it is constant speed of light. Again, I may have a flat earth view.

If you have these answers, please let me know. If you have questions of your own, post those also.

Rocket to the moon

Last Wednesday my wife had some friends over for a craft party and I was in charge of the children. Mine are 18 months and 4 months and they are easy to keep entertained. But some of the attendees brought their children that varied in age from 6 to 9. I did not realize how quickly they would get bored. It was getting late and I was running out of options so I recommended that we go down to the park. Not too many thrills came out. When I said I wanted to go to the park to launch a rocket though, eyes lit up.

Being the age these children are, they fantasized that the rocket would go so high that it would hit the moon. Then there were questions of what would happen then "would it come back?" And I told them that if it made it to the moon it would not come back. The youngest asked if it would get stuck there and I told them yes. I told them that they would weigh 1/6th of their current weight and worked out the math of how much each of us would weigh. Using the same ratio we then dreamed of jumping six times higher on the moon. Children are generally excited about the effects and experiments of science. I think that children also have a greater knowledge of science innately than perhaps we did at their age do to growing interest in sciences, television programs and movies that relate to real world science, and access to such information on the Internet.

On our second trip (I forgot the launch bar on the first) we setup and prepared for launch. These three kids were all excited and anxious to see the launch. The cone has its own propeller blades that carry it down like a helicopter and the main part of the rocket has a parachute. I knew that my eyes might have a hard time because it had become dark and the mosquitoes were hungry so I wanted to pack up as soon as the rocket launched. I told them to keep track of both parts of the rocket. Needless to say that I will have to fabricate a new cone.

Focusing Photons

This blog is named Looking at the Sun because of the pair of Eclipse Shades I dug up yesterday. I needed them because of the bright spots in my eyes that were being formed by the focused Sun through a magnifying glass and the ensuing fire on a leaf that I was looking at. After putting the glasses on the light was not bright enough to see more than a faint glow. These glasses are designed to protect your eyes from direct view of the Sun or an eclipse. I then spent a few minutes looking at the giant ball of fusion before I went in.

Looking at the Sun is a record for my returning to learning about science. I have been out of school for some time and studying and learning about science has been little since then. Yeah, I have taken some classes at the local community college and read books and lectures of some of the worlds great scientists, but I miss the fun and excitement of experiments.
I have 2 young daughters and I want to teach them as much as I can about real world science. I'm sure that like any parent, I think that I have the world's most intelligent children and that they will change the world. Actually, they will change the world just by being a part of it. I want to arm them with knowledge that will excite them and interest them is a world that is more than struggle and survival. I want them to see the world as a place for growth, change, and discovery!
I will be keeping track here of the things that we do.