So this is the point I was getting at. I could not see light leave a headlight on a vehicle travelling past me at the speed of light. A hypothetical vehicle, travelling past me in an atmosphere with particulates to be eliminated, etc, etc. Because the light leaving the vehicle would be travelling at the same speed as the vehicle, relative to me.
Well, my point here was that you wouldn't be able to directly see that light because you would have to be directly in its path. From the side you could only "see" that light reflected off of dust ahead of the car and I wanted to remove the added complication of reflection from the discussion.
The challenges of actually seeing the system posed by the question are extreme (of course!) but if we ignore the difficulties and concentrate on the thought experiment at the single instant of observation, you would be able to see light pulling away from a car traveling arbitrarily near the speed of light. Since extending the thought experiment to imagine an object traveling at the speed of light produces undefined math, it's hard to draw a meaningful conclusion about what is physically going on.
Last Edit: Nov 8, 2015 12:25:28 GMT -6 by Skitch: spelling is hard
GCID: akaSkitch
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, which if left alone in large enough quantities, for long enough, will begin to think about itself.
Skitch, thankyou for all this, makes my brain itch, in a happy way! At the risk of being spanked by a mod for going off DV; I have, due to this game, become fascinated with trying to understand code; like how off/on or 0/1 makes a dragon and colour and movement; can you point me to a site which explains the basics for a non tech type person please? My only experience w code was way back at uni chomping out Fortran cards I have also thought I wd contact the local polytechnic to see if there is a basic course. Like how do these tech-gen kids know how to develop mobile ph apps etc I don't want to DO it, just understand the concepts like trying to understand the concept of electricity Thanks!
Well, unfortunately I don't have a very good answer for you. The sites I use are platform documentation sites and professional support sites. I haven't really had to try to find a site that approaches development from a basic viewpoint. I did a quick Google of course, and there are lots of potential sites to choose from, but I have no good way to evaluate their quality or appropriateness for what you're looking for. My best advice is just to spend some time poking around and drill deeper into those sites that grab your interest quickly. And just try to have fun!
GCID: akaSkitch
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, which if left alone in large enough quantities, for long enough, will begin to think about itself.
I actually meant neither travelling towards or away from me, but perpendicular to me. Which, if I am a stationary individual, would mean circling me, i guess. If I am looking at a vehicle travelling at the speed of light, neither away from me or toward me, what would I see when they turned their headlights on?
The thing most folks struggle with when thinking about this is the "relative" part of relativity. We can only "observe" something by interacting with light, and our observations can only occur with respect to a specific frame of reference. An observer in the car is observing from a frame of reference that is moving at almost the speed of light while an observer outside the car is observing from a frame of reference that is "still" (relative to the car). The key is that the speed of light is the same for both observers independent of the frame of reference.
If the car is circling you at the speed of light, this introduces a bunch of other variables that complicate an already complex situation. A moving object that changes direction can only do so under acceleration in a direction different from the direction of travel, which requires force applied to the object. An object traveling at the speed of light has infinite mass and therefore infinite momentum and infinite inertia and therefore would require an infinite amount of force to change its direction. For the purposes of your question we can simplify the situation by assuming that the car is traveling past you at almost the speed of light and you make your observation when it passes closest to you (or perpendicular to your direction of observation). Also, to reiterate: what you are observing is light that has been emitted from the car or reflected off the car. In fact, you can't really "see" the headlights of a car unless you can see the filament emitting the light. The beams you see leaving the headlights of a car not pointed directly at you are actually light being reflected off of dust and vapor in the air (you wouldn't see this effect in empty space). So, simplifying further, lets assume there is a naked lightbulb on the roof of the car that can be directly seen from every direction.
So lets observe the car and lightbulb from several frames of reference: from inside, from the front, from the back, and from the side. Remember that the observed speed of light is a constant from each of these reference frames. From inside the car, the light from the bulb will appear to move away from you at the speed of light (in all directions!). From the front and back you would perceive the effects previously described: a blue-shifted, squashed car or a red-shifted stretched car. From the side, you will perceive a normally shaped car traveling almost the speed of light. The light reaching you from the bulb is traveling directly toward you at the speed of light but perpendicular to the car's direction of travel. You can't directly see the light leaving the bulb in the direction of travel, but if you could it would appear to be moving a little faster than the car. Similarly, you can't see the light leaving the bulb in the opposite direction of travel, but if you could it would be moving at the speed of light (which from your frame of reference would be separating from the car at almost twice light speed).
With regards to nothing travelling faster than the speed of light, I wonder what you think of entanglement? Do you think there is something massless that is connecting the particles allowing for instantaneous transmission of information?
Entanglement is a real thing and experimentally observable. Unfortunately, interaction with an entangled system presents a unique set of difficulties that make it difficult to do anything useful with it (the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and Schrodinger's cat, etc.). While we can repeatably create experiments that demonstrate entanglement we may never be able to harness it to send complex information an arbitrary distance away (so instantaneous communication and 3D printing [i.e. transportation] may never be achievable). Fun to think about though!
GCID: akaSkitch
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, which if left alone in large enough quantities, for long enough, will begin to think about itself.
especially since last event was the first time they did the banking strategy. Not all the players knew about it during or even utilized that method to its fullest so to turn around and take it away for the next event would be uncharacteristic and unfair.
I didn't know that for the Faire event. Should I know that's possible, I would have been able to get that darklin dragon
So it seems we are all kinda specualting and hoping on what would happen to the banked candies? That stinks! If I can use the banked candies, I would be about 500 short of the moon theme. I am willing to pay for that extra 500 candies to get the theme! But if I spent money and BFS didn't let us collect the banked candies, that's money wasted for nothing (don't like the new decor). I would be very upset. So can't decide if I want to take the risk
Candy collection will end on Nov 8, at which time BFS will move your banked candies into your total (if they follow the same procedure as the Faire!). The prize tent will be open for another week (until the 15th) so you can redeem your candies. You'll be able to decide at that time whether purchasing additional candy is worth it.
GCID: akaSkitch
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, which if left alone in large enough quantities, for long enough, will begin to think about itself.
Sure, but we all know that Scottie is really a Wizard. Tachyons are great! Except I have to make sure my Unicorn doesn't get into them because when he eats them he poops rainbows!
Turns out there is some interesting math around folding space/time that doesn't rule out the possibility of "moving" an arbitrarily distant location to right in front of your ship, but then you have the pesky problem of shaping the fold in such a way as to maintain your ship's structural integrity while you move through it. But the pedant in me would argue you can't be "faster" than light in such a scenario anyway because you need a non-zero distance and a non-zero time to calculate velocity and the transition point itself would have no length and you'd spend no time crossing it...
You are thinking instantaneously. The same paradox that says an arrow fired at a target can never reach it. Subtract the time at the origin from the time at the destination. Divide it into the normal distance between the two and you have the effective speed. Jayzuz Cap'n I ken no give ye Warp factor 12. The engines will blow up!
Ah, but since space/time is folded the transition is instantaneous! The time at the origin and the time at the destination are the same (obviously we have to use Universal Coordinated Time since you're likely to have crossed a timezone or two jaunting halfway across the universe [and not the watered-down UTC thing we use here on Terra... that'd be like disallowing Rigellians from entering the Miss Universe pageant!]). If we try to use the amount of time it takes the ship to approach the fold and the time to move away from the fold then we can only count the distance traveled in normal space/time during those time periods.
GCID: akaSkitch
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, which if left alone in large enough quantities, for long enough, will begin to think about itself.
Okay, if you're watching me travel in a vehicle at the speed of light and I turn my headlights on ... would you see them do anything?
Sorry. I blinked. Would you run that past me again.
Skitch You need to re read the original paper. It allows for FTL travel. Just not speed of light travel. Particles traveling faster than light have negative mass and cannot slow down to the speed of light. So all Scottie has to do is manage the translation. Back in the '80s there was a search on for Tachyons as they have been labelled.
You are also discounting warp drive departing the space time continuum and returning at a predetermined point. Of course you may need Geordie and his holo deck girlfriend to devise that system. Getting the coordinates wrong explains the occasional bit of time travel they do.
Sure, but we all know that Scottie is really a Wizard. Tachyons are great! Except I have to make sure my Unicorn doesn't get into them because when he eats them he poops rainbows!
Turns out there is some interesting math around folding space/time that doesn't rule out the possibility of "moving" an arbitrarily distant location to right in front of your ship, but then you have the pesky problem of shaping the fold in such a way as to maintain your ship's structural integrity while you move through it. But the pedant in me would argue you can't be "faster" than light in such a scenario anyway because you need a non-zero distance and a non-zero time to calculate velocity and the transition point itself would have no length and you'd spend no time crossing it...
GCID: akaSkitch
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, which if left alone in large enough quantities, for long enough, will begin to think about itself.
Yeehaw! 28:48 in the EBI, that'll be my Sanguinite pedestal!
So now I'm going to spend a few days working on non-spooky seconds and pedestals (until it's time to pull the trigger on the spookies), so I'll be sharing one or another of Darkling, Garland, Loot, Mono5, Omen, Pharaoh, Tidal, or Muse, depending on what I find in my friends' caves (because I am untrainable and somehow can't ever remember to blue-heart a different dragon than I'm working with).
GCID: akaSkitch
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, which if left alone in large enough quantities, for long enough, will begin to think about itself.
Yes... their beams would travel away from you at the speed of light!
(mind-blowing isn't it?)
Okay, if you're watching me travel in a vehicle at the speed of light and I turn my headlights on ... would you see them do anything?
Wellll... I was a little flippant in my first answer, of course, because the original question posits something not meaningful. Nothing except light can go the speed of light because the math doesn't allow it* (or the "maths" for community members who adhere to the British etymology). The original question can only be made meaningful by rephrasing it as "a car going almost the speed of light".
So given that, the followup question made meaningful is: what does an observer see if a vehicle traveling almost the speed of light turns on its headlights? To answer this question we have to define a few things and make a few assumptions. First, let's assume we're talking about a car coming toward us. When you "see" a car, you're actually seeing light that has reflected off the car itself. So if its headlights are on, you're seeing light being emitted by the headlights plus light reflected off the car. At a given instant in time, the light from the headlights and the light reflected off the front bumper left the car at the same time, but the light reflected off the rear quarter panel actually left a little bit earlier (because it had farther to travel to reach your eye). The faster the car is coming toward you, the smaller the time gap between the light leaving the front and rear of the car. This means that the car would appear squashed flat along the axis of travel. The closer the car is to the speed of light the flatter it would appear to the observer. Also, recalling that light is a wave, the wavelength of the light (the distance between the wave crests) would be squashed flat as well. This means that light arriving from the car would be higher frequency and would appear shifted toward the blue side of the spectrum (this is the Doppler effect).
These effects are reversed for a car moving away from you: the faster it's moving away, the longer the time gap between light leaving the front and rear of the car. In this case the car would appear stretched out and shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. This is why the Starship Enterprise stretches out in the instant it's jumping to warp speed **
Taken to the limit, these effects are why the idea of the car actually reaching the speed of light are mathematically meaningless: it would take an infinite amount of time to accelerate to light speed and the car would seem to become infinitely short or infinitely long to an observer (and really, who's got the time to wait around for that to happen anyway?).
* Mr. Newton didn't have the whole story... ** The Starship Enterprise can't really go faster than light
GCID: akaSkitch
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, which if left alone in large enough quantities, for long enough, will begin to think about itself.
I'd like to know what happened to your mass at the speed of light... did you increase and stretch as you accelerated until reaching to almost infinity... and then... what? That's my burning question. Does 0 = infinity in some way?
Well, the thing is, you can't actually travel at the speed of light. You can get arbitrarily close without actually getting there, but the closer you get the greater your mass gets. Your mass approaches infinity as your velocity approaches the speed of light, but even if you accelerate constantly it would take an infinite amount of time to reach the speed of light.
Zero is related to infinity in that the quotient of a division operation approaches infinity as the divisor approaches zero (but the result of the divisor actually reaching zero is undefined).
GCID: akaSkitch
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, which if left alone in large enough quantities, for long enough, will begin to think about itself.
My game's behind by 3 hours. (Nogard dixit, anyway. Could be 2 and a few minutes).
If you try to start the competition ring or spin the wheel / name that dragon, it will tell you the exact time until reset (unlike the unhelpful prisoner* pumpkin info window)
* This is now the official name.
GCID: akaSkitch
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, which if left alone in large enough quantities, for long enough, will begin to think about itself.
Time for me to start the candies shopping or I won't have room in the nursery for the new Spooky dragons if I wait till the end. By the way, will we have more time beyond the end to get the prizes, like we had during the Faire?
H The candy bash "runs through the 8th. The prisoners pumpkin is available through the 15th. So yes.
Ha! You really are feeling a bit ambivalent about Dragonvale these days, aren't you?
GCID: akaSkitch
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, which if left alone in large enough quantities, for long enough, will begin to think about itself.
Help please ...:0) What is email address for contacting backflip w/problems ? I have searched this site (but obviously not where it is posted, which i am sure it is).... I have been unable to purchase candies during last double weekend & now this double weekend ... I have contacted them 4 times regarding this & have heard nothing back...makes me think i have sent to wrong address ... Have googled problem & tried to address all the tips & helps & nothing has cleared the problem ... Get message saying "purchase has been canceled, you have not been charged, try again later" Have done latest update, checked itunes account (all in order there apparently), hard-started game multiple times, checked time clock in settings & much more ...all to no avail Any help appreciated ..thanks :0)
Apps use code that is provided by the developers of your operating system, so purchasing is actually handled by Apple (I see in your signature you play on iPad). While it's possible that Backflip has a bug in their use of the store code that completes the transaction, the problem is most likely on Apple's side. You should contact Apple first at getsupport.apple.com (let them know you have an iTunes purchasing issue). If you still want to contact BFS, use support@backflipstudios.com
GCID: akaSkitch
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, which if left alone in large enough quantities, for long enough, will begin to think about itself.
I've renamed one of my Sun dragons Ra (Egyptian god of the sun) and one of my Crypt dragons Anubis (Egyptian god of afterlife/mummification) on the off- off- off- off-chance BFS is now using dragon names when calculating odds (hey, you never know!).
GCID: akaSkitch
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, which if left alone in large enough quantities, for long enough, will begin to think about itself.
'... overwhelming goodwill, and witty humour, profound grace and compassion blended with the spice of relentless taunts.'
Note: This is an independent forum and is not affiliated with Deca Games, the developer of DragonVale.
It was created by and is managed by DragonVale fanatics.
All who observe the following brief guidelines are welcome to this great community: no personal attacks & no spam.
I have also thought I wd contact the local polytechnic to see if there is a basic course. Like how do these tech-gen kids know how to develop mobile ph apps etc
I didn't know that for the Faire event. Should I know that's possible, I would have been able to get that darklin dragon especially since last event was the first time they did the banking strategy. Not all the players knew about it during or even utilized that method to its fullest so to turn around and take it away for the next event would be uncharacteristic and unfair. 
They should just give us a wishing well and call it a day:) Yow. One reddit user is reporting different reset times for the Competition Ring and the Tree of Trials... glad I don't have that particular glitch!
