Hrm
2003-07-31 12:56:20 ET

Wow, I haven't written in here in a while. Oh well. I'm very busy, and it's rather insane. I just finished a small geek project: The MRTG for Load Balancers online configuration database.

I may branch this out to include OIDs/Objects and references for all networked devices, and not just load balancers and SSL Accelerators.


2003-07-31 12:58:23 ET

I was in a job interview and I opened a book and started reading. Then I said to the guy, "Let me ask you a question. If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?" He said, "I don't know." I said, "I don't want your job."

2003-07-31 14:13:42 ET

So do you know the answer? Or are you just frontin'

2003-07-31 17:23:24 ET

what does it matter to you?

2003-07-31 19:33:27 ET

The person sitting in the car would have tunnel vision, because light emitted by objects near the edge of hisr field of view will have already past the observer by the time it reaches them..

2003-08-01 07:35:31 ET

But what speed will the light on your headlights travel at relative to you? and relative to the people you pass?

2003-08-01 08:50:39 ET

in theory, i would be able to see them because the speed of light is constant.
Light ALWAYS travels at the speed of light, relative to you, me, or the guy on the sidewalk as you drive past. Imagine if instead of turning on your headlights, you were throwing a ball out of your window. Lets say that you are traveling 100 mph, and throw the ball 30 mph. The guy on the side of the road would see the ball pass him at 130 mph, right? You would see the ball flying forward at 30 mph, right? <--discounting wind resistance.
one of the things which makes relativity a little difficult to understand is the fact that this is NOT so for light. The man on the sidewalk would see your headlight beams fly past him at the speed of light, which is to say that he would assert that they never left the bulbs of your car, if indeed you were driving at the speed of light, also. He would be correct.
You, however, who were also moving at the speed of light along with your car, would assert that your headlight beams traveled away from you at the speed of light.

jesus, my brain hasn't put that much out since college..i hate the ball theory, but it's true

2003-08-01 09:08:33 ET

An easy way to think about relativity is that time is not a constant; it bends to allow the speed of light to remain constant.

The light from the headlights of the car flying towards the observer at near the speed of light would be blue-shifted into much higher wavelengths; even beyond visible light. Time will also appear to speed up on the car from the point of the view of the observer, and then slow down when he leaves.

If you stand on a neutron star, and point a flashlight up, the light will escape the star at the speed of light. However, as you look up at the sky, the Universe will appear bluer, and events will appear to pass by much more quickly.

From a safe distance away from the immense gravitational field, looking down at a person walking around on the neutron star, they'll appear to move in slow motion, as time passes by at 1/3rd the rate as in little or no gravitational field.

Pre-relativity astronomers noticed that Mercury appeard to move just a tad too slow in it's orbit of the Sun. They couldn't account for this discrepency. However, relativity accounts for it, since it's closer to the Sun's gravitional field, times passes by a bit slower than on Earth.

2003-08-01 09:14:03 ET

:-)

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