I have just been reprimanded by three persons for making their life even more complicated. Oh well.
What happened was physics. We were talking about relativity, a concept that is a bit hard for me to get my head around. I keep firing questions at the teacher. (keep is in present tense because it is an ongoing process). One of the many questions I asked whether l0 of the length contraction equation referred to the length at rest according to the moving object or according to the stationary object (I later figured out that I was being redundant as this was basically the same thing in both frames of reference. No wonder everyone got so confused. They probably subconsciously spotted the mistake but couldn’t figure out why my question was so confusing. XP). After much discussion, it was determined that l0 referred to the proper length in any inertial frame.
Another question was about time dilation (moving clocks measure slowly), ie. a clock travelling at the speed of light would record a time shorter than a stationary clock on earth. Here comes my dilemma: according to time dilation, a human being travelling at the speed of light would theoretically age slower than a human being on Earth. OH GOSH. I think I’ve just stumbled across a formula for immortality!!!... NOT.
What took me about two days to figure out was this: it doesn’t matter whether time appears to move slower or faster. Human beings have an average lifespan of under one century in Earth years that cannot be changed (just yet). Just because the time seems to go by slowly does not necessarily warrant a longer life. It’s just like how one year on Mars is about 2 years (687days) on Earth. Does that mean we age slower on Mars? No…. the only thing that is different is the measurement. We are STILL aging. Dang!! Bang goes that immortality theory.
By the time I figured all this out, lots of people were getting confused. Sorry, I can’t help it. It’s my nature to ask until something clicks in my head, regardless of whether other people understand it. XD
Haha, I like this article. It’s just a little bit of insight that I have gleaned from my physics class. As well as the incredibly long thought process of mine.
Cheers!
PS: When an object approaches to the speed of light, energy gradually becomes the equivalent of mass. Despite the fact that energy gets converted to mass when an object is travelling at c, increasing the mass exponentially, why hasn’t anyone tried to stop that process of mass conversion and instead use that energy to continue the acceleration of the rocket? (Put in layman terms, it seems easy, but apparently it’s a long and difficult process way beyond anything I’m likely to learn in High School. Sigh.)
PPS: Does anyone know how to insert equations into the blog? Or would you guys recommend me to stay completely off the subject because it bores you to sleep?
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