Stephen Hawking, kiss my black hole.
Stephen Hawking wrote a book called "A Brief History in Time." You probably are more familiar with him as the smart guy in the wheelchair who uses computers to talk.
The whole book is based on 2 key premises. That there is nothing faster than the speed of light and the speed of light is a constant. I am not claiming to be on his level. I didn't even understand half the book...(the half after he summed up Einstein and co). He is a genius, and should be treated as such.
But I think his whole argument is wrong. If one premise is wrong, the argument is wrong. How can he say nothing is faster than the speed of light?
- How about darkness? Darkness has to be at least as fast as the speed of light.
- How about anything we don't know about yet. How can he base his whole argument on a premise that contains the word "nothing"? Extreme words in a premise are begging to be wrong.
- Light is a wave. Anyone familiar with an osciliscope or car/home audio knows that waves lose their power over distance. Hawking/Einstein claimed that the speed of light was a constant...how can it be a constant if it loses its speed? (think this is too easy to be true...create your own wave by throwing a penny in a pond...notice that the ripples are less the further away you go). Thus the speed of light is not even as fast as the speed of light. If this simple observation is correct than I have just proved Einstein's theory of Relativity wrong (E=MC^2)
So what's the point? The point is be skeptical. Just becausewe are taught it doesn't make it so. Just because its in print, doesn't make it so.
posted by Greg at 8:16 AM
5 Comments:
Just because something, in this case light, has a wavelenght that can experience resistance and therefore slow down does not mean that it is not the fastest thing out there.
The whole idea of the article was to imagine what else could be out there. To "our" knowledge as of this date light is the fastest thing we have measured. 40 years ago we believed that blacks couldn't beat the whites in sports...
Einstein/Hawking assumed that the speed of light was a constant.
Since light is a wave length, and thus necessarily has different speeds, then Einstein/Hawking were wrong.
Am I missing something? Who knows...as the previous commentor said the whole idea of the article....and so on....and he is right.
I just want people to think about other angles of what we're told/sold.
Light is not just a wave, it is both a wave and a particle at the same time. That's its unique quality. And waves in a pond are not equivalent to light waves. They are made up of water molecules. You're over simplifying what light actually is to make your point seem more believable.
you are mistaking me for someone who cares if you believe me or not.
You are oversimplifying me to make your point seem more believable.
In any case, lets say light is a particle. Then the pond anology still works because as you pointed out water is also a particle.
Lets say light is a particle. Once it hits its fastes speed (aka its least resistence) then it has reached the speed of light. But it doesnt hit the speed of light instantly. How could it? Does your car which is essentially a massive particle reach terminal velocity instantly? No. So you must agree that there is not a constant speed of light. Perhaps when it reaches its fastest speed, that is constant. But until then it varies. Einstein's theory was based on the speed of light being constant.
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