Addendum --

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, [2] ]

Subject: Addendum

Author:
mi chamocha

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 09:42:17 07/11/01 Wed
In reply to: Mephster 's message, "faster = shorter?" on 12:21:50 07/05/01 Thu

There is a small but philosophically vital error in Mephster's wording above (maybe it was just his choice of words, and he's aware of this already though...)

A central premise of relativity is that **there is no fundamental reference frame**. There is no way to determine if you are stationary or moving at a constant velocity. There's no such thing as absolute velocity; only velocities *relative* to other objects (hence the name, relativity).

This has some serious philosophical implications since it means that we can't talk about what an objects "actual" length is - there's no such thing. We can say what its length is in its rest frame, and we can say what its length is in a frame that is moving with respect to the object, but relativity holds that neither of these frames is preferred.

When relativists speak of the "length" of an object, they almost always mean the length of the object at rest. The rest length is the maximum length of the measured object.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]