What is the Universe expanding into..

Do you think there was anything before the big bang?

  • I don't think there was anything before the Big Bang

    Votes: 56 12.5%
  • I think something existed before the Big Bang

    Votes: 200 44.7%
  • I don't think the big bang happened

    Votes: 54 12.1%
  • I think the universe is part of a mutiverse

    Votes: 201 45.0%

  • Total voters
    447
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SY said:
We went into much more detail in my senior year (undergrad) E&M. I'm surprised that wasn't in your curriculum. And in our theoretical methods course, the GR stuff came in to haunt me.
My impression is that UK universities include very much less physics (and maths) in (non-physics) science and engineering degrees than many other countries. They may even include less physics in physics degrees!

Most UK EE graduates may not have been told that a magnetic field is just a Lorentz-transformed electric field; those that have been told may not understand what they have been told. EEs do a module on solid-state physics, yet they may not have solved Schrodinger's equation for a periodic potential so don't know why energy levels turn into bands.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, nearly half of the teaching staff in my old EE department had physics as their first degree.
 
Does EE refer to Electrical Engineering? If so, wouldn't the kinds of high level theoretical issues you two are talking about really only apply at the doctoral level (and not the level of a basic engineering degree, where most students are typically instructed in what works, not why it might work)?

Just curious.
 
Does EE refer to Electrical Engineering? If so, wouldn't the kinds of high level theoretical issues you two are talking about really only apply at the doctoral level (and not the level of a basic engineering degree, where most students are typically instructed in what works, not why it might work)?

EE refers to Electrical Engineering or Electronic Engineering.

I have a few EE's in my family and I'm an enthusiast. Personally I think it's quite theoretical and you need quite a lot of spatial imagination.

Then again, mathematics experts may not need theory or imagination at all, and simply number crunch their way to success in any situation.
 
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Does EE refer to Electrical Engineering? If so, wouldn't the kinds of high level theoretical issues you two are talking about really only apply at the doctoral level (and not the level of a basic engineering degree, where most students are typically instructed in what works, not why it might work)?

Just curious.

Yes, "electrical engineering." I was a chemist (with a physics orientation, my specialty was quantum mechanics of molecules), and never had an engineering course, so couldn't really speak to the EE curriculum. I encountered special and general relativity as an undergraduate.
 
Neutrinos are not faster than light.

Objects don't increase in mass when traveling at speed relative to an observer, they simply behave as they are heavier relative to an observer ie. they need more energy to accelerate relative to that observer and they will impact a stationary target with greater force. Isaac Newton would think that the object was heavier than it was if he worked out the energy and forces involved using his laws

When we talk about velocity in a relativistic sense it's important to understand that the observer is not moving. Even if he is on a fast train going a thousand miles per hour, relative to himself he is not moving at all ;)
 
Hubble was able to see to the end of the universe.... that past the universe there was no more 'stuff' to be seen. The universe is still expanding however but will stop and then the size of the universe will be larger and fixed (unless it begins to collapse ---- until the next Big Bang).


-RM

More recent data indicate that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, and will not stop or collapse. The researchers received the 2011 Nobel prize.
 
Neutrinos are not faster than light.

Objects don't increase in mass when traveling at speed relative to an observer, they simply behave as they are heavier relative to an observer ie. they need more energy to accelerate relative to that observer and they will impact a stationary target with greater force. Isaac Newton would think that the object was heavier than it was if he worked out the energy and forces involved using his laws

When we talk about velocity in a relativistic sense it's important to understand that the observer is not moving. Even if he is on a fast train going a thousand miles per hour, relative to himself he is not moving at all ;)


Yes, objects do in fact increase in mass when moving relative to an observer.
However, this fact means that mass is not a fundamental quantity.
 
It is not a matter of semantics.

The orbiting satellite delivering this message has more mass right now then it does on Earth.

This is why despite us having accurate "atomic" clocks on Earth, the satellite's clocks have to constantly be compensated, because the exact same atomic clock will run slower due to it's speed relative to Earth. (By about 6 microseconds per day)

A larger effect is the weaker gravity causes the clock on the satellite to run faster, (By about 45 microseconds per day) regardless the net result of these two time dilations results in differences of almost 40 microseconds per day.
 
I understand that the satellites for all intensive purposes behave as they have extra mass or have the equivalent of extra mass, but depending on how mass is defined it could be said that the mass has not increased, more specifically if the mass is defined as the amount of matter the satellite contains then the mass remains the same

We could say that an object with a mass of 1Kg accelerated to 0.866% the speed of light would have 2kg's of mass

Or, we could say that an object with a mass of 1Kg accelerated to 0.866% the speed of light is 1Kg with a lorentz factor of two

Six of one half a dozen of the other
 
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