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
Status
Not open for further replies.
I think we can take a break from Relativity now. I am keen to spend time on Cosmic Rays.

Frankly, these things worry me. Apparently:

Every square centimeter of Earth at sea level, including the space at the top of your head, gets hit by one Muon - Wikipedia every minute.

Cosmic ray physics: Extremely powerful particles are slamming into the Earth. - Vox

Some bright spark wants people to download an App that turns your phone camera into a Cosmic Ray detector:

CRAYFIS: The app that turns your phone into a cosmic ray detector.

Gonna burn battery life IMO. But who knows? A large array of inexpensive detectors.
 
Cosmic rays affected the evolution of life on Earth!

Cosmic rays may be responsible for chirality or 'handedness' in biomolecules such as RNA, DNA and amino acids.

Chirality (chemistry - Wikipedia)

Life only uses one form of molecular handedness - not the mirror image form. In the case of DNA, a single wrong handed sugar would disrupt the stable helical structure of the molecule.

Louis Pasteur first discovered homochirality in 1848. Since then, scientists have debated whether the handedness of life was driven by random chance or some direct influence.

It is now proposed that homochirality is due to the fact that the evolution of life occurred amidst the sea of cosmic radiation from space.

Researchers hypothesise that, at the beginning of life of on Earth, cosmic radiation favoured the evolution of the biological handedness we see today.

How cosmic rays may have shaped life -- ScienceDaily
 
Since Steve was unable to quantify that for you, I decided to do the necessary calculation.

High energy particles arrive at the Earth's surface at a rate of 10,000 per square metre per second.

Since the average surface area of a man's body is 1.9 square metres, he would therefore intercept 19,000 particles per second.

Given that there are 86,400 seconds in a day, the daily total of particles intercepted would equal 1,641,600,000.
Exactly what kind of "high energy particles" are these? Does it include neutrinos, which only very rarely interact with matter? I recall there are three types of neutrinos, and vagely recall reading of a recently discovered fourth kind.

As I may have posted before, I was more interesed in this stuff several decades back, but haven't really kept up other than reading the occasional science news posts from Twitter science writers and this thread. If I really wanted to understand it (or, perhaps alternatively, get a degree in physics), I'd study all this stuff a lot harder.

It's enough that I have a decent idea of how to make an audio power amp (maybe, sorta).
 
Member
Joined 2009
Paid Member
Oh, your wording threw me off.


I still don't get how two objects, each traveling faster than half the speed of light in opposite directions away from each other doesn't amount to more than the speed of light relative to each other. If you combine their speeds, it's more.
 
Last edited:
Exactly what kind of "high energy particles" are these? Does it include neutrinos, which only very rarely interact with matter?
There's a veritable smorgasbord of particles associated with cosmic radiation.

Secondary cosmic radiation includes particles such as protons, alpha particles, pions, muons, electrons, neutrons and neutrinos.

Cosmic ray - Wikipedia

The "high energy particles" to which I referred were those in the 1 x 10^9 GeV (Gigaelectronvolt) range.
 
I still don't get how two objects, each traveling faster than half the speed of light in opposite directions away from each other doesn't amount to more than the speed of light relative to each other. If you combine their speeds, it's more.
You've been shown the relevant mathematics from the special theory of relativity.

Your everyday mathematics does not apply to objects moving at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light

There is really nothing more to add - get over it! :nod:
 
www.hifisonix.com
Joined 2003
Paid Member
Neutrinos pass right through us at a rate of 60-60 billion per sq. cm (mainly from the Sun) Since they do not react with ordinary matter I don’t think they are considered HE particles or UHE particles.

IIUC, HE particles are protons or similar accelerated to very high relativist velocities. In the earlier link Steve posted, it was noted that for many of these, the production mechanism was not understood - at lower energy levels, a lot come from the Sun and they know how. But stuff like the ‘oh my God’ particle, it remains a mystery.
 
www.hifisonix.com
Joined 2003
Paid Member
You have to think about the passage of time with each object and their velocity. At 2/3 c, the speed is relativistic and time will have slowed down for both objects from their perspective, so they won’t hit each other at 4/3 c, but the figure quoted earlier per the math.

(See Einstein’s famous ‘Bern Post Office Clock’ eureka moment for how he came to understand this - and it was all linked to c)
 
I'll be back:cool:
That's music to my ears! :D
i_ll_be_bach__by_goredonefreemen_d7ak1ur-fullview.jpg
 
Member
Joined 2009
Paid Member
You have to think about the passage of time with each object and their velocity. At 2/3 c, the speed is relativistic and time will have slowed down for both objects from their perspective, so they won’t hit each other at 4/3 c, but the figure quoted earlier per the math.

(See Einstein’s famous ‘Bern Post Office Clock’ eureka moment for how he came to understand this - and it was all linked to c)
Okay, I get that. But is perspective reality? I mean the greater impact shows there is a difference between the two, oiow their practicality. How do you put perspective to use?
 
I had to know what the Bern Clock is:

BBC - Travel - The clock that changed the meaning of time

Einstein heard the toll one evening in May 1905. He had been confounded by a scientific paradox for a decade, and when he gazed up at the tower he suddenly imagined an unimaginable scene. What, he wondered, would happen if a streetcar raced away from the tower at the speed of light?

If he was sitting in the streetcar, he realised, his watch would still be ticking. But looking back at the tower, the clock – and time – would seem to have stopped. It was a break-through moment. Six weeks later, he finished a paper outlining a “special theory of relativity”.

Back to Cosmic Rays, the muons (heavy electrons) that hit our heads so regularly seem to be harmless:

Muon - Wikipedia

Decay into electrons and neutrinos which are harmless. Of course there are other types of cosmic rays.
 
Last edited:

TNT

Member
Joined 2003
Paid Member
TFH on!! :-D

//

I think we can take a break from Relativity now. I am keen to spend time on Cosmic Rays.

Frankly, these things worry me. Apparently:



Cosmic ray physics: Extremely powerful particles are slamming into the Earth. - Vox

Some bright spark wants people to download an App that turns your phone camera into a Cosmic Ray detector:

CRAYFIS: The app that turns your phone into a cosmic ray detector.

Gonna burn battery life IMO. But who knows? A large array of inexpensive detectors.
 
How do you put perspective to use?
Einstein wrestled with the same question as yours: How was it possible for two people to see the same event in such totally different ways i.e. to have two such totally different perspectives?

The answer he arrived at was simply that time can beat at different rates throughout the universe, depending on an object's speed.

From the perspective of a stationary person watching your rapidly retreating rockets, time in the each of the rockets would appear to slow down compared to his own clock which would be beating normally.

So, from that person's perspective, the rockets do not appear to separate at as high a speed as you might think.

According to Newtonian physics, your rockets, each moving at around 66% of c should be separating at 132% of c. But Einsteinian physics shows that distances in the direction of travel are shortening and time is slowing down so that the sum of these velocities is actually 92% of c.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.