Recent content by M1keh

Thanks mfb, that looks spot on. Not sure why it worked the way I was doing it, but using a Sun mass of (Ms*Ms)/(Ms+Me) when calculating the velocity at perihelion and then setting the Sun velocity to Ve*(Me/Ms) gives the same results without the tweak. Mind you, this still give the distance...

Oh. One more thing. What's the velocity of the Sun ? Is it Ve * (Me/Ms) ? Or can you use the formula to generate both the Earth's and the Sun's velocity ? Any idea why subtracting 1/2 Sun's velocity from Earth's works in my version ? Is it obvious from the correct formula ?

Thanks mfb. That seems to be what I'm missing. Your formula for the reduced distance doesn't show up. Can you post a test version ? When I say "doesn't work", I mean that the orbit isn't circular. However, simply deducting half of the Sun's velocity from the Earth's corrects the problem...

Folks, hope someone can point me in the right direction. I've knocked up a perl program that pushes the planets around the Sun, using F=GMm/r^2 and f=ma, but there's one adjustment I've added to make it work and I don't know why ... The routines use 'v = sqrt[GM/(r*(1 +/- e))]' to calculate...

Thanks for the response ghwellsjr. I agree that if you squash the two diagonals along the x-axis, they'd be 2D and longer than the 2L that the stationery observer measures. That's the basis for the experiment and the results. My concern is that as the mirrors can only be moving at a...

I was hoping that someone would post a reply confirming that my question was nonsense, because ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Time-dilation-002.svg No matter how many times I look at this experiment, I can see no way that the time dilation calculated can be a value less than 0.707...

Fair point, if a bit harshly put. I'll take the formulas away and see if I can plug some numbers in, to see what I get. Thanks for the link.

Ok. May as well have A1,A2,A3 on the three staging posts. If A2 sees the Bn coming, all traveling at (1hour*0.8c) intervals, A2 knows that the Bn will all hit An at the same time (in An frame). A2 sends a signal to A1 & A3 advising them that hostilities have broken out and all Bn are to be...

At the risk of angering the gods. Adding complication in the questions is only necessary because of the complications added to the theory ? Pulling out the 'relativity of simultaneity' card complicates the stage we're working on and requires more complex questions to help with our (or at least...

Actually ... If both B & C are not single observers, but observers coming in waves of 3. In A's frame all 3 B's are (1hr@0.8c) apart and all C's are (1hr@0.8c) apart, then as B2 & C2, reach A, C1 & B3 are at one outpost and C3 & B1 are at the other. Assuming B1, B2 & B3 and C1, C2 & C3 can...

Ouch. Head hurts ! Yes. I'd forgotten that one. I'll take it away and have a thunk. :-) Thanks.

Ok. Sorry to jump in on this one, but ... If you have three staging posts in a row, with A in the middle and the other two an hour away at 0.8c, according to A. All 3 are stationery with respect to A, so all can agree on the time. If B is approaching one way at 0.8c and C is approaching in...

Sorry. No. I've confused the issue ... Taking the original thought experiment, there are only the moving mirrors. The original argument goes, that the moving observer would see a signal travel directly back and forth between the mirrors, but the stationery observer would interpret the path...

Ok. Going back to the original experiment, all results are viewed from the stationery observer and his view of what is happening. The longer path for the light as measured by the stationery observer is generated purely by the fact that the source of the light is moving. If we take it in...

None of this alters the fact that if the stationery observer bounces a light signal between two mirrors whose distance is the height of the triangle, he can't measure the moving observer as traveling further than twice the distance between the mirrors. This still gives a minimum time dilation...