5 ms·
If you pull a string that has the length of 1au, would it take 8 minutes for the other side to react to the tug, or would it move as soon as you pull the string
by jsemrau 10y ago
If you pull a string that has the length of 1au, would it take 8 minutes for the other side to react to the tug, or would it move as soon as you pull the string?
- reikonomusha 10y agoEven rarefaction obeys the speed of light. :)
- valleyer 10y agoIt would take 1 au / speed of sound in string. The 8 minutes comes from the (much faster) speed of light. Based on some googling it seems it would take roughly 1.8 years.
- ricardobeat 10y agoWhat if the string is completely non-elastic?
- mdpopescu 10y agoAt those sizes there is no such thing as "completely non-elastic" (aka "rigid").
- semi-extrinsic 10y agoThis. Diamond is one of the stiffest materials in existence. It has a sound speed of 12 000 m/s. Lightspeed is 300 000 000 m/s.
- sangnoir 10y agoHow about observing a quantum-entangled particle 1AU away from its partner? Can the speed of information surpass the speed of light? I'm a physics noob so I wouldn't know about research in the field.
- FreeFull 10y agoAs far as we can tell, the effect of measuring an entangled particle is at least 10000 faster than the speed of light. According to theory, it's instant. You can't use it to transfer any information, though.
- dragonwriter 10y agoAt any size, there is no such thing as "completely non-elastic", but at those sizes, pretending that some things are completely non-elastic is no longer a tolerable approximation.
- fennecfoxen 10y agoWhat if the string isn't actually made of matter but is made up of some hypothetical substance that doesn't follow any laws of physics? Same question.
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