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What I take away from these stories is not how to calculate the speed of light, but how to discover things previously not known. Observe something on the edge
by maeon3 14y ago
What I take away from these stories is not how to calculate the speed of light, but how to discover things previously not known. Observe something on the edge of what is known, (the orbital period of IO), take better measurements than ever before (creating new measurement technologies), observe unexplained phenomenon (the annual increase/decrease in the orbital period of IO), and apply tried and true mathematical principles: (given the distance between planets, and the observed orbital period, solve for speed of light).
It's this process that will answer other unanswered questions in our physics engine, another one for example being whether or not photons degrade, or if it is possible to remove the higgs boson from matter, rendering it with no mass.
- tripzilch 14y agoInteresting. Put it like that the large hadron collider is just a natural consequence :)
- gus_massa 14y agoThe Higgs bosons don't live inside the matter, so it's not possible to remove them. It's more complicated, and difficult to explain without a few algebra and physics study years, but let's try with another broken analogy: The Higgs field is like an invisible background. When the particles bounce against this background the effective effect is that the particles have apparent mass. Sometimes, the particles create bumps in the background; these bumps can move and they are the Higgs bosons. It's (probably) not possible to remove the background to make the particles "lighter". (The equations are so clear, the analogy explanations are so confusing. :( )