h a l f b a k e r yA riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a rich, flaky crust
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gold foil time
With accurate timing, measure the alpha particles entry and exit. | |
I don't know if this has been done but my mental curiosity wonders if there is a time difference between an alpha particle traveling through the space of the gold foil and an empty space. Since charged and the space being full of electron orbited nuclei in the electromagnetic field, timings should be
consistent with current models.
We all know the difference of walking through an empty office and one full of co-workers.
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Interesting question. A beam of alpha particles traveling
through a material loses energy following a Bragg curve,
as individual particles in the beam collide with particles
of the material, losing energy (speed) which is deposited
into the material. So alpha particles which happen to
collide with particles of the gold foil clearly do travel
more slowly through the gold foil as a result of the
collision. I do not know what happens to alpha particles
which pass all the way through the foil without colliding
with any of the particles which make up the foil.
Presumably the alpha particles would be affected by the
electromagnetic field of the nearby gold particles, but
not substantially affected by gravity or nuclear forces
from the gold particles. For light waves, the effect of
electromagnetic fields induced in the gold foil is to
reflect the light wave (if the foil is smooth). But for alpha
particles, I would guess
electromagnetic forces would cause the alpha particles to
slow down quite a bit, as the fast-moving positively-
charged alpha particle induces a magnetic field and an
electric field in the gold foil. I would guess this would be
similar to what happens when a magnet is dropped
through a copper pipe, but sorry to say my untrained
mind does not know what would happen. |
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Sometimes when the office is only half-full of coworkers I
walk more quickly to get out of there. |
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I can see people sneaking an emitter and a receiver on
opposite sides of Fort Knox, so people can check the time. |
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You could refill Fort Knox thrice with what we're spending in 2019 on the military alone. |
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Well, light travels more slowly in anything that's not a
vacuum. |
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I wonder what happens if you declare the speed of light to be
constant *in any medium*, and simply allow the speed of time
to vary instead. |
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Dunno. There are other things going on in non-vacuum that
depend on time. |
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//allow the speed of time to vary instead// |
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You emerge from the pool late for your next appointment. |
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//I wonder what happens if you declare the speed of light to be constant *in any medium*, and simply allow the speed of time to vary instead.// - More useful to imagine *everything* travelling at c *all the time* - so if you have a graph with 3D space on the x-axis and time on the y-axis, your vector of motion through this spacetime is always of length c. So, if you're moving fast through space you're moving slowly through time, and vice versa. |
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Yes, that's sort of what I meant. Everything would be
travelling in spacetime at C (as under normal relativity), but
light would travel at C in all media. I could explain further
but my head would explode. |
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There is a sense in which, in Relativity, time speeds up or slows down in order that the fundamental principles are not broken and all the sums add up. I think what you're saying is that in your New Theory of Relativity, as well as time-dilation, the density of the medium would increase or decrease in order to make the sums add up. Different observers will experience a region of space either as totally empty or as a
treacle-like goo depending on the speed they are travelling at. |
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It's entirely possible that that's what I'm saying.
Unfortunately, I'm not smart enough to know for sure.
However, if it turns out to be a clever idea then yes, that's
definitely what I'm saying. |
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Perhaps the cleverness of the idea is also a relative concept and the same idea will appear more or less clever to different observers travelling at different speeds |
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I'm either travelling so slowly that this idea makes my brain feel as slow as treacley goo; or, I am travelling so fast that this explanation has gone completely over my head without me even noticing it. |
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//Different observers will experience a region of space either as totally empty or as a treacle-like goo depending on the speed they are traveling at// |
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Isn't light always in it's own medium?(except birth and death transitions), which means that this medium has to be affected by other stuff. |
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