----------------- 2001 - Fast Speed and Short Time
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- I am fascinated by time and space. Both seem so fundamental, yet, Einstein’s Theory of relativity proves that time and space are not absolutes. They are relative. They are one thing, not two things, spacetime is one thing. Space and Time bend and curve when they interact with mass. Mass tells spacetime how to bend and spacetime tells mass how to move.
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- The ratio of space over time is the speed of motion. Speed = distance / time. And, it appears that everything in the Universe is moving with some velocity. We measure time with the Earth’s rotation. Earth takes one rotation on its axis every 86,400 seconds. On the surface of Earth your speed of rotation depends upon your latitude. At the equator it is moving at 1,040 miles per hour. In Santa Rosa at 38 degrees, 20 minutes, 12 seconds latitude, 174 feet elevation we are traveling at 645.1 miles per hour.
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- If you are walking east at 4 miles per hour with Earth’s rotation you are moving at 649 miles per hour. If you are driving home to Santa Rosa coming from the ocean, at 65mph you are moving at 710 miles per hour. If you are in a plane flying home from Japan you are moving 1,245 miles per hour but the air around the plane is traveling at the same speed as the Earth which is 645 miles per hour. The plane is traveling 600 mph relative to the air and the ground.
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- Let’s compare the planets that have a rotational speed about their axis, measured at the equator, and an orbital speed about the Sun, all in miles per hour.
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------------------ Planet ------------------- Rotational ------------------- Orbital
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------------------ Mercury ------------------- 6.8 ------------------------- 107,098
------------------ Venus ---------------------- 4.1 -------------------------- 78,341
------------------ Earth ---------------------- 1040 ------------------------- 66,629
------------------ Mars ----------------------- 539 --------------------------- 53,979
------------------ Jupiter ------------------- 28,361 ------------------------- 29,236
------------------ Saturn -------------------- 22,994--------------------------- 21,614
------------------ Uranus --------------------- 5,788 ------------------------- 15,290
------------------ Neptune -------------------- 6,001 ------------------------- 12,253
------------------ Pluto ----------------------- 30.4 --------------------------- 10,620
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Halley’s comet when closest to the Sun is traveling at 12,070 miles per hour. When farthest from the Sun, 2,039 miles per hour. The Sun is rotating at 2,231 miles per hour and orbiting the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.
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------------------ Sun ------------------------- 2,231 ------------------------- 486,000
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- Note that the planets are going slower the farther they are from the Sun. This is the result of the law of conversation of angular momentum. Momentum is mass times velocity. p = m*v. Planets have elliptical orbits and they travel faster when closer to the Sun and slower when farther away because angular velocity is measured in tangential speed times the radius. The planets distance from the Sun is the radius. These tangential orbital velocities are the averages between the maximum and minimum radii. Rotational speeds are given for the surface at the plant’s equator, which is also a tangential velocity.
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- The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is speeding towards the center of the Milky Way galaxy at 220,000 miles per hour. Because our Solar System’s orbit is today is going towards M31 we happen to be approaching Andromeda at 676,000 miles per hour.
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- Our Local Group of 36 galaxies, the Milky Way and Andromeda being the biggest, is speeding toward the Great Attractor in the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. One of the galaxies representing an average, M84, is receding at 2,370,000 miles per hour. M84 is 50,000,000 lightyears away. The Coma Custer of Galaxies which is 350,000,000 lightyears away contains 10,000 galaxies that are receding at 16,000,000 miles per hour. The Universe is expanding. So what gets complicated is that the galaxies are not traveling at 16 million miles per hour by themselves. It is the space between us and the galaxies that is expanding to cause our separation to be expanding sending us away from each other at 16 million miles per hour.
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- The Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, which is the most distant radiation we can observe, is 13,700,000,000 lightyears away. It is receding away from us at nearly the speed of light. Light radiation is the fastest velocity known. It speeds around your backyard and from as far away as the farthest galaxy at 670,615,200 miles per hour. This is 186,282 miles per second.
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- The human heart beats once per second, lightning strikes in 1/100th of a second, 10^-2 seconds. In everyday photography a camera can stop time at about 1/1000th of a second, 10^-3 seconds. Computers work at clock speed of 10^-9 seconds, a billionth of a second. Circuits have electrical switches that can operate at 10^-12 seconds, a trillionth of a second. Scientists today are working with laser pulses that can stop time at 650 *10^-18 seconds, 650 attoseconds.
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- About 20 years ago lasers could create a pulse of 6 femtoseconds, 6*10^-15 seconds. If one femtosecond is to 90 seconds, then 90 seconds is to the age of the Universe, 13,700,000,000 years.
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- Chemical bonds break and reform in molecules in about 100 to 200 femtoseconds, 200*10^-18 seconds.
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- Two years ago lasers could create a pulse that was 650 attoseconds long, 650 *10^-18 seconds. The is fast enough to stop the motion of an electron in an atom. In nuclear physics the natural timescales inside an atom are in the order of zeptoseconds, 10^-21 seconds. We have yet to invent this laser that can stop the motions inside the nucleus of an atom. We working on it.
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------------------------- deci ------------ 10^-1
------------------------- centi ------------ 10^-2
------------------------- milli ------------ 10^-3
------------------------- micro ----------- 10^-6
------------------------- nano ------------ 10^-9
------------------------- pico ------------ 10^-12
------------------------- femto ---------- 10^-15
------------------------- atto ------------ 10^-18
------------------------- zepto ---------- 10^-21
------------------------- yocto ---------- 10^-24
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Attoseconds and zeptoseconds seem incomprehensible, how can one even imagine these timescales?
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- Ok, let’s say you have a really, really fast motorcycle that would travel from Los Angeles to New York in one nanosecond, 10^-9 seconds to travel 2,787 miles. In one picosecond, 10^-12 seconds, the fast motorcycle would have only traveled 2.8 miles, barely getting to East L.A. In one femtosecond, 10^-15 seconds, it would have traveled about 1/5th of an inch.
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If you held on and your motorcycle really went that fast, in one second it would have passed New York , went into orbit and circled the Earth 112,000,000 times, in one second. How time flies.
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- If you were in a race with your motorcycle and you won by a single attosecond (10^-18 seconds) you would have won the race by less than the width of an atom, in fact, in less that the width of a proton. If you were second place your time would have been the same as the first place motorcycle plus 0.000,000,000,000,000,001 seconds. That was close.
- The smallest fraction of time is thought to be 10^-43 seconds. It is called a Planck second. That happens to be the time it takes light the fastest thing possible to travel the smallest distance of space 10^-35 meters, called the Planck Length. The reason this is the smallest unit of length is that if it got any smaller it would become a Black Hole. See Reviews 724 and 734 for the details.
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- The last thing we want to be is near a Black Hole. Or, maybe we are inside one now and the edge of the Black Hole is the edge of the Observable Universe. Nothing even light can escape from the Observable Universe, or, if it can we can’t see it. So, maybe from the outside looking in the Universe is a Black Hole.
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- The Observable Universe is 1.3*10^26 meters. When you go backwards in time and reduce that to 10^-35 meters you enter another Black Hole. What do you suppose happens to space and time inside a Black Hole? We have more to learn.
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----- 707-536-3272 ---------------- Thursday, January 11, 2018 -----
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