How did the church make a comeback

[Moschops]

So you have one ship travelling at, let's say, 0.9c, relative to earth.

Then it launches a ship which accelerates until it is travelling at what itself considers to be 0.9c, using the first ship as the reference for zero speed.

Earth observes the first ship to be travelling at 0.9c, and the second at about 0.994c

The second ship observes earth to be travelling at 0.994c backwards, and the first ship at 0.9c backwards.

Repeat calculations for the next ship launched, and so on.

According to the observer back at earth, all of the ships are at the same point the whole time. They never depart.

No. The first ship is seen to be moving, and the second ship is seen to be moving ahead of the first ship. Thus they do not crash into the planet at the same time. The order of events is preserved across all reference frames.

[iseeplusplus]

So I guess the flaw is that you cannot ever reach the limit as your speed approaches C, because it would take an infinite amount of time. Yet you can get dismally closer and closer to your hearts content.

Nevertheless, could the planet not observe that the difference in speeds between each ship is small enough that they make impact at intervals such that they each make it in time for dinner?

[Moschops]

So I guess the flaw is that you cannot ever reach the limit as your speed approaches C

You cannot reach c.

could the planet not observe that the difference in the velocities of each ship is tiny,

Yup

and still note that they each make impact at an interval such that they each make it in time for dinner?

I don't follow your question. What is time for dinner?

[iseeplusplus]

Time for dinner as in they all sit down on that planet on the same day of the first ships impact and drink beer and have a barbeque together.

Say the first ship was moving faster than .9c, say

c - 10 ^ ( -999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999)  nano seconds

, relative to Earth, and the observer on earth sees the ship in front of it is moving at a practically negligible difference in terms of when it will impact the other planet.

[Moschops]

So your question could be better put, is it possible for every ship to arrive within a 24 hour period, according to someone standing on the planet?

[iseeplusplus]

So your question could be better put, is it possible for every ship to arrive within a 24 hour period, according to someone standing on the planet?

I think it should have been clear what my question has been since I first asked it.

[Moschops]

I think it should have been abundantly clear what my question has been since I first asked it.

And yet it wasn't. Such is life.

Yes, it's possible to launch a whole bunch of ships that all hit the planet within 24 hours of each other according to someone on the planet.

[iseeplusplus]

Yes, it's possible to launch a whole bunch of ships that all hit the planet within 24 hours of each other according to someone on the planet.

While they also do not according to someone not on the planet, such as one of the pilots of the ships? Wether or not they drank beer together depends on who's reference you watched from? They drank on the same day according to one, but hundreds of years apart according to another?

[Moschops]

Wether or not they drank beer together depends on who's reference you watched from?

No. Only one thing happened. Either they had a beer, or they did not. You've missed out whose clock is used to decide if they arrived within 24 hours of each other or not, and everyone will agree on how much time that clock measured between the first and the last arrival.

If I'm the last ship in, and I think the first ship arrived 24 hours ago, but the guy on the planet tells me that according to his clock there was exactly 36 hours between the two events, do we have the beer or not? Whatever we decide, everyone will see the same thing; either having a beer, or not.

[iseeplusplus]

No. Only one thing happened. Either they had a beer, or they did not. You've missed out whose clock is used to decide if they arrived within 24 hours of each other or not.

I still don't think it's simple and easy to understand, but I appreciate you discussing it with me. :)

[Moschops]

I still don't think it's simple and easy to understand

Approaching it mathematically really is the best way to do it. I assure you, though, all observers agree on what happened; they will disagree on the timespan between them. You definitely, definitely should do it mathematically. The equations are surprisingly simple in SR. Dump having any acceleration involved (so in this case we'd have the pilots passing a finish line, rather than actually stopping) and you can use SR.

You have to jettison any idea of simultaneous in time (the only simultaneousness preserved is in space AND time - that is, if two events happen effectively in the same time AND place, everyone will agree on it), and jettison the idea that two people will agree on the amount of time that passed between two events.

The hard limits are that no matter how fast you go (and you cannot reach c), light will always appear to travel at c, and causality is preserved (things do not happen before their cause, no matter how fast you go).

[iseeplusplus]

Hmmmm.

[Filiprei]

Since spiritism is real(that is common sense), why can't a god exist that fights the evil? Unless you believe spiritism is people from different dimensions getting contact(Many scientists believe that).

[darkestfright]

Since spiritism is real

Um, no.

[SIK]

The same way relativity was first tested. Gravitational lensing.

So why was Einstein not convinced about the existence of black holes if gravitational lensing coud have been used in his time to test the theory?
That is because that concept was discovered much later.
It is this time period (from when GR was developed to the time gravitational lensing was used) I'm refering to in which you would have doubted the prediction that GR made about the existence of black holes.

You now accept it because a mechanism for testing the existence of black holes was developed.

Correct. We may yet find that relativity is wrong.

And they are testable (presumably. I don't really feel like looking it up), so they're not metaphysical.

See the contradiction in these two statements?

If relativity is proven wrong then white holes may have no basis for existence at all within the realm of relativity so will then be metaphysical.
However, you conclude that they are testable so are not metaphysical.
Scientist currently have no idea where a white hole could even possibly exist, so how will they be able to really test if these objects exist, what will they test?
This is still unknown, hence untestable in that sense.
Consider if white holes existed at the opposite end of a black hole. Current technology has no way of testing this, so these should then become metaphysics as well for you. However scientist in the future may have technology to measure beyond a black hole and so conclude the existence of a white hole.

So with the prediction made by string theory concerning the existence of a multi-verse, we may find scientist in the future capable of looking with other means to the cosmic background radiation and beyond, thereby allowing them to discover new measurements they could take of some newly discovered concept such that they could test if the string theory models of a multi-verse holds true.
As such, this would imply that both white holes and the multi-verse are currently in the same boat w.r.t. their validity.

So yes, I would say I require evidence to accept something as true.
You don't?

My words were "You would not have accepted the concept of black holes"
ie. It is different from "You would not have accepted that black holes are real"

ie. the theory provided a concept and you either regard it as metaphysics or unproven physics (still needs to be proven or disproven).

[SIK]

I don't know what yuo're talking about. I merely replied to the statement "we cannot with mathematics explain the ultimate question of what started it ALL".

I was trying to point out that you gave a mathematical conceptual example to support your claim that the very first event didn't need to have some external event kicking it off.

Remember, that this model assumed that the very first event was preceded by an infinite amount of "time".

With reference to what we have currently (the big bang model), where everyting is asumed to have started from a point, then we can say that the elements within this point existed in a state of harmony for eternity before the big bang. This is a closed system, so if all elements within existed in a state of harmony for eternity prior to big bang, then what could have change/influenced elements such that they never got influenced at some point earlier?

[helios]

So why was Einstein not convinced about the existence of black holes if gravitational lensing coud have been used in his time to test the theory?

I don't know. I'm not him. He probably wasn't convinced by the arguments.

That is because that concept was discovered much later.

Excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_general_relativity

Also the deflection of light by massive bodies was predicted. Although the approximation was crude, it allowed [Einstein] to calculate that the deflection is nonzero. German astronomer Erwin Finlay-Freundlich publicized Einstein's challenge to scientists around the world.[4] This urged astronomers to detect the deflection of light during a solar eclipse, and gave Einstein confidence that the scalar theory of gravity proposed by Gunnar Nordström was incorrect. But the actual value for the deflection that he calculated was too small by a factor of two, because the approximation he used doesn't work well for things moving at near the speed of light. When Einstein finished the full theory of general relativity, he would rectify this error and predict the correct amount of light deflection by the sun.
[...]
However, in May 1919, a team led by the British astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington claimed to have confirmed Einstein's prediction of gravitational deflection of starlight by the Sun while photographing a solar eclipse with dual expeditions in Sobral, northern Brazil, and Príncipe, a west African island.

On the subject of black holes:

The black hole aspect of the Schwarzschild solution was very controversial, and Einstein did not believe that singularities could be real. However, in 1957 (two years after Einstein's death in 1955), Martin Kruskal published a proof that black holes are called for by the Schwarzschild Solution.

Prior to his death, black holes were merely conjectured to be predicted by relativity.

If relativity is proven wrong then white holes may have no basis for existence at all within the realm of relativity so will then be metaphysical.

No. They would be fictional. Unless another theory arose that predicted them, in which case they would be hypothetical again. Its true that the falsification of relativity wouldn't say anything about their existence or inexistence, but an idea that's not referenced by any theory simply ceases to be.

So with the prediction made by string theory concerning the existence of a multi-verse, we may find scientist in the future capable of looking with other means to the cosmic background radiation and beyond, thereby allowing them to discover new measurements they could take of some newly discovered concept such that they could test if the string theory models of a multi-verse holds true.

All of this may be true.
However, here's the key difference for me. If relativity predicted that atoms are made of chocolate, I'd be more compelled to believe it than if string theory predicted it. Why? Because

lim{x -> m} n/x = +infinity

Where n is the number of experiments on relativity and m is the number of experiments on string theory.

EDIT:

I was trying to point out that you gave a mathematical conceptual example to support your claim that the very first event didn't need to have some external event kicking it off.

No. The mathematical model rejects the notion of "first event". The collision of the particles is preceded by an infinite number of events.

With reference to what we have currently (the big bang model), where everyting is asumed to have started from a point, then we can say that the elements within this point existed in a state of harmony for eternity before the big bang. This is a closed system, so if all elements within existed in a state of harmony for eternity prior to big bang, then what could have change/influenced elements such that they never got influenced at some point earlier?

What changed was that the particles collided. If they had reached each other "earlier", their paths still would have been infinite in length and would have required an infinite number of steps to traverse. So they were bound to reach each other at some point. What you choose to call that point (e.g. t=0) is arbitrary.

[SIK]

That is because that concept was discovered much later.

should have cleared up that [that concept] was referring to the usage of it for detection of black holes.

What changed was that the particles collided. If they had reached each other "earlier", their paths still would have been infinite in length and would have required an infinite number of steps to traverse.

I don't agree with this statement. Heres my motivation for saying so:

If you had a deck of cards being shuffled and displayed an infinite number of times, then we will have every possible combination occurring an infinite number of times. So even the odd sequence of all cards being sorted in the deck after being shuffled would have occurred an infinite number of times as well as every other combination.

So within the primordial atom which "existed forever" before, we would have every combination that every particle/wave could possibly be in occurring an infinite number of times previously.

If we were to define a particular state of a particular particle (or even set of) as an event then we can conclude that no event had a first event (because it had to have happened infinitely many times before).

Hence within this system, every event that occurs has already occurred infinitly many times before.

So whatever state we could asume just before the big bang had to have occurred infinitely many times before that.

But in all previous infinite occurances when this state occurred, the model traversed to the next state without causing the big bang event.

All of this may be true.
However, here's the key difference for me. If relativity predicted that atoms are made of chocolate, I'd be more compelled to believe it than if string theory predicted it. Why? Because

lim{x -> m} n/x = +infinity

Where n is the number of experiments on relativity and m is the number of experiments on string theory.

Ok, agreed, this is the current state of affairs where current technology for testing of string components cannot be performed due to the currently unobtainable energy levels required.

However the current tests performed under GR and QM can also be considered as tests for those items which string theory also covers.

And it now also seems as if scientist may be onto a way to actually start testing some of the components of string theory (at string level) so if this then proves successful to string theories predictions then hopefully you stop seeing me as a tosser :)

[helios]

If you had a deck of cards being shuffled and displayed an infinite number of times, then we will have every possible combination occurring an infinite number of times. So even the odd sequence of all cards being sorted in the deck after being shuffled would have occurred an infinite number of times as well as every other combination.

A deck of cards is a system with finite state. Mine has infinite state.

Consider the function d(s) which gives the distance between the particles at state s. By definition, the particles travel along the same straight line and at constant and opposing velocities. Then it's clear that d(S[n]) > d(S[n+1]), where S is the string of all states walked by the automaton. There you go. If s and t are two equal states, then any function applied to them must give the same result. Yet we have an infinite substring of states (S[n], S[n-1], ...) such that d(S[n]) < d(S[n-1]) < ... < d(S[n-m]) < ...
Thus, all elements in that substring are unequal to each other. Every state in it is unique.

The explanation for this is simple (if you're familiar with the concept of cardinality). If s is an infinite state (i.e. a state with an infinite number of bits), then it's equivalent to a string of infinite length, which itself is equivalent to a real number. The set of all possible configurations of the state is therefore on a 1-to-1 correspondence with the set of real numbers. The automaton however can only walk a countable number of steps in either direction. Thus the problem is equivalent to choosing an infinite countable subset of the real numbers such that every element is different from every other element. For example, the set of natural numbers.

[SIK]

Consider the function d(s) which gives the distance between the particles at state s. By definition, the particles travel along the same straight line and at constant and opposing velocities. Then it's clear that d(S[n]) > d(S[n+1]), where S is the string of all states walked by the automaton. There you go. If s and t are two equal states, then any function applied to them must give the same result. Yet we have an infinite substring of states (S[n], S[n-1], ...) such that d(S[n]) < d(S[n-1]) < ... < d(S[n-m]) < ...
Thus, all elements in that substring are unequal to each other. Every state in it is unique.

You cannot apply an infinite state model in context of the primordial atom due to us having a finite number of elements and space.
You would get an unbounded contradiction if you do so.
In your example you only have an infinite number of unique states if we consider the particles to be traversing through infinity - in which case we would get no unbounded contradiction.
However, as pointed for the context in question, we do not have this theorectical luxary.