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Just now, CypherHoof said:

And yet you literally quoted me saying "The sun is the best known example"....

Well I didn't think you were talking INSIDE the sun :blink: Don't mind me, just woke up; so my brain engines have yet to start :huh: 

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Just now, Xeltor said:

Well I didn't think you were talking INSIDE the sun :blink: Don't mind me, just woke up; so my brain engines have yet to start :huh: 

What else would I be talking about? there is no sound in space. You clearly need a coffee or three :)

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Just now, CypherHoof said:

What else would I be talking about? there is no sound in space. You clearly need a coffee or three :)

Yeah coffee would be nice:BornAgainBrony: But I don't have any :huh:  

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7 minutes ago, Xeltor said:

Yeah coffee would be nice:BornAgainBrony: But I don't have any :huh:  

Well, I have lots, but I guess it would be cold by the time it got to you (Not least because its a bank holiday here in the UK, so the postal service doesn't run today)

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Just now, Xeltor said:

How the hell can sound be faster than light? :confused: 

It can't... I was saying that light always travels faster than sound.

Just now, CypherHoof said:

Not in a vacuum, in the SUN.

In the sun, the atoms are fairly closely spaced; the weight of the stellar mass is supported by the pressure excursions (that is, noise) of the fusion reactions in the core, which propagate at about the normal speed of pressure waves in a solid (I think the average is about 17 times the speed of sound in air) so may take a few hundred hours to reach the outer corona (where of course they are lost)

Light however, also has to travel outwards from the core, and can take many thousands of years to do so.

(also, many things can travel faster than light; they glow blue when they do so)

The absolute speed limit for the universe is the speed of light in a vacuum; outside of that environment, all bets are off (but they still can't go faster than 'c')

The light is actually reabsorbed over and over again by other atoms in the suns core, hence why it takes so long for it to escape. It doesn't mean it's slower than sound considering light still travels at the constant speed of 670.6 million mph. Through a medium such as water, you are correct that light does travel slower (as is the case in Cerenkov Radiation) than it usually does... But it still does not travel slower than sound.

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7 minutes ago, Nsxile said:

It can't... I was saying that light always travels faster than sound.

The light is actually reabsorbed over and over again by other atoms in the suns core, hence why it takes so long for it to escape. It doesn't mean it's slower than sound considering light still travels at the constant speed of 670.6 million mph. Through a medium such as water, you are correct that light does travel slower (as is the case in Cerenkov Radiation) than it usually does... But it still does not travel slower than sound.

The SPEED of light in the sun is probably faster than the speed of sound - but with all the atoms in the way, light can't travel that fast. The sun is an example of an enviroment where the speed light travels isn't the same as the speed of light in that material (because the material is actually opaque to light)

(as another thought - and given the Heaviside Legacy is in play now - how does a Rainboom relate to Cherenkov Radiation? :)

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Just now, CypherHoof said:

The SPEED of light in the sun is probably faster than the speed of sound - but with all the atoms in the way, light can't travel that fast. The sun is an example of an enviroment where the speed light travels isn't the same as the speed of light in that material (because the material is actually opaque to light)

(as another thought - and given the Heviside Legacy is in play now - how does a Rainboom relate to Cherenkov Radiation? :)

Light does travel that fast from the point of it's creation. It just can't travel very far with the atoms in the way of it. If you were to measure the average speed between the point of the photon's creation and the point the photon was absorbed by another atom, it would still be 670.6 million mph :crackle:

Hmm... But that would be assuming Equestria's physics would be the same as ours... Which may not be the case.

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7 minutes ago, Nsxile said:

Light does travel that fast from the point of it's creation. It just can't travel very far with the atoms in the way of it. If you were to measure the average speed between the point of the photon's creation and the point the photon was absorbed by another atom, it would still be 670.6 million mph :crackle:

That is true of any transparent medium though; all materials consist of atoms, and spaces between atoms (which are effectively a vacuum, or there would be an atom there)

How light travels though a transparent medium isn't technically the same as when photons are absorbed and re-emitted in the discrete particle model, but that has no explaination for the change in speed at all - only when you start looking at the problem though the lens of wave probability theory and electron shells, does any explaination emerge, and in that domain, the diference between a photon "passing though, but slowly" and "being absorbed and re-emitted" isn't that great.

 

7 minutes ago, Nsxile said:

Hmm... But that would be assuming Equestria's physics would be the same as ours... Which may not be the case.

Well, my own theory is that the speed of Magic is involved. Magic in air is clearly not anywhere near lightspeed (given magic bolts can be dodged) but by terrestial standards, can still be pretty fast (given lightning bolts can also be dodged; Dashie does this on occasion). So my theory is that, as the pressure cone forms around Dashie's hooves when she approaches transition speed, she is actually catching up to her own magic (her "wingpower") as she projects it into the air in front of herself; at transition, she shatters that field entirely and only the fact that magic propagates faster though ponies (pegasus and presumably unicorn) than air stops her from suffering severe friction burns as she loses her protective shield (which also would explain why the wonderbolts and Rarity aren't severely hurt when she hits them at a serious multiple of the speed of sound, and changes their vector to be first parallel to the ground, then skywards....)

but Heaviside teaches that the phenomena of a mach cone and Cherenkov radiation aren't that different, so extending that to Equestrian (in this case, wingpower) magic would seem reasonable, given how visibly similar a rainboom is to a sonic boom or transluminal effects.

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