Thread: Does anyone NOT find nerdiness endearing?

Originally Posted by KT.

Nerdiness is not an endearing trait for fat or ugly people.

Nerdiness has become mainstream in recent years so in a way being geeky is not that geeky anymore.

I think it really depends on whether or not said person can back up his nerdy desires in a logical and understandable fashion when called out on it.

I dunno. I think we need to put another negative spin on nerdiness because some geeks/nerds are getting uppity. I actually sat behind two guys in the movie theatre who were arguing whether or not superman could turn back time by reversing the earth's gravitational spin.

That should be punishable by wedgies.

Originally Posted by gwahir

He doesn't reverse the Earth's spin. He spins around the Earth so fast that he turns back time.

Still that doesn't make sense! I know the irony considering the star is a man from the planet Krypton but still! One of the guys actually began to quote the theory of relativity!

Originally Posted by Infernus

except if you like anime

this

Originally Posted by Killuminati

but exceeding the speed of light is impossible.

I think that myth got busted about 7 or 8 years ago with some kind of fancy laser.

Originally Posted by djwolford

I think that myth got busted about 7 or 8 years ago with some kind of fancy laser.

First of all this isn't a "myth". We can't accelerate any particle to a velocity faster than that of the speed of light(299,792 km/s).

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

Is there any logic to this statement? No.

And while we haven't yet sped up the speed of light, have been able to slow it down significantly. It stands to reason if it's possible to slow it down, it would also be possible to speed it up.

"It is generally considered that it is impossible for any information or matter to travel faster than c, because it would travel backwards in time relative to some observers.[25] However, there are many physical situations in which speeds greater than c are encountered.

Some of these situations involve entities that actually travel faster than c in a particular reference frame but none involves either matter, energy, or information traveling faster than light"

We will never make matter travel faster than the speed of light. The reason for this is because E=mc^2. If you look at this
imagine if v=c. That would mean that the velocity was at the speed of light. When you do that the amount of energy required to reach that velocity is infinite.

Originally Posted by Killuminati

First of all this isn't a "myth". We can't accelerate any particle to a velocity faster than that of the speed of light(299,792 km/s).

Laser smashes light-speed record

One of the most sacred laws of physics is that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum. But this speed limit has been smashed in a recent experiment in which a laser pulse travels at more than 300 times the speed of light (L J Wang et al. 2000 Nature 406 277). However, the laws of physics remain intact because Lijun Wang and colleagues at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton in the US are able to explain the results of their experiment in terms of the classical theory of wave propagation.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2810

Electrical pulses break light speed record

Pulses that travel faster than light have been sent over a significant distance for the first time. Alain Haché and Louis Poirier of the University of Moncton in Canada transmitted the pulses through a 120-metre cable made from a coaxial 'photonic crystal'. The achievement raises hopes that data could travel through electronic communications systems at almost the speed of light (A Haché and L Poirier 2002 Appl. Phys. Lett. 80 518).

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/3630

Originally Posted by djwolford

Laser smashes light-speed record

One of the most sacred laws of physics is that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum. But this speed limit has been smashed in a recent experiment in which a laser pulse travels at more than 300 times the speed of light (L J Wang et al. 2000 Nature 406 277). However, the laws of physics remain intact because Lijun Wang and colleagues at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton in the US are able to explain the results of their experiment in terms of the classical theory of wave propagation.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2810

Electrical pulses break light speed record

Pulses that travel faster than light have been sent over a significant distance for the first time. Alain Haché and Louis Poirier of the University of Moncton in Canada transmitted the pulses through a 120-metre cable made from a coaxial 'photonic crystal'. The achievement raises hopes that data could travel through electronic communications systems at almost the speed of light (A Haché and L Poirier 2002 Appl. Phys. Lett. 80 518).

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/3630

You sir, just won my heart and my britches.

(no homo)

Originally Posted by Killuminati

Maybe you should read your articles before posting them.

Keep reading...

Originally Posted by first article

However, a pulse of light can have more than one speed because it is made up of light of different wavelengths. The individual waves travel at their own phase velocity, while the pulse itself travels with the group velocity. In a vacuum all the phase velocities and the group velocity are the same. In a dispersive medium, however, they are different because the refractive index is a function of wavelength, which means that the different wavelengths travel at different speeds. Wang and colleagues report evidence for a negative group velocity of -310c, where c (=300 million metres per second) is the speed of light in vacuum.

Their experimental set-up is remarkably similar to that used to slow light to a speed of just 17 metres per second last year. It relies on using two lasers and a magnetic field to prepare a gas of caesium atoms in an excited state. This state exhibits strong amplification or gain at two wavelengths, and highly anomalous dispersion - that is, the refractive index changes rapidly with wavelength - in the region between these two peaks.

Wang and colleagues begin by using a third continuous-wave laser to confirm that there are two peaks in the gain spectrum and that the refractive index does indeed change rapidly with wavelength in between. Next they send a 3.7-microsecond long laser pulse into the caesium cell, which is 6 centimetres long, and show that, at the correct wavelength, it emerges from the cell 62 nanoseconds sooner than would be expected if it had travelled at the speed of light. 62 nanoseconds might not sound like much, but since it should only take 0.2 nanoseconds for the pulse to pass through the cell, this means that the pulse has been travelling at 310 times the speed of light. Moreover, unlike previous superluminal experiments, the input and output pulse shapes are essentially the same.

...and although they say they can't transmit information faster than the speed of light...

Originally Posted by second article

Although the group velocity exceeds the speed of light - an effect permitted by relativity - each component of the pulse travels slower than light. It would be impossible to transmit information faster than light because it would be encoded onto a single frequency component.

But as Haché explains, many existing information systems are based on coaxial cables, and the current top speed for data is just two-thirds the speed of light. If the impedance of such cables were adapted, pulses sent at frequencies close to the absorption band could transmit information at speeds approaching that of light.

I guess it's a technicality that can be argued from either side.

I have a feeling that this is about to turn into an episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy or something. I love science but physics isn't strong point.

Fair enough. Like I said, physics isn't my strong point. I just argue for the fun of it 99% of the time.

Originally Posted by gwahir

travelling into the future is a possibility with our current knowledge of the universe (we just don't have the technology to make the vehicle that would travel that fast and for that long)

but yes, exceeding the speed of light would mean that, according to observers travelling slower than you, you are going backwards in time. we know this because of einstein's finding that there is no such thing as absolute time, rather time is unique to observers depending on where they are stationed, the gravity affecting them and the speed at which they are travelling.

this has been a vaguely true mainstay of science fiction for a long, long time

basically: you know nothing

I'm not saying it's impossible to move back in time but I am right about what I said. To the observer on earth, the one traveling at or faster than light speed would be moving at a slower rate, not moving back in time.

This is called time dilation.