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Relativity, lightspeed and COMPUTER GAMES!

Started by May 31, 2002 02:33 PM
21 comments, last by Lode 22 years, 8 months ago
quote:
Original post by Lode
if the player goes close to lightspeed, will he:
A) because he goes so fast, his time goes slower, and thus the player sees the time of the rest of the universe go faster (and when he stops, he''s younger than ships that didn''t fly so fast).
OR
B) the player thinks he''s hanging still and the rest of the universe is flying at lightspeed, so the player sees the time of the rest of the universe go slower and his own time go faster (so when he stops he''s older than ships that didn''t fly so fast).
?


The answer is A. The reason it is not B is because the player has accelerated to get close to lightspeed and has been in a non-inertial reference frame. Look up the "twin paradox" in any book on special relativity.
...I think if you really want to do this you''re going to have to learn allot more about relitivity. Of course you could always fake it, I mean the player isn''t really going to notice is he? Just find out what the general effects of relitivity are, and then code them in, instead of doing a mathmaticlly accuracte model.
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Yes, I was thinking to do it that way in the meantime, the player won''t notice the details anyway indeed.
hmmmm... just to say a note, im currently trying to build multiplayer bullet time, of course creating time is impossible, but with some very good AI to predict future movements, u can create a short space of time that can be slowed to create a longer space of time... then recorded, and played to the others at a faster rate. Its not perfect, of course, but its more realistic than u mite think!

Yratelev.
Yratelev
quote:
Original post by Mayrel
of their speed relative to other objects. The light-barrier is not like the sound-barrier - it cannot be broken.


I''m going off topic now, but I''d just like to add that there is one thing that can travel faster than lightspeed. Information transmitted by wire! I read about an experiment not long ago where they cooled a wire close to absolute zero and then the transmitted signal travelled at 2-3 times the speed of light. It required lots of energy though. I believe it''s because once an electron at the beginning of the wire is moved, it in turn pushes neighbor electrons almost simultaneously. Like a long train. Push at one end and the other end moves almost instantly.

I just found that cool for some reason.. Hey, maybe that''s how we''ll communicate with neighbor aliens one day, a looong wire from our star to their star.
quote:
Original post by Anonymous Poster
I believe it''s because once an electron at the beginning of the wire is moved, it in turn pushes neighbor electrons almost simultaneously. Like a long train. Push at one end and the other end moves almost instantly.


The key word is Almost Simultaneously. In my thoughts, an electron would have to be moves faster than the speed of light, an electron has mass so that''s out of the question, secondly i seem to remember that Electrons actually travel really slowly through wires.
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quote:
Original post by Xgkkp
The key word is Almost Simultaneously. In my thoughts, an electron would have to be moves faster than the speed of light, an electron has mass so that's out of the question, secondly i seem to remember that Electrons actually travel really slowly through wires.


Yes, this is my understanding as well. However, there is this concept of quantum teleportation enabled by the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect (see link below) that seems to suggest faster-than-light transportation of information. In fact, it seems to have been proven that the EPR effect makes instantaneous information transportation possible.

www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/

See this link for mention of the instantaneous nature of the phenomenon. (Its really only a *trigger* that happens instantaneously.)

www.newscientist.com/hottopics/quantum/fromheretothere.jsp

Weird, wild stuff!

Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

[edited by - grhodes_at_work on June 11, 2002 1:53:46 PM]
Graham Rhodes Moderator, Math & Physics forum @ gamedev.net
quote:

I''m going off topic now, but I''d just like to add that there is one thing that can travel faster than lightspeed. Information transmitted by wire! I read about an experiment not long ago where they cooled a wire close to absolute zero and then the transmitted signal travelled at 2-3 times the speed of light.



This is to a part true (I''ve also read about those experiments).
Somewhere (a Swedish sciense magazine i think) I read about
that you using a wave-chamber can get light to travel faster
than light (hmm..). You can also slow down light using
Boose-Einstein condensate.

But! All this is false. You cannot compare (for example)
speed in Boose-Einstein condensate or a wave-chamber with
light-speed i vaccum. Nothing that has a mass can travel
faster than light-speed in the same medium.

BR
Marten Svanfeldt
More off topic:

electrons across a wire do move slowly; the drift velocity is almost negligible compared to the speed of light (in a vaccuum).

slowing down light...I saw in a documentary once, that they can freeze light in some sorta crystalline. Is it safe to say that one day our RAM will be optical? I think it is Just imagine, an optical chip, with optical ram...I''m thinking THz CPUs!!! no more playin around with nanoseconds and slow moving electrons...hahaha.

Just my 2 cents.
People fear what they don''t understand, hate what they can''t conquer!
I once read the following: Although a "faster-than-light" light wave is possible, it is impossible to modulate it to carry any information. Any such information still travels at the lower "group velocity." I''m not sure how applicable this statement is, but I thought I''d contribute it just in case!

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