Big Bang day !!

[TimberWolf]

BTW particles will be at 99.9999991 per cent of the speed of light.
That's really impressive.
What will happen to their mass at that velocity?

Nothing. Not rest mass anyway. Increase in mass with speed is an old concept, one that Einstein himself initially used, but he knew what he was doing.

[OwlHoot]

Not so, the results of Eddington's eclipse expedition of 1919 supported it.

and it exactly accounted for the precession of Mercury, which had already been known about for years and was previously unexplained. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_o...ral_relativity

[Incognito]

I'm aware of his position at Cambridge, and I don't rate him against many of those greats. Look at the list yourself. Dirac, Newton, Babbage... Do you really think Hawking in the same league? What has he done aside from being in the right place at the right time in order to theorise on things that someone else would likely have done quite soon anyway?

I think Hawkings is a very intelligent man, I agree with you that he is one well known figure in a crowd of equally or more intelligent scientists, but I don't feel that is reason to denigrate him. I just feel it's a trait of the British to build someone up only to enjoy seeing them fall.

I think he's done some very important research in his lifetime. I read the 'Theoretical Physics and Cosmology' book that they put out to celebrate his 60th birthday after I watched the 'Master of the Universe' on TV. I haven't read 'a Brief History of Time' so I can't comment on that. He’s far more intelligent than me and yes he’s far more intelligent than even you Sas, so that’s my yardstick (me, not Sas).

[TimberWolf]

I think Hawkings is a very intelligent man, I agree with you that he is one well known figure in a crowd of equally or more intelligent scientists, but I don't feel that is reason to denigrate him. I just feel it's a trait of the British to build someone up only to enjoy seeing them fall.

I think he's done some very important research in his lifetime. I read the 'Theoretical Physics and Cosmology' book that they put out to celebrate his 60th birthday after I watched the 'Master of the Universe' on TV. I haven't read 'a Brief History of Time' so I can't comment on that. He’s far more intelligent than me and yes he’s far more intelligent than even you Sas, so that’s my yardstick (me, not Sas).

I think he's one of those guys who is brilliant in his field, but carp outside it. He sometimes says amusing things on speculative ideas more closely related to his field of expertise too, such as (loose recollection) saying something about how he was working on time travel when doing a tour with kids somewhere, a Star Trek set possibly. I can tell you now that while he may have been doing calculations, they were carp. You heard it here first

[Incognito]

and it exactly accounted for the precession of Mercury, which had already been known about for years and was previously unexplained. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_o...ral_relativity

That article states:

The early accuracy, however, was poor. Dyson et al. quoted an optimistically low uncertainty in their measurement, which is argued by some to have been plagued by systematic error and possibly confirmation bias, although modern reanalysis of the dataset suggests that Eddington's analysis was accurate. Considerable uncertainty remained in these measurements for almost fifty years, until observations started being made at radio frequencies. It was not until the late 1960s that it was definitively shown that the amount of deflection was the full value predicted by general relativity, and not half that number. The Einstein ring is an example of the deflection of light from distant galaxies by more nearby objects.

[Incognito]

It's Ok. I don't really know what I'm talking about - just random googling and cut'n'paste

[NotAllThere]

BTW particles will be at 99.9999991 per cent of the speed of light.
That's really impressive.
What will happen to their mass at that velocity?

From our frame of reference, they'll be some 7500 heavier than their rest mass.

1 / ( SQRT ( 1 - 0.999999991^2 ) )

In the frame of reference of the proton, they'll be exactly as normal. Now, can anyone work out, in the frame of reference of the protons going anticlockwise, how fast with the clockwise ones be approaching, and what their relativistic mass will be?

[expat]

I think Hawkings is a very intelligent man, I agree with you that he is one well known figure in a crowd of equally or more intelligent scientists, but I don't feel that is reason to denigrate him. I just feel it's a trait of the British to build someone up only to enjoy seeing them fall.

I think he's done some very important research in his lifetime. I read the 'Theoretical Physics and Cosmology' book that they put out to celebrate his 60th birthday after I watched the 'Master of the Universe' on TV. I haven't read 'a Brief History of Time' so I can't comment on that. He’s far more intelligent than me and yes he’s far more intelligent than even you Sas, so that’s my yardstick (me, not Sas).

I think some of the talk comes from the fact that he is compared to Einstein. He's good, but he's not Einstein.

[Incognito]

I think some of the talk comes from the fact that he is compared to Einstein. He's good, but he's not Einstein.

Agreed.

[ace00]

Nothing. Not rest mass anyway. Increase in mass with speed is an old concept, one that Einstein himself initially used, but he knew what he was doing.

Just been off wiki'ng, from same article:

"Because the relativistic mass is just another name for the energy, it has gradually fallen into disuse [1].
........................................
In special relativity, as in Lorentz's ether theory, an object that has a mass cannot travel at the speed of light. As the object approaches the speed of light, the object's energy and momentum increase without bound."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_in_special_relativity

I don't understand. And that's just the words, forget about the formulas.