Cosmos #8 Travels in Space and Time
Steven Dutch, Professor Emeritus, Natural and Applied Sciences, University
of Wisconsin - Green Bay
- Importance of great and minor events
- Roots of Present buried in Past
- Stars move in time
- Slowly compared to human lifetime
- Rapidly compared to geologic processes
- Stars are 3-dimensional patterns
- How are stars named?
- Distances in the Universe
- Stars - light years
- Andromeda Galaxy - 2,000,000 l.y.
- Quasars ~10,000,000,000 l.y.
- What's magic about speed of light?
- Einstein - dropout "Never amount to anything"
- Need for reference frame to measure velocity
- What does light travel through? ("Ether")
- Cannot add velocities to c
- Simultaneity problems
- "Light barrier" vs "Sound Barrier"
- Light = absolute framework
- Not = all things are relative?! = no absolutes!
- "Thought Experiment" (c = 40 km/hr)
- "Special or privileged frames - physics vs politics"
- Paradoxes of near - c travel
- Shortening
- Doppler shift
- Aberration
- Time slows down - dilation "Twin Paradox"
- Relativity Sequence in Vinci
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Dream of flight failed because technology not available
- Parallels to space travel 1939 - British Interplanetary Society
- Designs for starships
- Orion - nuclear weapons
- Daedalus - fusion reactor
- Multi-generation ships
- Suspended animation
- Bussard ramjet
- Space Travel/Time Travel
- Journeys to Past
- Logical contradictions
- Important but minor events
- Death of Mangu 1242
- Gallipoli 1915
- What if the Ionians had succeeded?
- Formation of Solar System
- Speculations on other stars
- Life cycles of the Stars
- Heavy elements - 2nd and later cycle stars
- Evolution
- Dinosaurs/extinction
- Major themes
- Implications of Relativity
- Importance of Random events
- Meaning of "random"
- Humans' history 5000 yr Dinosaurs = 150,000,000 yr = 30,000 x history 1 day history = 80
years dinosaurs
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Created 13 January 1998, Last Update 13 January 1998