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907 replies, Replies 11 to 20

I dunno if its me

I think a lot of people drive with their high beams on.

Like way more people than you would think.

Its nuts.

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Are you still being affected by covid19?

A family member caught it and was not able to join us for christmas. They are isolating and are doing ok.

I got my bivalent booster. I don't wear masks really anymore though.

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We have another hurricane coming this way.

Hope everything was ok.

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How to explain this grammar question...

You know it occurs to me that you said English student and i assumed it meant esl as opposed to teaching an english speaker about their own grammar.

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Hello, HelpQA~~I was a member of the original Help.com years ago and a member of the QA as well.

Welcome back.

Posting has been pretty quiet for a while unfortunately.

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Hurricane Ian came over and we are safe.

๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘

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How to explain this grammar question...

This probably isn't the best way to explain it but just a thought (not an original one):

Prepositions are largely arbitrary when not being used in a literal, spatial sense.

So while "in" makes the most sense there in English, in their native language "by" might make more sense. Taking the preposition in the literal sense, the meat isn't being cut "in" pieces (of meat). It's being cut in a room, or in the kitchen, etc.

Another example "We spoke about that." Though it's not used this way in American English as much, "about" more or less means "around." But if you said "We spoke around that" it would sound weird, or imply you almost the opposite of "we spoke about that."

In italian or spanish, if i remember correctly, you'd rather say "we spoke of that."

#grammarthoughts

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Time dilation is a lie.

Anonymous wrote:

Say an empty universe can exist hypothetically. No stars, no matter, no energy NOTHING. Does this universe even have a speed of light?

The thing is, if you take relativity seriously, this question is ambiguous. I would say okay, not matter no energy, no light...but is there space?

Space is not nothing in relativity. Its a space time continuum. Spacetime continuum is the medium through which anything can travel. And the fastest you can move through space is the speed of light, according to the theory. So in that sense the speed of light is still there.

Again my understanding is not super deep and i get frustrated by many of the explanations myself but i imagine a physicsist might say something like that.

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Time dilation is a lie.

Anonymous wrote:

If it takes 1 million years for light to reach earth from a star system, and it takes 1 million years for that light to get from the star system to earth, then it takes... 1 million years. Where tf is the time differences?

The theory of relativity and it's implications are this: the idea that 1 million years on the surface of the Earth and 1 million years in your hypothetical million lightyear away star system are "the same" is just not true. Or they are, but they aren't necessarily taking place in the same amount of time in both places.

Meaning the idea that in the time it takes one hour to elapse here on Earth, that exactly one hour is also passing everywhere else in the universe is just not true.

The main factors that cause time dilation are gravity wells and speed. So the faster you go and the stronger the gravity, the more time slows.

Scientists have effectively proved that time dilation occurs by using super precise clocks and putting them at different altitudes and moving them at different speeds and they show that time elapsed slower in the faster moving clocks than they do on the slower moving clocks, and likewise time moves slower at lower altitudes than at higher altitudes. They've also done it by showing that certain particles will decay slower at faster speeds than slower speeds.

In terms of the speeds those clocks were moved at and the difference in altitudes we are talking about, the differences are pretty miniscule.

But when you are talking about moving huge distances at the speed of light, the differences are much greater.


Here are some references:

https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/a...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eins...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_test...


Here are a couple of interesting videos I found on the topic:

https://youtu.be/tzQC3uYL67U

https://youtu.be/yuD34tEpRFw

My personal thoughts: I don't really know, I'm not a physicist and my understanding of these things is not very deep. Some of the results of physics, when explained to me, make no sense. But I look at it like this: the idea that the usual rules of space and time get wonky when we start talking in terms of extremely large objects or extremely fast moving objects doesn't seem that far-fetched to me.

It also makes sense to me that our everyday experiences are primarily the result of our monkey-brains doing their best to make sense out of a manifold of inputs that are a probably a lot more complicated and interesting that what we can perceive. So maybe the cat is both dead and alive, and maybe time moves really slow when you're moving at the speed of light, idk.

Anonymous wrote:

Folks need to stop letting their perceptions be their reality. Time and space is not influenced nor bends to our perception of it.

I kinda used to have this reaction to explanations of relativity but as I have learned a bit more about it, I have gotten the impression that it is more the result of poor explanations. I think people often phrase it as "it would see" or "the apparent speed" when they really mean something else.


Here is another interesting video from an Italian physicist who questions the validity of time as a concept. It's a more "philosophical" take.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeHHjGKwZWM

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anyone

Im not. I do like other kinds of board games/card games.

I have never played magic but i hear even people who do play it and even like complain that it kinda demands that you keep buying cards. You have no way of beating someone with superior cards.

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