Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with speedoflight

Football on Sat TV and AM radio way out of sync? Speed of

priorpark17 — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 01:30:34 -0800

Football on Sat TV and AM radio way out of sync. Is it a technical thing or a maths issue? Speed of light, azimuth, etc I like watching football on sat TV but like listening to the commentary on AM radio. The AM radio is about 1.5 seconds ahead of the Sat TV. My maths goes like this. All is equal leaving the ground, they both then send the signal through a sat uplink to the studio. Then one is transmitted via satellite on the equator near West Africa (80,000km round trip) and one comes over the air from a big tower (say 1000km). The delay should be 1/4 second (79,000k/speed of light 300,000km/sec). What gives? BTW if you are in the UK and want your bearings then look for a grey sky TV disc on a house and mimic the way it is facing, turn to your right about 35 degrees and you are facing due south. The angle varies a bit by location but not by that much.

I fought the law

extrabox — Wed, 31 May 2006 05:37:30 -0800

Is there any evidence that physical laws have changed, or could possibly change over time? For example, has the speed of light - since the beginning of the universe - been the same, and will it always remain the same into the future? i.e., Is it possible conditions were so different for the first billion years of the universe that this 'constant' was different than the speed we now measure?

I am interested in the answer to this question as it might apply to any law of physics or 'constants', light is just an example. (Also, I'm aware of experiments that show, for example, that light may be 'slowed' under certain singular conditions...I'm more interested if these laws could change or have changed on a universe-wide scale)

Can I transfer information faster than the speed of light by using a really long rod?

tommasz — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 11:33:57 -0800

[PhysicsFilter] This has been troubling me for a while and the answers I've gotten haven't satisfied me. Nothing travels faster than the speed of light for all intents and purposes, information included. I think I have a way around that, but I've been told it won't work. [More inside] My idea: build a rod that stretches a long, long distance, perhaps to another solar system. I suspect that materials science would say this is impossible also, but bear with me. If you were to whack the near end of the rod at the same time as a light flash was emitted, would the other end of the rod move before the light was detected? Or would something cause sufficient delay to make them appear at the same time at the remote end. All I've ever heard was that it wouldn't work. My question now is, "why not?"

Explain Theory of Relativity

xmutex — Tue, 06 Jul 2004 14:12:46 -0800

trying to get my head around special relativity filter: Can someone explain to me, in terms as devoid of mathematical formulae as possible, how something traveling less than the speed of light cannot be accelerated to the speed of light?