geordief

I think I see what you mean . There would have to be (stable,presumably) cavity or volumes of lower/higher density material in Mercury for an effect to be noticeable.

That is why I am asking . I don't have the maths skills to have a "hands on" feel to be able to say. From your answer it appears to me that it would make little difference (although I assumed -again without the maths-that the difference between the Newtonian calculation and Einstein's might also have been extremely small)

I think I may have heard that Special Relativity is able to cope with accelerating frames of reference. If this is correct is it also possible for Special Relativity ,allied simply to the Newtonian formula for gravity -as being inversely proportional to the square of the distance between centres of mass of 2 objects -to actually make predictions that are as good as GR? Suppose the internal mass density distributions of Mercury , the Sun and the other bodies were known accurately enough could the predictions of Mercury's perihelion precession be calculated as accurately as was done by GR ? Since Special Relativity would be applicable , spacetime distances would be used rather than "Newtonian" **units of space and time . I do not have(or am likely to acquire) the maths skills (or the theoretical knowledge) so I am just fishing here -and hoping perhaps to pick someone's brain if my question has any merit. ** just calling them "Newtonian" as shorthand. I mean the way space distances and time distances were treated separately before Special Relativity "fused" them together.

Well just on the basis that an older partner would tend to be more rigid in his/her views and his/her social milieu would reflect that. "Married life" in an informal sense ,I suppose. (if that is clear) I am not confident in my assessment, though. I reckon studies could be made (pointlessly?) to interpret the findings of this research (where did you find this btw?)

The man gets a carer but the woman's social milieu is likely to be less challenging than otherwise?

What do you mean by "real work"?

A historical question perhaps but is there any record of what gave Minkowski the idea for this representation? I understand Einstein was not pleased at first but came around. Was it Einstein that first discovered that the spacetime interval was invariant from all inertial FoRs? How did he get the idea for that minus sign? Did it just show up in the maths "uninvited" or was someone playing around with (4D?) hyperbolic geometry and did Einstein just notice the applicability?

No,not light speed.Speeds approaching that of light. I thought you said it was not possible and so my idea seems impractical. Some of the plans for traveling to the planets in the vicinity of Proxima Centauri do seem to envisage relativistic speeds by means of laser propulsion but I am prepared to accept that smaller spacecraft might not travel significantly faster than "normally" sized ones.

For the aim of achieving relativistic speed (but you say this can't be done )

I mean people. Can it be done? We can breed our offspring for genetic qualities and one of these is presumably smallness . How small can we go before intelligence is sacrificed? If we can go very small can we go small enough that travel at relativistic speed becomes possible ? If we are very small then resources become very much of a non existent problem and if we can travel at relativistic speeds the only problem would be maintaining contact with those we have left behind (we are well used to this dilemma as it is only over the past couple of centuries that emigration has ceased to become something of a one way ticket in this respect) I realize we will never breed for sufficient tininess with today's technology but could we manage it somehow in the future (and escape our planet before we destroy it and our civilization-or we get done in by a natural disaster)

I knew I could badger you into feeling guilty

Every winter our beach disappears into the sea (not completely ,it just drops away (a metre or so) so that the rocks and the pebbles are shown up near the shore). The sand comes back in the Spring or the Summer. It is more marked after heavy storms. Old buried trees are also revealed. I have no idea how old they are.

Not that I have a hope of gleaning anything from this ,but is this a decent description? It seems to date from pre-Ligo times....(I googled it based on your post) http://eagle.phys.utk.edu/guidry/astro616/lectures/lecture_ch21.pdf

Would there be a time axis in that representation (I am quite happy to forego the y- and z-axes if it means time (or ct ,perhaps) can be depicted in relation to a spatial distance in a graphical or geometrical way. Pardon my ignorance but this vertical/ horizontal feature of the wave has nothing to do with the e and m components of an em wave? (it looks a bit similar-is that a feature of all waves) What causes these vertical/horizontal components in a gravitational waves? (is it only evident in the inter spatial relations?)

Can gravitational waves be shown graphically in terms of spacetime geometry? Is the rubber sheet with radiating waves the only representation? https://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1600&bih=769&ei=Kj4QWvOBBYHwaKWOp4AC&q=merging+blasck+hole&oq=merging+blasck+hole&gs_l=img.3...1561.7410.0.9403.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0....0...1.1.64.img..0.0.0....0.FgoeW3WFcww loads of them Am I really just asking for a mathematical/geometric analysis of a region of space as a ripple passes through and would that just be another example of spacetime being minutely curved -this time as a result of an extremely distant event ?

Yes ,after I posted I realized it wasn't saying or asking much as a question. (just trivially true?) Even so I was not really clear on the wavelength x frequency =speed (c) formula so hopefully I am now.

Yes that was my half misunderstanding.That whole area is a bit outside comfort zone. That is interesting. Does that deconstruct c into spatial and temporal components?

Is there any sense in which the frequency of light can be seen as another measure of the light's "speed"? You can say the frequency "slows down",can't you ? In that sense can one say that the speed of light has no limit** or am I misunderstanding the phenomenon as an up/down motion when it really isn't there? **or a different limit

I will have to find out about that. I was only given the bare details I doubt he was confronted.

thanks

So the same applies to a beam of light emerging from a gravitational well? It loses energy (its frequency is lowered) but maintains a constant speed?

When a beam of light approaches a Black Hole "head on" would a stationary* observer between it and the Black Hole notice any change in it as it approaches? If it cannot go any faster than c but is being pulled into the Black Hole , does the beam become more energetic ? *For the observer to be stationary near a Black Hole ,he must,I suppose be accelerating towards the beam of light and so would that explain the increased energy between him and the oncoming beam of light ?(if indeed there is an increase in energy)

Anecdotally I was told a story where two young women on holiday were joined in public at a bench by a man who proceeded to wank himself. How serious a crime/(misdemeanour?) would that be considered to be ? Worse or better for the fact that it occurred in public?

Are we going to set the spacetime distance from an origin at any constant (or simply any s) and examine the 3D mathematical objects created when we set any of the 4 variables to a constant (similarly to how one does partial differentiation)? (I am quite OK with manifolds needing to be differentiable)

I am not sure to make of those representations. Perhaps they are mathematically/geometrically consistent but it is too hard for me to follow the analysis of how they are constructed. I would ,though be interested (if only from a pedagogic point of view) whether the surfaces/hypersurfaces Studiot has described can be shown graphically in a similar way (or even as part of the tesseract) Even if they cannot ,that in itself might be worth knowing. At the present time .I am especially interested in any surfaces in 3D+1 spacetime .Previously I have asked whether such mathematical surfaces can be created by setting spatial (or perhaps temporal) values to a constant but got no specific answer at the time. @Studiot :I don't want to get ahead of myself and am looking forward to the next installment