Re: One Fast Meteor

Steven wrote:
> Just out of curiosity, what would happen if you got rid of the "optical
> illusion?"

I probably should have phrased things more carefully. The
part that I was calling "optical illusion" was, or at least
I intended it to be, the pure Doppler part. In other words,
it's the part you correct for in order to understand the
underlying physics. A bit like shooting your arrow "below"
the fish you see in the water, because you know that's
where the fish *really* is. You correct for appearances.

The interesting thing is, even *after* you do these corrections,
you get real effects like twins having different ages when
they reunite after one has taken a long journey moving very
fast. That's no illusion. It's real. And it's been
observed, many many times. (Although, the twins are usually
particles, not humans. In some famous experiments, the twins
were atomic clocks.)

Imagine a theoretical universe that is identical to ours
> except that the speed of light is increased to infinity. All
> information is instantly transferred across the entire universe. Would
> Einstein's relativity theories still apply? Or would Newton's theories
> of motion be more appropriate?

The Lorentz transformation (which is the essential mathematical
expression of SR) reduces to the Galilean transformation in
the limit as c -> infinity. So in a sense, the answer is yes
to both your questions.

.