Suppose I am following it at a distance and varying my velocity? How does its positional distance avoid being affected by my antics? Why should it be an exception?
I don't know that anyone can explain "why." It appears to be an inherent property of the universe--on some level I'm not sure "why" even makes sense to ask if it's just a fundamental property of reality. Someone with a physics background might have some more insight into the why or how, if anyone really understands it.
Yes, it’s because the speed of light is a fundamental constant of the universe. It’s not actually special, mass is special. Everything without mass travels at exactly c. The reason that c is always the same no matter what your speed is is because it’s simply the distance something travels over time. If you are not moving through space, all of your motion is through time. If you travel at the speed of light, all of your motion is through space and you don’t experience time at all (photons do not experience time.). You can increase your own motion trough space but still have c be c by decreasing the speed of time by the same amount. C is a ratio between motion through space and motion through time, but neither are concrete. This is called special relativity. This was a huge problem for classical physics because the non-relative speed of light fell out of Maxwells equations and no one knew how it worked until Einstein. Light also never accelerate to c, it is created at c. Let me know if I didn’t explain it well enough. Relativity can be a little mind bending, but we’ve tested it thoroughly and it’s definatrly how things work.
There's a nice near-lightspeed battle sequence in The Algebraist that takes place in minute detail, but under five seconds, IIRC.
Let's see.... 1) Asimov's laws of robotics being treated as actual things you can program into a robot, especially one with a human-like AI. 2) Time travel. Any form of time travel. It works in comedies where the science isn't supposed to be taken seriously, and I know it can be done well, but it usually ends up with a story with so many gaping plot holes that I can't take the work seriously. 3) Using scientific/mathematical terms improperly. It is one of my all time biggest pet peeves.
It's just how relativity works. The cosmic speed limit (the speed of light) is absolute, and has been tested and proven again and again. Consequences of this lead to effects such as time dilation and several other important phenomenon, and it's the reason why it would require infinite energy for anything with mass to reach the speed of light (i.e. why light-speed is impossible without warping space itself). One thing that I'd like to point out is that the speed of light is not actually about light at all. It's the speed of causality (which is the speed that massless particles such as photons travel in a vacuum). In other words, it's how quickly an event in one location can affect something in another location. Honestly it's not at all a topic that can be covered nearly in-depth enough in a forum discussion. There are quite a few videos and books out there on the subject, though. I personally recommend PBS Space Time, as I've found them to be very reliable at presenting scientific theories accurately and in relatively good depth. There are plenty of other good channels out there as well that are likely to give more condensed explanations, but I don't know them all (Vsauce and Veritasium come to mind, though).
Getting into space physics is weird. So if you were able to get something up to 90% light speed, and shine a light on the same vector, it would move along said vector at light speed, and it will continue until it strikes something and either bends around it, bounces off it, or goes into a black hole who’s gravitational pull goes so far beyond understanding that it pulls light into it. (Technically all forms of the EM spectrum, since EM waves move at light speed). Any who, you gradually begin to see things in front of you from farther and farther away as the photon put distance between it and you. It will have a relative speed of 10% light to you as it moves away, but you won’t see it because it isn’t bouncing off of anything to make it back to your eyes. Like I said, space and physics in space are fucking weird.
Orbital mechanics bent my brain badly enough, and that shit's easy. But to the original topic, non-SF movies that try and shoehorn some SF into them for whatever reason. I know there are a million and one reasons to hate him, but Dan Brown's Angels and Demons was on cable last night. His forte is screwing up history and geography, but when he pops up with pocket universes and antimatter bombs just kinda tacked on as a side note to piss off the few Christians he hasn't yet? Yeah, go back to insisting Jesus was an alien and the Vatican is in alignment with Uluru and Stonehenge, or whatever the fuck it is you do. I may have Dan Brown partially confused with this guy, come to think of it. I don't know if either of them should feel flattered or insulted by that comparison...
This isn’t how I understand it. I think that the speed of light is constant for all observers. So both the people moving at .9 light and people relatively stationary will both see the beam traveling at the speed of light.
Correct, all observers view the speed of light as exactly the same. Distance and time stretch and condense to allow this to happen. Distances get shorter at higher speeds and time moves slower. If you are the reference frame, the rest of the universe changes shape, but to an outside observer, it’s you who are shortened and moving at a different rate of time. For example, if you were traveling around 99% the speed of light, to a star ten light years away, common sense would say it’d take just over ten years, and it will from the point of view of earth. But for astronauts on that space ship, the trip is over relatively quickly bother because the space in front of them contracted and time slowed down dramatically. It’s probably be less than a year. Oh have to do what’s called a Larenz transormation to swap between reference frames.
Why is everyone complaining about using CGI? If you make a movie just to show off cool effects I can see the bad part of it, but in most sci-fi movies it just is a tool to make it look better, the story isn't affected.
What this guy says. I will add that there is one thing about the signal that is sent from the ship moving at 90% speed of light in reference to another ship: the light's wavelength will appear to be different depending on which ship is viewing it. If a ship traveling towards another ship fires a red laser at the second ship, the second ship will see a bluer laser hitting it (I do not feel like calculating the exact shift that would be observed, hence me saying it's "bluer," because it will be blueshifted).
Dear Science Fiction, Things to please stop right now: Injections directly into people's necks. Really? When has anyone ever had an injected directly to the carotid artery in real life that wasn't intended to cause a massive embolism? The military or para-military person or military advisor who is just marginally under control and ready to go full Rambo at any random moment. Extra points if said person is the ex-spouse of one of the science nerds also on site. Double extra points if this person who has been "hand selected" to be the military presence in some highly classified, black-ops sort of thing even though he (it's always a he, innit.) shows actual blatant signs of being psychotic, but somehow it's not a problem because his time and experience in Mogadishu and the jungles of Venezuela outweigh the 30 grams of alprazolam he tosses back daily like it was Tylenol. My thanks in advance, Me
Alien invasion movies where the aliens want to destroy and harvest a perfectly viable world to live on. Robot Uprisings, where are the ones where the Androids do good for humanity. After all if anyone is fucking anything up, it's us. LOL.
Setting aside my perpetual argument that extincting humans is "doing good" for them, The Matrix was an example of the machines helping us. It was humanity that was guilty of ecocide, but the Matrix went and created a world for them to live in that was similar to the one they'd destroyed. The machines also said they'd tried to create a virtual paradise for humanity to live in, but people were incapable of handling it. Basically, it was a situation where a toddler who was playing with fire set his house ablaze and had to stay at the neighbors equally decent domicile is getting all fuzzy because he wants to go back to his room, despite the fact that doing so will be fatal. The Matrix is the hero of the series.
, Lol. Indeed. The Matrix was the true hero, using Humans as batteries while given them a virtual world to live in. It also reminds me how much I didn't care for the next two Matrix movies. (I think there was two more). But basically, the Humans did it to themselves then blame the machines, who keep them alive.
Yeah the neck injection thing is kinda odd. Though in ST TNG they did it in the arm, but in Voyager and Deep Space 9, they do the neck too. Also in thriller movies assassins and such do too. It is a strange concept for sure. Not too familiar with you second point though. Closest I can think of to that is Cane from Soldier, but that was at the end of the film. Usually they just make the super badasses basically invincible (with a few bruises and scrapes) for effect. But I can see what you mean about the character going 'Rambo' on what ever enemy forces. It's like yeah, it's just like a video game where 1 guy can take on an entire army with little effort. Yeah no. They would be dead before they made it that far, but because plot convenience is there so they don't get overwhelmed by whole battalions at once, he can. Really? Not IRL dude. Well my book(s) take a different approach to the alien invasion thing. Granted they don't want resources or to dominate the Earth, so in a way it is the opposite of that.
I'm not thinking super-soldier types. It's more like... In each of the Jurassic World/Park/Whatever films, there's some paramilitary dickbag who immediately shafts everyone in sight as soon as no one is looking. He's always some egomaniac douche-nugget that everyone was supposed to buy as a "professional" up to that point. In the film Arrival the military advisor (paunchy desk-jockey, totally not a soldier) pretty much has his hand on The Button™ the whole movie waiting to send in the shock troops. He's painted as irrational, just looking for any little shadow to call in the ICBMs. In Contagion, when Laurence Fishburne's character is interviewed by the military, again, the guy in uniform comes off like he's hiding a raging war-boner under the desk, dying for Laurence Fishburne to tell him yes, the virus is a weaponized attack, and Laurence gets his moment to dish out the film's key sound bite, "No one has to weaponize the bird flu; the birds are already doing that." And there's Iain's example of the military team that joins the rest of the scientists in The Abyss, again, painted as trigger-happy idiots who are easily felled by nerdy Everyman Logic™. If you've been in uniform, it's a trope you can't help but notice time and time again.
Not to say it happens everyday, but there is precident for the 1 against an army trope in real history. To name a few, there’s the Viking at Stamford Bridge, Dan Daly in the Boxer Rebellion, Hector Cafferata in the Last Stand of Fox Company (battle of Chosin Reservoir, Korean War), and Audie Murphy at Holtzwihr. All of these are examples of men in history who singlehandedly halted the advance of an opposing army, and in the process killed a hefty number of them. In the cases of Daly, Cafferata, and Murphy they survived the event to boot.
Also alien invasions where they want something they can easily get elsewhere. I think Battle LA the aliens came to earth for water, when anyone with a science background knows that there is way more water in other places like Europa and Pluto.
This is entirely false. Photons always travel at the speed of light, regardless of the motion of the observer. Distance and the speed of time change to make this happen.
