Ultimate speed limit....?....Nah, Einstein is WRONG.

The speed of light has often been described as "The Ultimate Speed Limit", a 'barrier' because people have always been informed of this.

And, without knowing why, they have been imbibed with the belief that this is the actual scenario, without having been informed as to why this statement has been made public as if it is fact. Conesquently, they have likened it to the 'sound barrier', a totally different thing.

Hence the plethora of people (especially in the physics rooms) who believe that Einstein 'was wrong', because just like sound, they believe that the 'light barrier' can be breached.

Wrong or right, this is what happens: Nothing can travel faster than light, and what is more, there is no way to even approach those speeds.

Whatever people believe or led to believe, be it good-intentioned or not, the truth is that the speed of light is completely unnattainable. But how do I explain this in normal terms?

I deal in this stuff almost every day, so watch this space as to how it can (or cannot be done).

Most of the boffins in the physics rooms are completely unware that sound and light travel in a different way. In fact, light travels in a totally inexplicable way, to them at least, or it would if they had studied rudimentary wave theory.

The Conclusion of the Calculus...or is it?

Above here you can see what the Calculus can get up to given its wicked way.......

However, we haven't QUITE reached that level yet.....

So, we were up to ‘speed’. I had just finished introducing what ‘speed’ is.

‘Speed’ is the average over, well, in our case, an hour. In 1 hour, we travelled exactly 60 km. And in 30 minutes, we travelled 30 km. So, what was our speed in the last second? Why, 60kph of course. BUT this is not our speed NOW. That was just in the last second.

The measure of speed seems to depend on the time interval before we took the measurement, and, normally this is enough, for cars at least.

But for Math, and certainly Physics, we need more, we need the speed NOW. The way we do this is easy in principle. We begin to make our measurement over shorter and shorter time intervals, until the time interval is so small, the speed we measure is to all intents and purposes, the speed we are doing NOW.

In fact, it turns out there is a real easy way to calculate this NOW speed in Math. We do it with a technique called the Calculus.

Scientists use this technique all the time as 1). It is painfully easy for those used to it, and 2). There are so many ways we can use it, rather than just calculating how fast a car is travelling.

In fact, the use of Calculus is so widespread that Physics would fall apart if Newton hadn’t formulated it. Maybe that is a bit of a strong statement, but without Calculus, science would be completely lost.

Examples of the use of Calculus include speed, acceleration, angular momentum, currents in circuits, voltages, astronomy, black holes, relativity, tensors, athletics, rockets, brake fluids, air conditioning and quantum mechanics.

And those are only the ones from the top of my head (which is pretty small anyway!)

Suffice it to say, Calculus is the cornerstone of physics (OPINION!), and this reader is astonished that schools in the UK have deferred the teaching of it, even the basics, until after 18. And they STILL say exams are not easier here despite everyone getting A grades!

Maybe I will give some beautiful examples of how the Calculus is used in a later post……

Bring Her Home....

This picture has to be the most famous image of a little girl as was Shirley Temple in her heyday, at least in Europe.

It is plastered all over stores, billboards, near traffic lights, guardrails, stations, bus-stops, and has appeared in almost every newspaper and magazine from Here to Eternity.

She is of course, 4-year old Madeleine McCann.

The innocent girl was apparently abducted nearly two months ago in Portugal, on a family holiday.

There are countless yellow ribbons all over Liverpool. tied to railings, lamp-posts, or wherever they can be tied.

Everyone is waiting for her to come home.

Such a furore has been generated that a website has been started: http://www.bringmadeleinehome.com/.

The unique mark in her left eye makes her hard to miss, and yet.....no sign of her. Not even a whiff of a suspect.

Poor Madeleine. She would have had no idea of what was happening.

I wonder how many of my readers have heard of this case, and of what they think. OPINION: It is the writer's view that the girl was murdered soon after abduction, after the perp had had his way, and that the body will be found in Portugal near to where she disappeared.

I have heard of stuff like this happening in America ( exclude Korea on this count), but we don't get the coverage over in the UK that THIS has had here.

Anyone with any views? Please enlighten me, guys.