The G spot

[Hashi Lebwohl]

The guy throwing the ball into the air while on the train doesn't see the ball's horizontal movement because his horizontal movement is exactly the same as the ball's. From his point of view he and the ball are not changing position horizontally and so no such motion is observed.

Photons do not "inherit" momentum from physical objects that emit them, which is why light coming from a source moving at "almost c" does not put out light at "almost 2c".
Yes, the faster you go the slower your relative time is, as described by the classic 1/sqrt[1-(v^2/c^2)] where v is your current velocity. The speed of light is constant so begin by drawing a square on a piece of paper; this square has sides with a length of 1 light-second. As v increases (whether because you have been accelerating a lot or you are near a source of immense gravity) then space stretches; the amount of "stretch" is again defined by the above equation. It still takes light exactly one second to travel the length of the square but since it is now (for example) twice as large then time must have slowed down by half--from an outside frame of reference. To someone inside the square they see the light take only one second to cross the square.

We are able to examine or hypothesize about what happens are really high velocities only on pencil/paper since we cannot go that fast.

[peter]

But was I correct Hashi, that the first example, [the ball bit] while it does describe how what you see is dependant upon your frame of reference, is not actually describing an 'event' that is ehibiting the 'paradox' of relativity [is relativity a paradox - I guess not once you accept the non-constancy of actual time itself] in the way that the 'lamp-light' part is?

There was always that thing/quote re Einstein on a train saying comething like 'Cambridge is now arriving at the train I am sitting on' - I never got that exept as an example of 'frame of reference' thinking.

To the lay person, both Relativity and Quantum [big and small I guess] have these weird paradoxes that quite possibly make absolute sense to the mathmetician. I assume relativity and quantum physics are still in a state of pretty much mutual exclusion in the 'being right' game or we would probably have heard of the 'unification' even at the popular level - it would be a major advance wouldn't it [a GUT?] This implies one, or both, will need significant tampering with to arrange 'the fit'. Is there any indication as yet which of the two theories will fall first - or be most 'changed' in furure times.

[Do theories such as these ever, by the way, attain the status of 'Laws' - has such an elevation ever been achieved in Science. Was the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics ever the '2nd Theory of Thermodynamics'. Will we ever see 'Darwin's Law of Evolution by Natural Selection'.]

[Hashi Lebwohl]

But was I correct Hashi, that the first example, [the ball bit] while it does describe how what you see is dependant upon your frame of reference, is not actually describing an 'event' that is ehibiting the 'paradox' of relativity [is relativity a paradox - I guess not once you accept the non-constancy of actual time itself] in the way that the 'lamp-light' part is?

Yes, you are most definitely correct.

Paradoxes in science exist only because the person struggling with the paradox is missing some vital piece of information. That piece of information is keeping them from fully understanding what is happening.

Newtonian and quantum physics are both correct at their respective levels. I have long been fascinated by objects at the boundary of those two levels--there must a point where objects above this mysterious barrier follow Netwonian physics and objects below the barrier follow quantum physics but I do not know where this barrier is or how large/small objects must be at that barrier. Of the two, though, quantum physics will change--remember that we have been investigating classical physics for thousands of years but quantum physics is just about 125 years old. Boltzmann first hypothesized discrete energy states based upon statistical analysis of emission from heated gases in 1877 and Planck fully formalized his theory of quanta in 1900.