A Slower Speed of Light Game Demo

so you move faster, or light goes slower, then you get weird length contraction effects? I'm guessing the world in your direction of travel approaches zero size (assuming they let you get that close). Wonder if time dilation effects come into play where those "people" move slower as a result, or how about doppler shifting of light, go too fast the visible world becomes invisible (UV and higher freq. light)
 
I don't think anyone want's to use this game engine...and homeboy is right...I would expect a game like this from MIT, doesn't mean I expect fun...
 
Whether it'd be a fun game or not, it's an awesome demonstration of relativity. I could see it being a very useful classroom tool.
 
drako said:
Whether it'd be a fun game or not, it's an awesome demonstration of relativity. I could see it being a very useful classroom tool.
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I haven't looked yet but it sounds interesting. Of course, when all is said and done, people are fooling themselves. We cannot even explain 'relative' until we verify what is moving and what is not in the first place before we make observations of relative speed. Just who is to say our entire universe is not travelling at near the speed of light already? Do we even know what 'stationary' is, so that we can have a reference? (I'd have to say NO to that, simply because no one has put into space a gyro locked stationary device to use as a locked positional reference yet.)
 
BBA said:
I haven't looked yet but it sounds interesting. Of course, when all is said and done, people are fooling themselves. We cannot even explain 'relative' until we verify what is moving and what is not in the first place before we make observations of relative speed. Just who is to say our entire universe is not travelling at near the speed of light already? Do we even know what 'stationary' is, so that we can have a reference? (I'd have to say NO to that, simply because no one has put into space a gyro locked stationary device to use as a locked positional reference yet.)
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/palm
/face
 
BBA said:
Do we even know what 'stationary' is, so that we can have a reference? (I'd have to say NO to that, simply because no one has put into space a gyro locked stationary device to use as a locked positional reference yet.)
Click to expand...

Hmmm. Might be tough to set that stationary device up. Maybe, instead, we could use a fixed velocity as our reference and define stationary relative to that velocity. I wonder what could provide a suitably constant velocity?
 
BBA said:
I haven't looked yet but it sounds interesting. Of course, when all is said and done, people are fooling themselves. We cannot even explain 'relative' until we verify what is moving and what is not in the first place before we make observations of relative speed. Just who is to say our entire universe is not travelling at near the speed of light already? Do we even know what 'stationary' is, so that we can have a reference? (I'd have to say NO to that, simply because no one has put into space a gyro locked stationary device to use as a locked positional reference yet.)
Click to expand...

I'm not sure i understand. Relativity usually refers to how everything is relative to the observer. Basically the observer becomes stationary, and everything else is either moving, or standing still like the observer. You can pick any point of reference you want as the "observer point" so there is really no such thing as a stationary point in the universe.

the universe IS moving (depending on which reference point you choose). The universe is also stationary (again, depending on the reference).

For the purposes of showing the effects of traveling near the speed of light (or as this game does instead, slow down the speed of light greatly) there is no need to set any particular reference point in space, relativity in reference to the observer, as described above, is all you need.
 
drbenjamin said:
Hmmm. Might be tough to set that stationary device up. Maybe, instead, we could use a fixed velocity as our reference and define stationary relative to that velocity. I wonder what could provide a suitably constant velocity?
Click to expand...

I 'C" what you did there ;)
 
A game for Physicists basically.

It's more interesting than trying to understand Relativity in a class lecture that's for sure. Although both the lecture and the game looks kind of mind-melting.
 
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