universal constant

there is only one constant in the universe, the causality effect: cause and effect, action and reaction.

not neccessarily... studies into subatomic particles suggest that occasionally there can be an effect before the cause, and that certain events appear to be acausal... at the moment nothing can be proved... in fact the only thing certain in the universe is that nothing is certain...

Big Gay Kirk> If you're thinking entanglement that is not really acausal events.

And there is at least one other universal constant. Namely the speed of light which is the same in every reference-frame and for all observers. Plancks constant doesn't change either...
So... 🙂

are we talking about the "cosmological constant"...and ya Omega is right on the speed of C being the constant for spacetime......

C= lightspeed(Y) 😄, in case u diddent know

Lightspeed is not a constant as such... light slows down as it passes thru a medium.... if you had a piece of glass thick enough you could see back in time... theoretically....

Pencils are constant... you will never find a pencil that is different.

Originally posted by big gay kirk
Lightspeed is not a constant as such... light slows down as it passes thru a medium.... if you had a piece of glass thick enough you could see back in time... theoretically....

Ehrm... NO! What gave you that idea??????

Okay, the speed of light in vacuum is constant.
Nothing can move faster than light. So when light slows down as it passes through a medium everything else will also move slower.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992796

stuff can happen without a cause.....i mean that's how the universe started...from a singularity

Originally posted by The Omega
Ehrm... NO! What gave you that idea??????

Okay, the speed of light in vacuum is constant.
Nothing can move faster than light. So when light slows down as it passes through a medium everything else will also move slower.

Nothing that we know at the moment can move faster than light... even Einstein admitted that there could be a FTL particle, but that with "modern" methods such a thing would be unobservable... and what happens when some light moves thru a medium and some doesn't... does part of the universe move slower, and the rest stay the same? What of the theory of "privileged channels" which seems to enable instantaneous transmission of messages over any distance... and I mean instantaneous, not merely "very quick..."

Originally posted by cermiestar
stuff can happen without a cause.....i mean that's how the universe started...from a singularity

basically correct... objects engulfed by a singularity undergo "causal collapse," and all the rules break down... cause and effect cease to have meaning, as do such abstract things as mass, velocity, accelleration, et al...

He didnt say that nothing could move faster than light. He said that nothing could accellerate to the speed of light.
However, he said nothing about things that are already travelling faster than the speed of light (and have been that speed forever)

Originally posted by eleveninches
He didnt say that nothing could move faster than light. He said that nothing could accellerate to the speed of light.
However, he said nothing about things that are already travelling faster than the speed of light (and have been that speed forever)

precisely... he was an intelligent bloke... clever enough to know he didn't know...

Originally posted by The Omega
Ehrm... NO! What gave you that idea??????

Okay, the speed of light in vacuum is constant.
Nothing can move faster than light. So when light slows down as it passes through a medium everything else will also move slower.

c is a constant, but Einstein himself thought that a "true" constant should have no units attached. Interesting guy.