I just wonder

[mike Meehan]

This evening Prof Brian Cox gave a talk on atoms on beeb 2 at 10pm and mainly the electrons within them - not sure if I got it right totally but my understaning of what he said was that all the electrons throughout the universe were interconnected and that no one electron can be exactly the same as another.

To demonstrate his point he rubbed a fairly large diamond so that its temperature would rise and in so doing said that there would be some change in the electrons and that this change would echo throughout the universe and would affect other electrons where necessary whereever they are and I had the impression that this was instantaneous to ensure that no two electrons are exactly the same.

Now if this were to be the case I find it absolutely staggering since I always thought the the speed of light was the limiting factor on all sorts of communication and travel.

However if this were to be the case I am wondering whether it would be possible to modify certain electrons to such an extent that we could use them to carry communication anywhere in the universe in an instant.

It is not altogether without precedent because our TV's, computers, radar screens etc work by projecting electrons onto a screen - I don't know too much about it and it all means dealing with the strange world of quantam mechanics but I just wonder whether it may be possible for some future boffin to come up with a way of getting electrons to do our bidding in this manner.

Or did I misunderstand the whole concept.

[NL]

No, Mike you did understand that concept. Ive talked about this with a mate of mine and paradoxes arise through this concept (Entanglement) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement .... these paradoxes arise through the hidden theories leading to EPR paradox, quite mind-blowing stuff and scientists do enlist the possibilities of their use in communication and computer technology. As Prof Brian Cox mentioned last night that this is still current belief of what makes up the universe and its workings..Will we ever know the truth or will there be other unknown variables come into play...probably!

[Coast]

However if this were to be the case I am wondering whether it would be possible to modify certain electrons to such an extent that we could use them to carry communication anywhere in the universe in an instant.

I missed the program but if you could do it for communications, wouldn't it then be feasible (given time and research) to do it for any solid object made up of atoms - even say human ones?

[mike Meehan]

Thanks for you replies - as a basic philosphy, my glass is normally half full, rather than half empty.

Thinking about it futther led me to wonder also whether gravity has a speed - I'm not talking of the normal 32 feet per sec per sec which we have here.

The best way I can describe imy question is. 'imagine a hypethical case where say a star suddenly materialises at a mid point between our soar system proxima centura. Would the effect of this star's gravity be felt immediately by our solar system, or would it take time for the gravity to travel and if so would the speed depend on this star's mass?'

It is obviously impossible for such a star to materialise this way but I am just using this as an example to illustrate my question.

[Bobby]

Thanks for you replies - as a basic philosphy, my glass is normally half full, rather than half empty.

Thinking about it futther led me to wonder also whether gravity has a speed - I'm not talking of the normal 32 feet per sec per sec which we have here.

The best way I can describe imy question is. 'imagine a hypethical case where say a star suddenly materialises at a mid point between our soar system proxima centura. Would the effect of this star's gravity be felt immediately by our solar system, or would it take time for the gravity to travel and if so would the speed depend on this star's mass?'

It is obviously impossible for such a star to materialise this way but I am just using this as an example to illustrate my question.

Gravity travels at the speed of light. Here's a interesting article about it and how they proved it did

http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gravity/overview.php

They compared the position of J0842+1835 on September 8, 2002, with its average position on the off-Jupiter days. Plugging this into Kopeikin's formula for the gravitational field of the moving Jupiter gave them the answer they were looking for. Kopeikin and Fomalont became the first two people to quantitatively measure the speed of gravity, one of the fundamental constants of nature.

They found that gravity does move at the same speed as light. Their actual figure was 1.06 times the speed of light, but there was an error of plus or minus 0.21. The results were then announced at the 2002 American Astronomical Society annual meeting in Seattle, Washington. The result rules out the possibility that gravity travels instantaneously, as Newton imagined. If it did, a minutely different shift in the position of the quasar would have been visible on the night of September 8. This vindicates Einstein's instinct when formulating his general theory of relativity, which was to assume that the speed of gravity was equal to the speed of light.

[Methuselah]

Gravity travels at the speed of light. Here's a interesting article about it and how they proved it did

http://www.csa.com/d...ty/overview.php

They compared the position of J0842+1835 on September 8, 2002, with its average position on the off-Jupiter days. Plugging this into Kopeikin's formula for the gravitational field of the moving Jupiter gave them the answer they were looking for. Kopeikin and Fomalont became the first two people to quantitatively measure the speed of gravity, one of the fundamental constants of nature.

They found that gravity does move at the same speed as light. Their actual figure was 1.06 times the speed of light, but there was an error of plus or minus 0.21. The results were then announced at the 2002 American Astronomical Society annual meeting in Seattle, Washington. The result rules out the possibility that gravity travels instantaneously, as Newton imagined. If it did, a minutely different shift in the position of the quasar would have been visible on the night of September 8. This vindicates Einstein's instinct when formulating his general theory of relativity, which was to assume that the speed of gravity was equal to the speed of light.

It does indeed, Bobby...You'd be surprised at how many folks think it's instantaneous though...