Is there anything in the physical universe that is truly constant?Lightspeed is relative to the medium light travels through.Time is relative too.Everything i can think of is in some kind relative. And i'm not talking about math or something, it has to exist in the physical world.Is there something that is always the same, no matter what? (Except for your mom, she will always be fat)
>>16779045C.>but Lightspeed is relative to the medium light travels through.C being the speed of light is just a vaguely useful generalization and depends on how you even define "speed of light." Pulse speed varies. Phase speed can even exceed C. But front velocity is always C no matter what.
>>16779051That's cool and all but has nothing to do with my question.How can we define what is real when everything around us is relative to something? There is no absolute constant, or is there something?
>>16779045the universe is a giant programmable computer.
>>16779090Either this or reality is not what we think it is. There are as many realities as there are observers in the universe.
>>16779087>There is no absolute constant, or is there something?I just told you. It's C.
>>16779115c is only constant for the photon itself, but relative to an observer.
>>16779087>How can we define what is real when everything around us is relative to something?pointless with people like you. either you're trolling, or you don't know the meaning of words well enough for an explanation to get through.
>>16779122No. It's invariant to all observers. Time and space will literally shift to maintain this consistency.
>>16779087>How can we define what is real when everything around us is relative to something?Try asking the opposite. How can anything be real if it isn't relative to something else? "This" needs "that" to meaningfully exist; else how can change, transformation, information exchange etc be possible?
>>16779051>"speed of light."speed of causality. imposed by our universe, it is not the speed of the photon. photon not having mass would travel at any max speed our universe allows for. it is not the speed of the photon, it's the limit that determines the photon move at that speed
>>16779045Very interesting question, the answer is definitively no, at least not in any measurable way.Reality doesn't work like math does, you can't map reality as if the map is the territory itself.Also, in order to measure anything, you need to measure it against something else, or else the measurement is completely arbitrary and not useful in any mathematical way. So in this way reality is completely relative, and doesn't work like mathematics does, although there are certain patterns to be found, they are not mathematical, at least absolutely.
>>16779174And how is time and space measured?
>>16779424Well I'm American so I just make up units on the fly.
>>16779429BASED
Man, I don’t fucking know.
Is the direction that time flows a constant?Perhaps its like alternating current, constantly fluctuating between forward and backward. We would never notice this if it happens and I can’t imagine any scientific test to determine the truth. Maybe it’s truly unknowable.
>>16779045There kind of has to be some sort of fundamental reference frame or two objects with a closing velocity greater than c, one of the object would be doing twice the speed of light.
>>16779424by those tiny cute squares you see in a coordinate paper
>>16779045I think these are roughly what you are looking forThe gravitational potential at infinity is fixed at 0J/kg, and everything is set relative to that constant at infinityI guess empty space and absolute zero are also constants
>>16781154Empty space is hard to archieve because of cosmic backround radiation, it's everywhere.But i guess you're right with absolute zero, this should be constant for everybody, regardless of where and when you measure it.
>>16781338>empty space is hard to achieveah good point I forgot that the infinity I refer to is a theoretical one and doesn't even exist on the 'outskirts' of the universe. We also can't actually measure a point in space to have precisely a potential of -33222.1J/kg (though maybe we can do some complex calculations based on the composition of the universe?)symmetries are absolute and lead to absolute laws of conservationyou've also got stuff like mass of protons etc.
