

What happens to chirality at relativistic velocities? - asciilifeform
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/racem.htm

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jleyank
I thought one of the many paradoxes of relativity is that while the moving
bodies would appear changed, their "self-world" view is invariant. They see
the relativistic effects applied to the atationary frames. It's been a long
time, so I might be misremembering...

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noonespecial
No, you're right. Its a classic error to accidentally mix in a little fixed
reference thinking with your relativity when first coming to terms with
relativistic reasoning. What helps me most is to remember that something
somewhere is going .9c relative to me right now, and more importantly, I, it.

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JabavuAdams
Bullshit. The "relativity" part of "relativistic" means that the physics are
the same in all inertial (non-accelerating) reference frames, independent of
their relative velocity. The author isn't keeping his reference frames
separate.

If I'm in the spaceship, I don't notice any shortening of my molecules in the
direction of travel, the outside world just looks longer along that axis.

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BahUnfair
Thankyou, I picked up on this to. It amuses me that someone can know quite a
bit about the theory and then completely miss the most obvious flaw in his
idea. The ridiculous mass of objects, however, is (theoretically) true.

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JabavuAdams
... mass as seen from another reference frame ...

but yeah, there may be a reason to make your interstellar ships have small
cross-sectional area ... and ice shields ... _wonders why he forgot to take an
Alastair Reynolds book on vacation_

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BahUnfair
Haha thanks for the correction. I forget that I need to take care with
definitions when it comes to physics concepts.

I just finished reading _Redemption Ark_ , that leaves _Absolution Gap_ and
_The Prefect_. Only a good 2000+ pages to go!

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CrLf
The first part about small bits of interstellar matter impacting the starship
becoming an increasing problem as the speed approaches the speed of light is
something as surprising as it is obvious in hindsight.

I had hever had though of that until yesterday when, coincidentally, I
finished reading Arthur C. Clarke's "The Songs of Distant Earth".

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dmoney
According to an interview about Gene Roddenberry (with one of the writers who
had worked with him), this is the problem that deflectors (which are separate
from defensive shields) are designed to solve. The dish on the front of the
Enterprise's drive section projects a cone of force in front of the ship,
moving dust and other small things out of the way.

I believe this was on one of the TNG seasons' DVD's special features.

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CrLf
Yeah, but the idea that a single atom of hydrogen was a threat hadn't occurred
to me, and this was the real eye opener. Even though I've seen Star Trek and
understood that deflector dishes were supposed to move "tiny bits" of matter
from the ship's path.

