Time

Time runs slower for objects moving fast.

Time runs slower for objects closer to a strong gravitational pull.

True things:

Say you have two clocks that keep accurate time. If you leave one at home and take one with you on a round-trip airplane flight, the clock you bring with you on the trip will be behind the one you left at home when you get back.

If you take the same two clocks, put one on top of a mountain and one down by the beach (assuming no weird gravitational pull anomalies based on geographical location), the clock on the beach will be behind the one on the mountain. While that example is extreme, you can replicate scaled results simply by placing one on a table and one on the floor.

The mountain example works for Mount Everest.

https://ascentdescentadventures.com/blog/is-gravity-different-at-the-top-of-everest/
https://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/circles/lesson-3/the-value-of-g

• At sea level, the value of g is approximately 9.806 m/s².
• At the summit of Mount Everest, this value drops to around 9.773 m/s².
• At twice the distance from the center of the Earth, g is approximately 2.45 m/s².

These clocks running slower or faster experiences always depend on two relative points in space. If you are an observer in intergalactic space (between galaxies) and one on Earth, the clocks are running very differently. There is a measurable difference if you are a person on Pluto vs. someone on Earth. It is not the insane levels shown on Interstellar, but it will tick by differently.

The Speed of Light

The last thing that is often tricky to comprehend is how things moving at the speed of light observe time. It has been shown using equations that anything with measurable mass cannot move at precisely light speed. There is a problem with mass and energy when you reach that c speed. However, if you could move at that speed, you could travel anywhere in the universe instantly for yourself.

The math shows that time would stop for a mass moving at the speed of light. If you wanted to travel 500 light-years at instant light speed, stop, and return at the same rate, it would take you 0 seconds, but the Earth would have experienced 1,000 years. Going to instant light speed is currently impossible, let alone changing direction 180 degrees in an instant.

Most of our ambitious plans to send probes to nearby stars use laser energy to speed objects up to insane speeds to shorten the time required to get there. If we could get a probe to 80% of the speed of light, the probe would experience 3/5ths of a year for every 1 year we sat here and waited for it to return the signal.

Fall Mid latitude Aurora

Last year, we were treated to at least two (some accounts say four) different aurora displays. The first one in the Summer was surprising, an event I had never experienced. The skies don't light up quite like the photos below, but you can tell there are reds and purples, and the curtains of charged particles are noticeable as you look skyward.

I set up a long exposure timelapse and captured the video below during the second aurora I witnessed in early October.

A phone photo highlights the color well. Digital devices detect charged particles well.

RIP Dark Energy

Dark energy and dark matter are both used to explain the unexplainable. Dark energy has been touted as reverse gravity, pushing things apart and explaining the Universe's accelerating expansion. This idea is used to describe things we could not understand.

However, a new study demonstrates that differences in gravity can actually explain it.

In short, time in the Milky Way Galaxy (our home galaxy) may run up to 35 percent slower on average. So, while 100 years in our galaxy is 100 years for us, approximately 153 years pass in intergalactic voids. Ramp that up to a billion years, and a whole extra 500 million years happen in the void. This is additional time for expansion, so it happens much faster. 

Mind blown.

References

• https://www.yahoo.com/news/study-blows-dark-energy-theory-132330258.html
• https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/537/1/L55/7926647?login=false

Politics and Advertising

This one will be short because it's not a fully formed thought. I've been on YouTube quite a bit over the past month or so, and the number of U.S. presidential campaign ads on videos is very high. You could watch a 10-minute video and see four ads, often two from each candidate. I'm unsure if the content creators can control which ads appear; I've seen right-leaning ads on left-leaning content and vice versa.

According to EMARKETER, 9% of political spending (national, regional, local) will occur on Meta and Google in 2024.

There's nothing like supporting your favorite candidate with a donation, and nearly 10% of it ends up in the pockets of two large American corporations. To be fair, the YouTube content creators also get their cut.

References

1. https://www.emarketer.com/press-releases/2024-political-ad-spending-will-jump-nearly-30-vs-2020/

The Dog and the Truck

 

There is a version of me who would love to own an old Ford Ranger and take it to the grocery store while my dog waits for me. The only problem with this version of the Ranger is that it does not have airbags. The truck didn't see airbags until 1995.

 

 

Self Vs Others

Per the script, I'm writing about something bothering me. People with a particular family structure have expressed their displeasure with how we run our own. This debate is as old as human thought, with the elderly matriarch voicing displeasure with how the younger generations live. With any system, a popular one arises, and it becomes the norm. This can be subject to bias when someone growing up in a particular system feels like it is the right one for everyone else involved. Else they can use their experience to reason why a particular system can still work.

And you know which system is correct? All and none of them.

But the problem here happens when a group living in one system disapproves of a group living in a different one. They can say such hurtful things but forget to take a long look in the mirror.

Covid—for better and worse—has altered the rules many people live by. A social gathering in 2019 is no longer precisely the same as one in 2023. I've found that many people quickly forget that a person is a human, and humans have more going on with them than just their opinions about Covid. I've discussed this with people and heard stories of anxiety that manifested and continued long after the heart of the pandemic had passed. For some, it is new; for others, it has been there forever and not noticed until now.

I've long been introverted. I prefer to avoid crowds and groups. At many gatherings over my career in physical spaces, I would often slip away and disappear from the group. If walking with a group of six, lagging behind in the back, turning the corner of a city block meant a chance to change direction and escape before the group would notice. As the pandemic winds down, I'm comfortable with my tendencies. People that strive for "normal" can be hiding from their own problems, unseen through mental walls erected over a lifetime of being told to "toughen up" or to "deal with it."

Again, as the years pass by, I've learned the lesson of empathy. Just because I dislike groups and situate my social group in a particular way, that does not mean others should live as I do. This goes for my social group, this goes for work habits, and this goes for my attitudes about Covid. Yet, the disapproval still seems to come. Sometimes fast, sometimes harsh, and never seemingly from someone who has given it the proper thought it deserves.

It is easy to lash out at these people in private. They all have complex attributes that make up their own system, and when they don't match your own, sometimes you question them. But why openly question them? Of course, there are valid reasons to do so. Is someone drinking too much? Are they putting themselves or others in real danger? Then go right ahead. Make the call. But don't do it for someone who wants to arrange their social system in a particular way, assuming those involved are not toxic people.

Long live the ignorant.

Flight

 

Sharing Is Not Always Caring

Note: The No War Ukrainian banner that has appeared as part of the background on this blog was not something I added. I guess whoever created this template updated it to include the banner. I do support Ukraine and hope that the conflict will end and that they will remain their own country, but I'm not so quick to share political opinions or statements like that.

And, that leads us right into today's blog post. Sharing is an action on the internet that is everywhere. Most consumable content has share buttons. Even software user interfaces, such as the toolbar on iPhone's Safari browser have sharing built-in. It goes the same with phone apps, where photos, content, etc are all sharable to other phones using email, text messaging, Bluetooth, or using social apps such as Facebook and Twitter.

And it's quick. You can share something with someone else in as little as 5 seconds, faster than that if you are a skilled user. Many things that get shared online are done so without much thought. For example, you see a news article with a headline proclaiming that someone recently stole half a million dollars from an organization, the sensational headline may prompt you to share it to a social timeline or feed. Yet once you read the article, you may learn that it was a hoax, that the news source was unreliable, or that it was very different than your initial assumption. It may even be an article written by The Onion, a news website that specializes in fake news content.

Content such as shared on social media can be controversial. Often individuals who are on one side of an issue will share any content that supports their belief, even if the content is non-factual. Fact-checking warnings have become popular on social media websites over the past three years, with misleading content having a flagged overlay. Some users continue to call the fact-checkers wrong and will continue to share that sort of content.

So-called fake news is a problem in today's society. It used to be common knowledge that anything coming from the Internet has a high probability to be false. A child under the age of ten is capable of creating and sharing such content without adult supervision if so desired, so who is to say that user John Smith on Twitter has checked the information he shared. Yet, people take and repost shared content without much thought.

For example, we can dive right into US politics. One side may say that Joe Biden is causing gas prices to rise. The other side will say that it is not true. Regardless of who is correct in this situation, many users will repost any sort of content that supports their particular belief. They may even have doubts about their own belief but will continue to share content to reinforce their own beliefs. 

S. Talwar et al. (2019) researched metrics on Online Trust, Self-disclosure, Social Comparison, Fear of Missing Out, and Social Media Fatigue as it pertains to outright sharing of fake news or self-authenticating news before sharing. They found that social media fatigue causes users to share fake news (Talwar 2019). The research also tests all other metrics and assigns values to each.

An article by Shannon Gupta (2016) tells the story of Pepsi's CEO, Indra Nooyi, who was the target of fake news stories shared where he wanted supporters of president-elect Donald Trump to "take their business elsewhere". This started a boycott of the brand, which was premature, as he never said those words at all. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, defended critics, saying that it was a "small amount of content". He said this in a statement also proclaiming that it did not influence the presidential election at the time, to be clear.

And what I am getting at is this. If you want to share or post content on a social media platform, it is wise to figure out if it is true, and it is also wise to make sure that your statements are not an insult to others who may not share your belief. It is one thing to post something true and insulting, but it is much more damaging to post something that is only an opinion and insulting, especially if it is someone you should care about. With how quickly users can share in 2022, it is a good idea to think before sending off that piece of content to your social feed.

References

• Gupta, S., 2016, Trump supporters call to boycott Pepsi over comments the CEO never made, CNN Business, https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/16/news/companies/pepsi-fake-news-boycott-trump
• Talwar, S., Dhir A., Kaur, P., Zafar, N., Alrasheedy, M., 2019, Why do people share fake news? Associations between the dark side of social media use and fake news sharing behavior, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, V. 51, p. 72-82