Eric - Response

In responding to the ideas put forth by my classmates, I do not refute or deem incorrect any concept that has been proposed here. First off, I would like to provide what I believe is a rather complete definition of "ultimate:"

ultimate: furthest or highest in degree or order - wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Now I do not think this necessarily the best or only definition of ultimate, but it does seem to be the most pertinent to this discussion. I would like to clearly state that in my opinion, our search for the ultimate frame of reference is not for the "best" one, but the most absolute. I chose the center of our expanding universe as the ultimate frame of reference because I do not know of any frame of reference of a higher order.

Though this frame of reference may not be practically obtainable, it does provide a relatively unbiased frame of reference for all other motion in the universe. As stated by several other individuals such as Brad, there are many more practical frames of reference and every situation warrants a unique viewpoint, but as far as an ultimate frame of reference, I do stand by my claim that there is one, and that it is the center of the universe.

Moving off on a slight tangent and apologizing for being a little repetitive in my last paragraph, I would like to address the concept of all motion being relative, which was discussed by many people between now and my last post. In respect to frames of reference, I propose this idea concerning the speed of light: theoretically, nothing can go faster than the speed of light. A recent discussion regarding the speed of gravity waves ties into this because we don't have any way to detect them. First of all, gravity is exerted by all matter in the universe, so the only way to tell what the speed of gravity is (and if it is faster than the speed of light), mass would have to be accelerated past the speed of light. However, two problems present themselves. Firstly, as far as we know, this cannot be accomplished, so there is no way to perform this experiment, rendering it to be a bit of a dead end. Secondly, if we could move matter faster than the speed of light, how would we be able to tell if it really was? What I mean is, yes, an object may be moving five times the speed of light, but how can we tell that it really is if we can only observe it moving at the speed of light? On top of this, we have no way to detect gravity waves, such as those that would be exerted in this experiment. Therefore, there would appear to be no way to test the speed of gravity with our current level of knowledge.

Branching off of this idea, I want to discuss one more thing. We say that the speed of light is the fastest that anything can travel, but if motion is relative, how can this be the case? If you have two photons of light traveling in opposite directions, would that not make them each moving at twice the speed of light in respect to each other? And if we were to add a third photon traveling in the same direction as one of the others, but the speed of light faster than it, would this photon not be now moving at three times the speed of light relative to the one moving in the other direction? I am aware that experiments have been conducted regarding the relationship between mass and speed, and that as a particle is accelerated near the speed of light, its mass begins to increase, but this still leaves my previous questions unanswered. What if two planets were moving away from each other at 3/4 the speed of light - this would make them appear to be moving 1.5 times the speed of light with respect to each other. And as an extension of this, if all motion of matter in the universe is relative to the center of the universe, how does this tie in to relative motion and the speed of light? I have no definitive answers to these questions, but I think they are interesting prospects to consider while discussing these subjects.

I have found it interesting to read the various viewpoints put forth by everyone else, and I believe that all of them have merit. I think that mankind has barely taken its first steps into the ocean of science, and that there is so much out there that we do not know. Therefore, we can really only speculate on what we have observed thus far. I look forward to seeing what new scientific discoveries are made in the future as where it takes us.