Musings on the Speed of Light

Friends,
There's a really good chance that you're not as nerdy as I am.  I'm neither bemoaning the fact nor bragging (is nerdiness even braggable; is braggable even a word?).  I'm just stating a probabilistic [Exhibit A] fact.  Two nights ago I played a strategy game that featured cards called "King's Court", "Duchy", "Nobles", and "Steward" [Exhibit B].  Yesterday as I watched Moneyball, some of my favorite moments were the glimpses of the equations used to evaluate players' values [Exhibit C]. 

And now I'm blogging about thoughts I've picked up while reading Einstein and science fiction [Exhibit D].


The speed of light is finite, but faster than you
The former isn't obvious; the latter is routinely discarded in sci-fi

Since you're probably less nerdy than I [see Exhibits A-D above], you may not have ever thought about the speed of light.  No one would blame you for this, unless you studied physics.  But it's time to start thinking about it. 

Because I don't know enough about relativity to actually explain it to you, I'm just going to give you a few cool things to think about.  At least, I think they're cool.  And as we've determined, that might not mean anything.

1. The basis of every cool sci-fi thing: the speed of light is constant
Everything else I'll say hinges on this-- light travels at a fixed, finite speed.  This doesn't quite line up with our experience.  It travels so fast that we sort of assume it's instantaneously everywhere.  But no, when you turn on a flashlight, that light actually has to travel to the far end of the room. 

2. No events are truly simultaneous
To say that two things happen at exactly the same time, what do we mean?  We might imagine syncing up wristwatches or something, but the actual meaning of this must mean that an observer would 'see' (i.e. receive the light particles of) Event A and Event B without any passage of time in between.  But because light has a finite, constant speed-- it matters where the observer is standing!

Consider this example from baseball: a runner tags up from third on an attempted sacrifice fly to left field.  Now, suppose there are two observers: the centerfielder next to the left fielder, and the umpire next to third base.  When the ball hits the glove, the light has only a tiny distance to travel to reach the CF's eyes; but when the runner's foot leaves the bag, there is a much longer distance for the light to traverse.  So he sees the catch with virtually no delay, but a slight lag occurs before he sees the runner leave the bag.  Thus, if he sees the two events as truly 'simultaneous', then the umpire-- with the opposite vantage point-- would fairly call out the runner for leaving early!

[Two points: I realize there would be "virtually no delay" for all events in a baseball park, but over incredibly large distances, this sort of delay for light would be extremely relevant.  You might think there could still be simultaneity if you just plopped the observer at a place equidistant from the two events; but if you just altered the speed the observer is moving, the whole concept would fall apart again.]

3. Looking into the past
If you read the bracketed note above-- and I totally understand if you didn't-- you know that this only creates interesting scenarios if we have super long distances for light to travel across.  And nowhere on our planet do we have a distance long enough for this fact to really play out.  But if you've looked up lately, you might have noticed this thing we call "outer space".

Over the vast reaches of space, light's finite speed becomes incredibly interesting (to me).  The most interesting thing, maybe, is that when we look up at the night sky, we're looking into the past.

In our baseball example, the point was that the umpire might see the runner leaving third just after it happens, but (if the baseball field were enormous) he might not see the ball hit the left fielder's glove until a few seconds after it happens.  This is because the light takes a little time to travel the distance to where he's standing.

Well, space actually is enormous, so we don't have to imagine a pretend baseball game anymore.  We can consider actual facts!  The brightest star in our sky is Sirius.  Its distance from Earth is 8.6 lightyears.  What this means is that it takes light 8.6 years to travel from Sirius to us (or vice versa).  So, if something crazy happens to Sirius (e.g. it explodes), we will see the event eight and a half years later!  To put it another way, when you spot Sirius in the night sky, you are seeing Sirius from 8.6 years ago!  What's up, Past-Sirius?


That's all my brain can handle right now
Kudos to you if you made it this far through my nerdy ramblings

There are so many other cool (to me) consequences of relativity.  If objects were to travel at speeds close to the speed of light, so many crazy things would happen, including a slowing down of the passage of time for that object!  Maybe I can ramble about these things another time.  Now I need to go stare at a TV for a while.

What's your nerdiest pastime?

Any, um, cool physics thoughts?

Jon

How to cope with the Pittsburgh Pirates

It was a dark, cold October night.  The year was 1992.  Ok, I'll admit I have no recollection of the temperature or amount of light outside, but it was a 1992 October night.  In my short life up to that point, I had known many emotions -- joy, fear, envy, love, and obsession.  But it was that night in autumn when I had my first run-in with heartbreak.


Some important background

The previous year, in the summer of 1991, my dad introduced me to organized baseball.  He coached my team (his first of many years in that role), and I was the worst player ever (this may someday get its own post because of how funny it was; fortunately, my "embarrassingly awful" phase only lasted one year).  But somehow, despite my literally jaw-dropping inability to play the game, I began to love it.

My newfound love for the game and my dad's ticket-producing business relationships led to many, many visits to Three Rivers Stadium to watch the Pirates in those years.  So by the following fall, after two full seasons of watching Barry Bonds, Andy Van Slyke, and Jay Bell, I was a Buccos fanatic.


That night in October

The Pirates were in the NLCS against the ugly, racist Atlanta Braves (I'm just stating facts).  The series was tied 3-3, so the winner of Game 7 would be playing in that year's World Series.  The Braves had home field advantage, so I was watching the final showdown with my dad in our basement.

I won't go into too many details, but we were winning heading into the last half-inning, and our closer gave up two runs, blowing the save, and we lost.

I wept for two hours.  But little did I know, the Pittsburgh Pirates were just getting started.

A neverending cycle of false hope and shattered dreams

The crushing soul-murder of the Pirates in the years since has been dramatically different from that of the '92 team.  Rather than making it super close to the title and losing, they have just lost right out of the gates.  In EVERY SINGLE SEASON since 1992, the squad has lost more games than it's won.

As the years of this losing streak have piled up, a question has begun to loom, pregnant with depression and despair -- when, O when, will the Pirates have a winning season (one in which our winning percentage is over .500)?  It's really remarkable that the question on all Pirates fans' minds has nothing to do with when we'll win another championship, or even when we'll make the playoffs... just winning more games than we lose.

There are 3 basic approaches to answering this question.  They're all depressing:

1. "This is the year."
These fans are on an annual emotional roller coaster that rivals the Millenium Force.  Spring training and the first two weeks of the season are filled with joy.  The rest of the season is filled with increasing torment.  There's never a logical basis for this position, and the person who holds it knows that; it is admittedly believed as an act of faith.

2. "Ok, not this year, but seriously, like 2 or 3 years from now."
These fans (I'm usually one of them) are trying to ride the fence.  It's almost the perfect example of trying to eat a cake but still be able to have the cake in front of you to gaze at with gratitude and anticipation.  Not possible.  The reasons it's so easy to dismiss the Pirates "this year" will inevitably still be true in 2-3 years.  But some of us need to sleep at night.

3. "Forget about it.  The Pirates will always be terrible.  Life is meaningless."
Ok, not all of these fans have existential crises, but you catch my drift.  This third camp has abandoned all hope and bought a lot of Steelers and Penguins gear.  But the problem is, they are forced to always be around themselves, and that Negative Nancyism can't be good for your health.  So instead of hope and crushing defeat, this fan lives with steady sorrow in the background.


Pirates fans, commiserate with me

Even if you're not a Buccos fan, join in and help the rest of us feel better about life:

When will the Pirates have a winning season?

What silly things break your heart?

Jon

MLB, You've Had This Coming for 12 Years

Welcome back.  The Gone Baby Gone debate ended in a 7-7 tie (though the vote is still open for a few more days, if you want to tip the scale).  This wasn't surprising at all, given the scenario's almost eery ability to split any group down the middle.
[Note: "eery" looked a little weird, so I looked it up.  It is an alternate spelling for "eerie", and I'm going to stick with it.]

And now, we move onto one of my favorite rants of all time [yes, I said "one of my favorite rants"; I apparently enjoy individual rants the way I do ice cream flavors]: the uneven distribution of teams in Major League Baseball's divisions.  Wait!!  If you're not a baseball fan, or even a sports fan, I implore you to keep reading!  I can't think of a single reason why, but... come on, I'm imploring you.  How often are you implored to do anything?

For those of you who don't know the MLB very well, there are six divisions -- three in the National League ("NL") and three in the American League ("AL").  Each League has a West, Central, and East division.  And now, the moment we've all been waiting for.  Here are the number of teams in each division:

AL East: 5
AL Central: 5
AL West: 4

NL East: 5
NL Central: 6
NL West: 5

If you're a fan of sports, nae, a fan of such things as decency, justice, and hope, you're probably looking at that and thinking, "WHAAAAAT?!?"  I know.  Four divisions with 5 teams each, one with 4, and one with 6 makes no sense.  But it's worse than just not making sense -- it's super unfair.

Here's the bottom line -- making the playoffs is (theoretically) significantly easier or harder for you depending on which division you're in.  For example:

What it takes to make the playoffs if you're in the...

• AL Central or AL East: win your division or win the AL wild card spot -- i.e. outperform 4 specific teams, or outperform 10-12 of the other 13 AL teams
• AL West: win your division or win the AL wild card spot -- i.e. outperform 3 specific teams, or outperform 10-12 of the other 13 AL teams
• NL West or NL East: win your division or win the NL wild card spot -- i.e. outperform 4 specific teams, or outperform 12-14 of the other 15 NL teams
• NL Central: win your division or win the NL wild card spot -- i.e. outperform 5 specific teams, or outperform 12-14 of the other 15 NL teams

Even the parts I didn't bold are bad, but I just had to draw attention to what I think is the biggest problem with this system -- how much lighter a task an AL West team has to make it to the postseason than an NL Central one.  Also note the fact that the NL simply has more teams, making the Wild Card harder to attain.


Some arguments I've heard supporting this unfair system:

1. The AL and NL are like different sports, so how dare we force a team to switch?  It would be some sort of disgrace to the game.
2. The NL Central is a bad division and the AL West is a good one, so it balances out the factor of number of teams.
3. Interleague play (or specifically the way it's scheduled) relies on the NL having more teams than the AL, or the 2 uneven divisions, or a lunar eclipse, or something. -- Courtesy of my friend Jason, whom I've invited to explain in a comment below.

The first two arguments are bad (in fact, the second is horrible), and the third one I don't understand at all.  But I'll address all three:

1. No, they're not.  Having a DH on your roster does not change the game nearly as much as all the raving National League purists claim it does.  Plus, we already saw the Brewers make this leap in memorable history, and I don't remember hearing about any spontaneous combustion or anything.  Now, we'd never ask a team to move to a stadium built over an ancient Native American burial site...
2. This argument is ludicrous.  It's like condoning a league with one division of 5 teams and one division of 27 teams and saying, "Well, those are 5 really good teams, so it balances out."  No, it's an unfair way to run the league, regardless of where the "good teams" happen to fall.
3. On the one hand, I invite Jason to please comment on this entry and explain the Interleague Play Theory.  On the other hand, even if Jason presents the most crystal-clear, articulate argument that demonstrates why all of Interleague Play rests on the teams being distributed in their current fashion, I'd still say the system needs immediate revision.  Interleague Play, for all its merry matchups and fall foreshadowing, should never be able to dictate something so big and unfair.  Interleague Play is a trivial (if not stupid) part of the game, not a major one.

I'm not sure how to fix the problem.  I mean, it seems like we should take one NL team and put it in the AL, and shuffle teams around until the divisions make sense geographically and each one has 5 teams.  If this puts Interleague Play in grave peril, then revise IP or get rid of it altogether.

Thoughts?  Ideas?  Observations?

Bonus question:  What year will the Pirates be above .500 again?

Jon