The speed of Darkness

Originally posted by ANOK
reply to post by Nyte Angel

 

When there is NO light your eyes cannot see anything. You can't see colour, which is light broken down into it's spectrums, when it's not there.

You don't see black when it's 'dark', you don't see anything when there is no light. The blackness is nothingness being registered on your brain from your eyes. It's you and your brain creating the blackness, it's not what is actually out there. Without light you couldn't see the darkness if it was out there...

Yeah what he said Cool idea though for a 10th grader! Who knows in 100 years all we think we know now might in reality be bad guessing

Originally posted by ANOK

Originally posted by ITSTHECIA
...If darkness is simply the absence of light, what was darkness before the creation of light ? You see, darkness was here first and darkness cannot be the absence of something that did not yet exist (light) ....Or could it ???

The Bible is not a scientific work written in literal terms. That passage just means there was no light, it doesn't mean the darkness was physical. Before you are born, in the womb, you exist in darkness, and then you go to the light and you pop into the world, it's parables and crap...lol

Darkness is just a description of not being able to see, it's not a physical thing.

Are you saying God created everything except darkness ? and the Bible is incorrect ?

i also would say darkness is infinite. just because it is there when nothing is there. it depends on the backdrawing "being". when god said "let there be light", the light spread with lightspeed or more.. who knows. but there was darkness all around.
if now light draws back, lets say it fades out, darkness is there when the light is gone.
so instantly it is there, and that means it is for instance when you turn a light off, at the switched off lightbulb the first, and then travels backwards along the shining light the bulb emmitted - in reverse lightspeed.

so lets say if you have a beamer like on enterprise and you beam someone - it should make theoetically a noise like a flash - because the surrounding air is collapsing into the "nothing", the vacuum when the person is beamed away. the nothing here is instantly there. because it was there before there was anything :-)

Darkness = default color

There is no speed only overlaying things, like light.

Originally posted by ANOK
There is no darkness, only lack of light. So therefore darkness has no speed...

My thoughts exactly, any attempt at measuring the speed of darkness would merely be measuring the retreat of light which in theory should be the same as the speed of light. Light has properties and therefore can have velocity and such, but darkness is merely the lack of light and has no properties. In fact darkness is actually absolutely nothing, dont talk about the atoms and molecules in the room with the dark, they are in the dark but not of it.

J

This is the same as asking what an empty glass of water tastes like.

Sorry for the one liner...

reply to post by ANOK


I completely agree, don't they teach physics in school anymore? Like Anok stated darkness is a word for what our eyes cannot interpret without light. Simple enough to understand, our eyes can't make out darkness without light so therefor there is always darkness, its forever, light is the material thing that interacts with humans.

umm I always thought darkness was just a lack of light.. therefore it would have no speed.

Simple put...

If you pour water from one vessel to an empty vessel

you could measure the speed of the water entering said vessel

If you poured the water out then you could measure the speed of the water leaving but not the speed of emptyness flowing into the vessel, because its not a physical thing...

I know that is really crude and i hope someone gets what i mean..

Musician not a scientist...

Maybe the confusion comes from the limitation of our eyes when it comes to determining whether it's dark or not. Visible light is a form of electromagnetic radiation but the full spectrum extends far above and below our limited senses so very few places in the universe are truly dark (no radiation), we just can't see it so I consider dark to be a stationary phenomenon. Radio telescopes see 'light' outside our range of vision but it's just as vibrant as a spotlight.

When the light is on in a room the visible radiation has an effect on everything it irradiates with some energy being absorbed and some being selectively reflected (colours). When the light goes out the absorbed energy is being dissipated in other forms we can't detect visually like increased infrared and raised surface temperatures and all those affected surfaces head toward equilibrium with the surrounding ambient conditions gradually by exchanging energy in different forms.

It's called conservation of energy.

It may be a falacy to think that what we see is our definition of light. In terms of science, there is light, even in the darkest of rooms, yet it is in a frequency that we cannot perceive. I find the larger question to be: "Where does the light go?" Be it incandescent, fluorescent, whatever, even the Sun, all these billions of photons do not pile up on the floor, and you cannot trap them, and store them, so there must be a remarkably infinite amount of photons somewhere! Even our own DNA emits light in the UV, and IR ranges, and so for us, there can never be a total absence of light. Don't believe me? Just Google DNA/photon emission.
"If you ain't livin' on the edge, you're takin' up too much space!"

I would think... darkness does not have a speed but rather an acceleration.

ooooh ahhhh.... just upgraded... "Ubuntu HARDY" spell checks as I type... at ATS!

nice...

anyway...

Darkness has acceleration (one L) and that acceleration is relative to the mass of the darkness and distance one is from the dark space, dark object, dark thought, etc.

I am,

Sri Oracle

This was problably said before but:

There is no such thing as darkness!!!
There is only a absense of light.
so, in turn, it doesnt have a speed.
thats why some shadows are darker then others, its the amount of light hitting a surface.

I'd say darkness is a constant. No speed.

For instance if you sent one light photon down a tube. you all know the splitting photons experiment. But lets just say one photon one slit, no splitting.

In front of it, and behind it is darkness, so you could in theory measure the speed of darkness as the darkness behind the photon travels, which would be the same speed of light. But there's also darkness in front of the photon as well

It makes me think darkness is a constant though and has no speed. Just light passes through it. Like cars on a racetrack. The racetrack has no speed.

I'd guess the same would go for sound, and silence. With silence being the constant, until a sound is made.

To put it neatly, and poetically, Darkness and Silence are just a tapestry for light andsound to be painted on(well across really).

[edit on 28-1-2008 by Nola213]

[edit on 28-1-2008 by Nola213]

[edit on 28-1-2008 by Nola213]

I would have said darkness was without void and form a few years ago, however with the recent discovery of dark matter I just don't know anymore. Some would say darkness and dark matter are different.I'm not sure if they are since we don't even know what dark matter is.Perhaps the best way to measure darkness is to measure the speed at which light is absorbed into darkness or retreats from darkness.

when you want to measure darkness you have to take into account that it is at a 90° to the 3 Dimensions (HXWXD, or XYZ coordinates) It is a medium (once referred to as "ether") in which light propagates (in the water and glass analogy, Darkness is the glass)

Light, which has both particle (photons) and wave (rainbow of colors) characteristics, creates a stroboscopic effect for us to "see" the world around us.

"Darkness"needs a definition, do you mean "Black" (the absorption of all light colors) or black as in the absence of photons? (you need to reconcile both characteristics to create a proper definition)

Darkness to me is nothing more then the screen on which a movie plays; It is "null" but not "void"

reply to post by Nyte Angel


The speed of Darkness = Infinite -Light

Light is a generated wave with varying frequency. Dark is the median that carries the wave. the light wave travels out from its source into darkness. when the light source is extinguished, the wave length of light continues outward into dark till it is no more and finally extinguished in the dark median from an observational point. Unfortunately we can't see with our eyes, light as it passes by unless there is a surface to reflect it back.

In space or darkness, we can see the source of a light, we cannot see the light around us, or as it passes behind us, since there is nothing to reflect it back. We can however see light on us in space since it reflects off our position. Dark has no speed and only shares its space with light.

Duality of our realm.

I fully understand & agree with what ANOK & others have posted about this. I was just thinking though, ( stand back - could be dangerous ), does this follow suit with respect to black holes?

Aren't the properties of a black hole producing darkness faster than the speed of light? If you were able to turn on a flashlight while inside a black hole wouldn't darkness be the result? Therefore being eminated faster than the speed of light?

Just a thought. Great topic & responses!

2PacSade-

Does the light in the refrigerator REALLY go off when you close the door? The speed of darkness can perhaps be easiest to measure by choosing any starting point that you wish and then comparing how bad you thought things were back then to how bad you think things are now. No really... I haven't been the same since I discovered the affect gravity has on light. I think I'll leave it there... =)

Darkness is based on reaction from light, so it has to have the exact same speed as light as one counters the other at the same time... there are no gaps between light/dark. Anyhow my 2cents!

[edit on 28-1-2008 by freighttrain]