Is it possible to just stop anything in the Universe?

Moon moves around the Earth, Earth moves around Sun, Sun moves around galaxy center (black hole), Galaxy moves (know one knows around? through? over? in?).....

What would happen if you just stoped? Is it even possible for anything to stop?

Does anything exist that is not moving through space time at all?

Everyone wants to go the speed of light to see if they move through time.


How hard would it be to build a probe and have it just stop in space. Completely.

What effect occurs on things when there is no gravity pullin on it at all?

Not even minute black hole gravity?

Well what about just stoping?

Since the Galxay is moving at ???? speed through space would it just zipp past a probe that put on the breaks?



[edit on 7-7-2004 by Xeven]

I have thought about this some before. Since the Earth is traveling at ?? tens of thousands mph ?? then by the time the probe stopped it would be too far away to know what happened to it. I'm guessing galaxy speed+earth speed is incredibly fast. Anyone know the answer? However I think the energy required to come to a complete stop and maintain it would be vast. An interesting thought but probably not possible to find out.

if we stopped, the force would be so stong wed all be killed by the crush.

i had a similar question, but instead of stopping, what if somehow, the earth slowed down its rotation maybe by about 100 mph. what would happen? climate shift? tectonic activity? our days and nights would be longer, for one, but i wonder what other HUGE consequences there would be.

Velocity can only be measured relative to other objects. That's one of the postulates of special relativity. It basicly means that you never be sure that you have stopped. You can be sure that you have stopped relative to the sun or to the center of the milky way or to the center of the local cluster. There are quantum gravity theories where there is a preferred reference frame, but those are not very popular and not finished at all, so I think it's best to stick with special relativity for the moment.

I wouldn't recommend stopping relative to the sun though. The speed of earth counters the gravity pulling the earth towards the sun. If the earth stops, it will fall into the sun.

I've thought about this myself. Just stop and wait for the point you want to get to...lol.

**

"Stop the world i want to get off "

Well after reading what would happen i say let it roll as long as the old girl can roll.

The earth spins at around 1085 miles per hour.
the earth revolves around the sun at around 63000 miles per hour .
our solar system consisting of ten planets one sun and a feww dozen mooons and assorted rocks and what not is moving at over100,000miles per hour.
the milky way galaxe is moving at 370 miles per second 1,332,000 per hour. WOW heres a web site. www.mcwdn.org...

If you could stop reltive to the milkyway galaxe you would be going very fast 1,332,000. But rember you are going that fast right now. Hummm isent time sopos to slow down as you approch the speed of light all.
How is it the galaxe is moving at 1,332,000 with out showing any time effects .HUMM theres food for thought.

Wow! Yeah I've been thinking the same sort of things!!
I promise I did not read this thread before I started mine on Problems with Time Travel!!
SC4RH - It's a very good point, maybe there are time effects, but we arn't aware of them because we are part of them, it would be interesting if you could observe our solar system from a stationary point somehow, would it seem like time was sped right up or slowed right down?
It's all mindbending stuff!

This thread reminded me of this little diddy.
From "The Meaning of Life"



The Galaxy Song

Composers: Eric Idle & John Du Prez
Author: Eric Idle
Singer: Eric Idle


Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

Well, due to frame of reference (Einstein's Theory of Relativity), even though the Milky Way Galaxy is moving at incredible speeds, we don't feel those speeds here on Earth. We feel the much 'slower' speed of the Earth revolving around our Sun. (Kind of like how a person in a train with the windows all closed can sit comfortably and drink some tea, while the train outside is moving at 200+ km/hr...)

Technically, you can't come to a full stop relative to the entire Universe, because the Universe itself is moving (via expansion) at near the speed of light... to come to a full stop relative to the entire Universe would also pull you out of both space and time... into something.

Hmm I was thinking even more about this. So gravity while it stops us and slows us down and even drags us to a hault withen a reference gravity well (earth).. it also prevents us from stoping/slowing down by continuously pulling us along.

We just cant send a probe out of the solar system, then out of the galaxy and just stop it dead in empy space?

How fast would a probe have to travel to escape the galaxy?

Would it help to send it in the opposite direction of our galaxies movement through the universe?

If we did send that probe what would it record out there? If that probe had a clock on it how would it be effected? And if that probe had a laser light and beamed it back to earth would it ever be able to catch us?

mind boggleing... If anyone finds any research or information on this please post a link.

One last question. I assume bigger stars probably have more gravity? If so do they create drag or do heavier stars/blackholes orbit the galaxy center slower than lighter stars?

[edit on 7-7-2004 by Xeven]

I wanna know how something that is stationary in the universe experiences time, everything moves and its speed has someting to do with how it experiences time so something completly stationary would have to have some kind of effect on its time.

I do not think its possible to just stop anything in the universe.

Originally posted by Xeven
We just cant send a probe out of the solar system, then out of the galaxy and just stop it dead in empy space?

I'm afraid not, since the space of the Universe itself is expanding. Space itself is moving as the Universe expands; that's probably the most difficult concept of Einstein's to grasp!

Originally posted by undergrounddaily
Serious question though: What keeps it moving? I mean I understand gravity etc. But space seems like a perpetual(sp) machine.

If you come to a full stop relative to the whole Universe, you'll be outside of space and time, since space and time are the definition of velocity. Where you'll end up no one knows. Reality -- exit, stage right!

That's where we reach the limit of human understanding. Where does the Universe get its external energy to keep moving from? God? Where did God from? etc. etc.


[edit on 7/7/2004 by ThunderCloud]

Momentum and inertia, one assumes.
... =)

Originally posted by Simcity4Rushour
The earth spins at around 1085 miles per hour.
the earth revolves around the sun at around 63000 miles per hour .
our solar system consisting of ten planets one sun and a feww dozen mooons and assorted rocks and what not is moving at over100,000miles per hour.
the milky way galaxe is moving at 370 miles per second 1,332,000 per hour. WOW heres a web site. www.mcwdn.org...

If you could stop reltive to the milkyway galaxe you would be going very fast 1,332,000. But rember you are going that fast right now. Hummm isent time sopos to slow down as you approch the speed of light all.
How is it the galaxe is moving at 1,332,000 with out showing any time effects .HUMM theres food for thought.

Because it isnt anywhere near the speed of light of 186,000 miles per second, compared to the galaxy's 370 miles per second.

Say we are able to stop time instantaneously. Since our brains would have no activity we would not percieve or be able to notice it. The universe would be like a still life painting, so real you could almost touch it, but i would not change. Now for the fun, if you suddenly started the Universe back up again all the inertia would be gone. The Earth and all the planets would drop directly towards the Sun, the Sun to the center of the galaxy. This would not make a good situation for us puny little humans.

Im in favor of outlawing this practice until we can store inertia for the re-start.

PS. The Earth revolves around the Sun at about 67,000 mph
We rotate around the Earth at about 1000 mph at the equator and less as you go north or south till you reach 0 at the poles.
don't know the rate of galactic spin or our distance from the center.
Net around Sun: (67,000 +/- some part of 1000) mph

Originally posted by slank Now for the fun, if you suddenly started the Universe back up again all the inertia would be gone. The Earth and all the planets would drop directly towards the Sun, the Sun to the center of the galaxy.

Would the inertia disappear though? If I understand Einstein's theory correctly, the same warping of space that produces gravity is also responsible for inertial forces. Now assuming that it's possible to freeze time without disturbing space (i.e. without collapsing the whole lot into a singularity) then the space should be warped in the same way that it was before, thus preserving inertia and kinetic energy.

I don't think momentum would disappear when time is frozen. That is if we don't consider the fact that we wouldn't be able to percieve stopped time.

I think momentum remains, because momentum is defined as m*v, or m*dx/dt. The velocity stays the same, if you keep looking only at a certain point in time, just like the tangent of a function f(x) stays the same if you only look at a certain x.

It has been a long time since anyone posted information to this thread. Again I ask if anyone knows if you can just stop and what would happen if we where on a spaceship that exits the Galaxy? I often wonder if things travel through space faster in between the gravity of Galaxies than they do inside galaxies. Are there any rogue Sun's or other phenomena that has been discovered outside of the influence of a galaxies gravity? This would be a very interesting object to understand and watch how it reacts when it is free of its galaxies influence.