Can You Produce An Analogy Between Speed Of Sound For Bats And Speed Of Light For Humans?
by paco on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 | 3 Comments
can you extend that analogy for speeds lower than speed of sound and higher than speed of light (gravitation waves?) Are we some sort of big bats using light instead of sound to observe our surroundings? Is our brain wired for this and unable to understand higher speeds?
Yes bats ‘hear’ the world in almost the same way we ‘see’ the world. We both rely on reflected waves to tell us about our surroundings. Lots of things are based on the concept (radar being the most obvious one).
As for hearing slower sounds, well bats always hear objects that are moving slower than sound, so there’s nothing strange about that. They wouldn’t be able to properly ‘see’ an object moving faster than sound. They would likely be very confused by it as well, since there would be an accompanying sonic boom to go along with it.
Interestingly (and maybe not that surprisingly actually) is that there are people who can see using sound. You can find videos on youtube.
As for the rest of us using light, we usually don’t have to worry about things traveling faster than light, since it’s not very easy to do (and impossible in vacuum). However, such a thing does exist, and it’s called Cherenkov radiation, which usually occurs in nuclear reactors. All it is, is electrons traveling faster than light underwater (light traveling slower underwater).
I’ve seen it in person, and to be honest, although it looks cool, it doesn’t appear to be that much different from anything else I’ve seen. It literally looks like a sourceless blue light underwater (like a glowing blue cloud).
Oh yes! Without the electromagnetic energy in the visible light frequency, we wouldn’t know about anything outside our reach, or perhaps, our atmosphere.
But that has nothing to do with the limitation of the speed of light. The problem is rather the opposite; our brain is wired to think that if we can run fast, maybe tomorrow we can run just that tiny little bit faster.
But if I was to ask you to run as slow as possible. Then even slower until you are fully stopped. Then I ask you to run even slower … it wouldn’t be possible, would it?
The problem with the speed of light is that no human has ever come near it so we can’t really accept it.
The speeds are not very relevant. It is the ability to sense the world around you.
Nothing travels faster than light.
Waves on the ocean are slower but don’t carry much information.