mitchellmckain

Not enough food in the ocean? You have got to be kidding! The most difficult problem I see is the pressure, 1 additional atmosphere for every 10 meters below the surface. The story of it sinking into the sea makes it likely to be based on island of Thera, but the story of elephants makes me wonder if it might be based on the sea traders from Carthage, or a mixture of both. Since there is no evidence of an advanced civilization in the Azores as well as being covered by a million years of sediment, I doubt that this is the source of the legend.

I am what I would call a minimalist anti-gnostic born again christian. I am a born-again christian because I have asked Jesus into my life, putting my salvation into his hands and hoping that he will find a way to help me.I am minimalist because although I have opinions about many things, I realize that I really know practically nothing. Therefore I put no faith in any of my opinions, beliefs, or knowledge. My faith is in God alone. I read, respect and love the bible, but I don't pretend that I really know what it means.I am anti-gnostic because I don't believe there is any knowlege or belief that is any more effective for salvation than good deeds. I think that many christians are gnostic because they think their belief in Jesus saves them, I do not. I know that I am at God's mercy, and have not the understanding needed to hold God to any contract or promise. My assurance is not in my salvation but in the love and goodness of God. I am at peace with the fact that my fate is in His hands and is thus for the greatest good.I find self-righteousness intolerable and without excuse in a christian. I also know that I am probably self-righteous no matter how much I try not to be, so that I myself am without any excuse. Christian are not saved by any merit of theirs so they are no better than anyone else. Their salvation is an act of God and His to give to whomever He chooses. Christians are beggars and not the gatekeepers of salvation. So, although I might understand their reluctance to accept the teachings of other religions, I do not find the condemnation of other religions to be an acceptable christian practice.I also do not agree with the tendency of many christians to be like the Pharisees avoiding sin and impurity by association, condemning things like Dungeons and Dragons or Harry Potter. We do not find God, by making sure we quote the bible in every sentence. We can find God in almost every story and activity, using all of our imagination with an open heart and active mind.

Ok, since we are exploring all of the tired old topics, that people disagree about, I would like to reopen (here) what I believe to be the most important. It think that the theory of evolution is the hammer blow which not only greatly diminished the influence of christianity in western society, but was a divisive force fracturing christianity itself. The conflict runs deep and I believe the majority of christianity (however you define it) has great distrust in science and academia because of it.This is in the philosophy and religion section not science because I think what concerns us most is not the science, but what we think it means. So the discussion I am suggesting is not about whether or not there is documented evidence that evolution occurs. Some people take this theory and its supporting evidence to mean that the story in Genesis is a fairy tale. This conclusion is quite unacceptible to the majority of christianity for it tears out the root and fabric of their lives.Let's start with a succinct description of the theory of evolution.When living organisms reproduce there are variations in the capabilities of the individuals due to a variety of causes. Some are smarter, stronger or faster and some are stupider, weaker or slower. These differences give advantages to some individuals in the competition with other individuals for limited resources, which give them a greater chance for survival and reproduction. These advantages affect a bias in the drift of the genetic pool of the species causing the species to change over a long period of time. This effect may be responsible for development of all the forms of life on the planet from more primitive organisms in the past.Now lets look at the two philosophical points of view.Evolutionism: From the theory of evolution a philosophy has arisen a philosopy that the world and all the things in it are the only the result of the operation of natural laws. On this planet the right conditions existed for complex chemicals to be formed which replicate themselves. Mistakes in replication and damage from radiation provided the variation upon which natural selection or "survival of the fittest" has operated to give rise to all the forms of life on the planet. Human beings are animals which have evolved the ability to communicate and use tools.Creationism: God created the earth and all life upon it in all its infinite variety according to a grand design. He is like a great watchmaker who using his superior understanding, creativity and power is responsible for everything that we are and that we have in our life. God created man in his own image and gave the world and everything in it into his keeping. To these I would like to add two more possibilities.Both: Both are simpley two different ways of looking at the same thing and there is no real contradiction between them.Neither: Perhaps, both of these philosophical "theories" are wrong. I will even suggest that they may be wrong for similar reasons, and that both arise from a complete lack of understanding of what it means to be alive.

The bible actually has something very interesting to say on this topic. In Genesis, after the flood God was apparently sorrowful over the destruction of the earth and said "never again will I destroy the earth for the sake of man." This seems to imply an attitude or methodology change on the part of God. It suggests that once God may have been willing to try solving the problem of human misbehavior by using natural disasters but having seen the result, has decided that it is not worth it. This suggests that God has left nature to take its natural course and does not interfere. I find the hands off policy quite understandable. It reminds me of Star Trek's prime directive. Ok, so it seems likely that God does cause natural disasters to punish people, but why doesn't he stop them from hurting people or at least warn us to prepare. Well it is clear to me that the greatest danger to the well being of humans is humans. We solve one source of conflict only to find something else to fight about. So why should God stop nature from distracting us from our efforts to destroy ourselves. Why should God eliminate the threat of nature as a "common enemy" or at least a common cause, so we can put more of our energy into inventing enemies among ourselves. Why should God prevent one misery so that create a much worse misery ourselves. Putting myself in his place, I think I would be tired of my every effort to reduce suffering only leading to greater suffering because of the perversity of man. No, the prime directive makes a lot of sense.

When making the previous post I realized that many people might object that the result of the actions described for A and B, that is A slowing down and B speeding up to follow one year behind A, would not make sense. And I think the main objection by common sense is what if they both do these actions at the same time?Well, think about that question again while looking at the two rows of clocks and tell me what you mean when you say "at the same time." Our intuitive grasp of what we mean by this phrase does not apply to this situation at all. What is at the same time for observer A is not what observer B thinks of as being at the same time, and if either one stops or accelerates. what "at the same time" means to the observer doing this becomes uncertain (since all the clocks are changing). This makes it impossible to talk about both stopping or accelerating at the same time in any meaningful way.

Well I would wait longer but frankly I am ready to start a new topic in a different area.When working out the solution I found that gamma = 2 or 86.6% of the speed of light was a more convenient choice of relative speeds for the problem. The diagram was easier to do in MS Word, so that document is attached. But here is the basic explaination.The point is that since velocity is relative, you cannot say who is moving and who is not. So when two observers are moving away from each other there situation is completely symmetrical and both see the same time dilation and lorentz contraction in the other. This seems to contradict the fact that when one is making a journey to a destination at a distance from the other that it is the traveler who traveled a contracted distance and experience time dilation, since for him the journey took less time, than for the other person watching.One of the basic tools for understanding this are two rows of regularly spaced synchronized clocks stretching out in the direction of motion, in front and behind both observers. One of these rows of clocks follows (keeping the same speed as) each of the two observers. The relativity of simultaneity means that when one observer looks at the row of clocks following the other observer traveling at a relative velocity close to the speed of light, those clocks do not give all the same time.The key question is then, how is the symmetry between the two broken in the travelers case and the answer is two-fold. First, the destination chosen for the traveler is basically at rest with respect to the other observer. Once you start thinking in terms of such a destination the symmetry is already broken and the distance is shorter for the traveler. This is breaking of symmetry is only in how we look at the problem. It is only when the traveler arrives and slows down and stops is the symmetry really broken. When he slows down two things change. First the distance to the destination stretches back out to what is measured by the "stationary" observer. The second is that the time on all the clocks following the other observer change to match the the one at the postition where he comes to a stop.

Signs... sheee.... Here are these aliens who have traveled accross the void of space from other stars and they attack by breathing poison gas on people. The swamp monster look was a little strange too. I thought the movie made the Stitch animation look realistic. The movie would have done much better leaving the guys paranoia about aliens without any basis in reality and making it all about the guy coping with his wife's death and his loss of faith. Yeah I have read a few of Clarke's books. "Rendezvous with Rama" is a favorite I have read many times. I only read "Childhood's End" but I never forgot it. But neither of these (nor 2001 etc) was much of an exploration of what aliens might be like.

Trillian looks good because of the added security due the fact that it is monitored by avast. But I am looking for something with whiteboard capabilities and that only works on Windows Messengers if all parties have windows xp (and perhaps Windows 2000). So I am trying Bitwise Messenger.If anyone has suggestions about a messenger with whiteboard let me know.

Of course you are quite right. And yet when the ship is aiming at a destination the distance is shorter for him. Why isn't the distance that the ship travels shorter for the observer on the planet? The question is trying to apply common sense. There is only reality right? How can both have slower time. We know that when he arrives at a destination it is the guy on the ship who has less time passed. Lorentz contraction and time dilation looks so symmetrical between the ship observer and planet observer, but the result after reaching a destination is not symmetrical. Why is that? Sounds really good. I'll look forward to your post of it.

Ok here is one of the most difficult puzzles about relativity. It regards those phenomena known as time dilation and lorentz contraction. We will use a relative velocity of 99.5% of the speed of light for which we know from previous posts give a lorentz contraction factor of gamma = 10.So the idea is that if you (in a ship with clocks) are passing a planet (which we will assume has both observers and clocks on it) with a relative velocity of 99.5% of the speed of light, that object will be shorter in the direction of relative motion by a factor of 10 and the clocks on that planet will be going 10 times slower than the clocks on you ship. This is not an optical illusion or anything like that because we are assuming that you have some way (which defies explantion like ESP) of knowing instantly what time is on the clocks of the planet and of knowing the length of the planet.Ok, now here is the crazy part. Motion is relative, so the situation for the observer on the planet you pass is the same as your own. This means that, for the observer on the planet, your ship is shorter by a factor of 10 in the direction of motion and the clocks on your ship are going 10 times slower than the clocks on his planet. So who is really shorter in length and whose time is really going slower?Now remember from our previous discussion that lorentz contraction and time dilation are not illusions. These are real and they have a concrete effect on the space traveler making his journey shorter for him than for the people he left behind. So how do you reconcile the contradictions between the observations of you on the ship and the observer on the planet?I will explain this later, but I would like to give people time to respond first. I will give everyone a hint though. The solution lies in fully understanding the relativity of simultaneity and understanding what is really meant by time dilation and how it is derived.

So how is it possible that you can go somewhere as fast as you want even though you never exceed the speed of light? The answer is lorentz contraction. This means that all lengths and distances in the direction of relative motion are decreased by the factor gamma. In fact gamma is known as the lorentz contraction factor.At 99.5% of the speed of light you would see the earth moving away from you at 99.5% of the speed of light and your destination coming toward you at 99.5% of the speed of light, just as the people on earth see you moving away from them at 99.5% of the speed of light. But since gamma = 10, for you the distance between earth and your destination is only one tenth the distance as seen by the people on earth. So it only takes you 4 tenths of a year to get to the nearest star while it takes 4 whole years for the people on earth to watch you go to the nearest star.One way of looking at this is to say that time on your ship is passing only one tenth as fast as time on the earth.

Well maybe its time I answer my own question then.The answer is that relativity does not limit how fast you can get to any destination.If all technological issues are dealt with you can get to the closest star or the ring nebula or anywhere else as quickly as you would like.Yes nothing can go faster than the speed of light, but this is a limitation on relative velocity only. It mean that you never see anything go faster than the speed of light. But otherwise the speed of light is like an infinite velocity, and the gamma is a more meaningful measure of the velocity than this relative velocity.Recall from my previous post that 99.5% of the speed of light is gamma = 10Which basically means you have an effective velocity of 10 times the speed of lightso you can get to the nearest star (4 light years away) in 4 tenths of a year or about 5 months.However for the people on earth waching you never exceed the speed of light so as they watch your ship making the trip it takes at least 4 years. So after a round trip you are less than a year older but the people on earth are 8 years older.So the real impact of relativity on space travel is to make it mainly a one way trip. You cannot go out there for recreation or work and expect to come back to a family or people waiting for you. It also makes interstellar government largely unworkable. So the wars for and between interstellar empires in star strek and star wars are fantasy. For long trips you cannot really expect to come back to any recognizable home. But for the adventurous life of a pioneer and colonist, relativity imposes no limitations.No lets deal with some of the other problems. The biggest in my mind is acceleration. The only really safe acceleration is 9.8 m/s^2 or one gee. And at that rate it take a couple years to get near the speed of light. The result is that even the nearest star will take at least 3 years but farther distances like the ring nebula (2300 light years away) would take only about 50 years.The energy requirement is a big requirement and that is assume perfect efficiency in mass to energy conversion. But all this means that the largest portion (more than 75%, for small distances) of the mass of your ship must be fuel for the journey.

I am not sure I would compare a state of permanent dream or drug induced dementia to sentient existence. And before someone takes me to task for saying this, my own grandmother (whom I visit every week) lives mostly in such a state, and while I would not dream of denying her humanity I am still not sure I would call it sentient existence.

No you are not off topic, however, you are illustrating perfectly the problem I have been talking about. Everyone puts more faith in science fiction and fantasy than in science, because worm holes are a fantasy. If we did not have solid evidence that they really do exist black holes would be a fantasy too. Do you know that there are catalogues of blackholes and neutron stars, just as there are catalogues of stars and galaxies? The fact that incomplete theories like general relativity can describe wormholes does not mean they exist. Something you need to understand about general relativity and quantum field theory is that they are theoretical frameworks which like a language can be used to describe just about anything. For example general relativity has been used to describe black holes and the big bang. These could be called theories, but they also have some evidence to back them up. Wormholes have no such evidence and there is not even the smallest reason to think that they really exit. So before we look to fantasy, how about a little reality. Are you sure there really is a need for these wormholes anyway? First answer the question. If relativity were your only limitation how long would it take you to get to the nearest star (4 light years away) or to the ring nebula (2300 light years away)? What is the effect of relativity on trips to these places?

Addition is what happens in the formula if the two velocities are small. For example .01% and .01% of the speed of light in the formula gives .019998% percent of the speed of light (which is close enough to .02% dont you think). No the alien really is traveling a lot faster than we are. That is why the speed of light really is like an infinite speed because a second alien can be traveling 99% of the speed of light faster than the first, and a third alien 99% of the speed of light faster than the second, and so on and so on.... But the earth sees all of these aliens as traveling closer to the speed of light but always less than the speed of light. People on earth would think the alien is only going a little bit faster than you (if you call .995% of the speed of light little), while the alien thinks you are only going a little faster than the earth. You however see the earth going 99% of the speed of light one way and the alien going 99% of the speed of light in the opposite direction. If the slow down of time idea helps you understand this, it is fine, however, I don't really think of it that way, I must admit. What is going on with time is a bit more complicated. Anyway, the point is that, where, when, how fast, and even the order of events, unlike the fact of whether an event (like the laser beam hitting someone) occurs, are all things that depend on how fast you are moving (and in what direction). However, the change in the order of events never reverses cause and effect because cause and effect can never be connected by something faster than the speed of light.

Sorry I am trying. You cannot expect it to agree with common sense since common sense is based on everyday experience and nothing in everyday experience is like this. No you would use the velocity addition formula. Let me change your question to make the caculation easier supposing your ship is traveling 99% of the speed of light relative to the earth and you are a really fast walker so you can walk toward the front of your ship at 2% of the speed of light. then v1 = .99 c and v2 = .02 c then v3 = (.99 c+.02 c)/(1+ (.99 c)(.02 c)/c^2) = 1.01 c / (1+.0198) = .9904 c which means your velocity relative to the earth is 99.04% of the speed of light. If this sounds really wierd, you are right. It distorts space and time all out of shape. For example, while you are walking if you compare the clocks at the front and the back of the ship they will show different times by a very small amount, but if you stop walking they show exactly the same time again. And I should say that this assumes you do not have to rely on light to read the clocks, but could somehow instantly know what time is on them without using light at all. When you take into account that the light which you see by is limited to the speed of light you see a lot of other strange effects, besides those of relativity, called the abberation of light. This includes seeing things which are really behind you (though not directly behind you) as if they were in front of you. Another example, going back to you and the alien. You could be traveling 99% of the speed of the light away from earth which means you see the earth going away from you at 99% of the speed of light. Now you see an alien pass you at 99% of the speed of light in the same direction, apparently traveling 99% of the speed of light faster than you. This means that the alien sees you moving first toward him and then away from him at a speed of 99% of the speed of light. But when the alien looks at the earth how fast does he see it going away from him? Using the velocity addition formula the anwer is 99.995% of the speed of light. You might say that from the alien's point of view (assuming he doesn't understand relativity too well) you are only moving at .995% (less than 1%) of the speed of light away from the earth.

Yes this is the Michaelson Morely Experiment which directly led to the Theory of Relativity The orbital velocity of the earth is 31 km/sec = 111,600 km/hr = .01% of the speed of light. No it is not possible, you are not massless. But suppose you are a photon, then you have no choice but to travel at the speed of light. But if you are a photon you cannot talk about what you see for the simple fact that you would experience no time. For example, there could never be a massless particle which decays because decay takes time and a massless particle would never have time to decay. If you are a photon you are traveling at the speed of light relative to everything. If you are a space ship with mass you are traveling at different speeds relative to different things but all of these speeds are less than the speed of light. The speed of light is the only absolute speed and it does not add to any other velocity. By the way there is a velocity addition formula, here:v3 = (v1 + v2)/(1 + v1 v2 / c^2) if one of the two velocities v1 or v2 is the speed of light then v3 is the speed of light: v3 = (c + v2)/(1 + v2/c) = c and if both v1 and v2 are less than the speed of light then v3 is less than the speed of light. If you are photons moving in the same direction then you never meet. If you are not photons then the alien could be traveling faster than you by any velocity less than the speed of light. See the velocity addition formula explaination above. Yes exactly. No matter how fast you are going it is the same as if you are not moving at all and you can always try speeding up towards the speed of light. But no matter how many times you do this it is still the same as if you are not moving. The only thing that changes is the how fast the place you left is moving away from you, which we call your relative speed to your starting place. And the speed relative to where you started is always less than the speed of light. No the sky would look really strange but otherwise you would not notice anything different. In fact, this is kind of the whole point of the theory of relativity, that no matter how fast you are moving the laws of physics are the same.

Even the background microwave radiation which is believed to be a remnant of the big bang in which the universe began is a serious problem but this is a technological consideration.Another big problem is acceleration, if we have to limit ourselves to one gee ( that is 9.8 meters per second squared) then this will really limit how fast we can get to another star. Really high gees would crush us to instant death and perhaps destroy the space ship as well.Another problem is the energy requirements. Getting even close to the speed of light requires an amount of energy equal the mass energy of the whole ship according to E = m c^2. In other word, you would have to use at least half the mass your ship converted to pure energy to get near the speed of light. In fact when you include the need for thrust mass half the orignial mass of your original mass will be needed to get to just 41% of the speed of light.But in my original question I said to assume that all of these problems are taken care of so that they don't introduce any extra limitation on how fast we can get to our destinations. Assume that our only problems is relativity which includes the fact that nothing can go faster than the speed of light.Given these assumptions how fast can we get to the nearest star or the ring nebula?

Well since I don't beleive in determinism or in "true randomness" either we are going to have to work a little harder to find something to argue about. Well with me here, poor as dirt, wondering what my degree is worth, the question about who has the brains is highly debatable. I think the real requirement for going into physics is a peculiar type of insanity. but the argument still remains... if my brain can support me, and my self awareness, could it not support anouther. its already supporting one, ME. maybe a better brain could support 2.. or three, or a billion. Wow, now this sounds like something completely different, and similar to thoughts of my own. I have thought that, in a way, the brain is kind of a living space for a living organism composed of electrochemical impulses (which you might call a mind). You could wonder if a larger living space accomodate more of such organisms, but they all would have to share the information input of the senses. This sounds more like an explanation for certain psychological disorders. But I suppose if you add a little hardware to supply artificial sensory input of sufficient complexity hmmm... I suspect the difficulty here would be in creating the minds which inhabit this expanded brain, which I fear may be a great deal harder than any of us could imagine. But if we assume that they already exists ........... well I certainly can't think of any objections right now, I will have to think about that for a while.

You got the part about time correct, the real confusion is the incorrect statement in the problem. Yes the slower time is called time dilation and the formula (which is derived from the lorentz transformation equations) is (t2' - t1') = (t2 - t1)/g where g is gamma given in my previous post and notice it is a difference beteen two times or a time inerval on either side of the equation. for half the speed of light gamma was 1.1547 which means that time is 1.1547 times slower for the racer. At least this is one way of explaining why the trip only took 1.73205 years for him instead of 2 years.

Well I am afraid that your physics teacher got it wrong because this following statement in the problem you gave is completely wrong. Here is how the calculation is done correctly using the lorentz transformations:x' = g (x - (v/c)t) t' = g (t - (v/c)x) where g is gamma and is equal to 1/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2) c is the speed of light so v/c = .5 because the racer is at half the speed of light. Now the lorenz transformations take the coordinates of an event for the "stationary" observer and give you the coordinates for that same event for the observer moving at velocity v. So the first thing to do is calculate gamma: g = 1/sqrt(1-(.5)^2) = 1.1547 Next we set up a coordinate system for the judge for whom I made the midpoint of the journey x=0 and the time that the racer passes that midpoint t=0. This is a convenient choice because when we put these into the lorentz equations we get t'=0 and x'=0 for the racer right at the time and place when he passes the midpoint of his journey. Since the judge sees the light leave at this same time his coordinates for that event is t=0 and x=-.5 light years. Now we put these into the lorentz equation. x' = 1.1547 ( -.5 - (.5) 0) = -.57735 light years t' = 1.1547 ( 0 - (.5) (-.5)) = .288675 years This means that the racer sees the light leave the starting position .57735 light years behind him when he is already .288675 years past the midpoint of his journey. When the racer arrives at the finish line the coordinates for the judge are clearly x=.5 light years and t=1 year. Putting these into the lorentz equations give x' = 1.1547 ( .5 - (.5) 1) = 0 t' = 1.1547 ( 1 - (.5) .5) = .866025 years This means that the event of the racers arrival is in the same place where he is at the time and it is .866025 years after he passed the midpoint of his journey. If you subract the time at which he saw the light leave the starting position, you get .866025 - .288675 = .57735 years which is exacly the time it takes the light to get to him since the light was only .57735 years behind him (according to him) when the light started out. I am surprised that your teacher would give this to your class without making sure it is right. It was probably not an active area of research for him as it is for me.

Oh and of course if the laser beam hits the guy then it hits the guy to all observers the only thing that relativity affects is where and when the laser beam hits the guy. But in this case since he is at the finish line there are no disagreements at all. He must be hit by it when the races ends in a tie, if he is hit by it at all.

If you are trying to make a fool of me by predicting that I will be a bore and take your problem seriously as far as it can be, well you have my number.First of all any two people in the same place at the same time must see the same thing so if the judge sees the light arrive at the finish line at the same time as the pilot then so does the pilot. You have established that the judge sees the light start out when the pilot is already half way to the finish line. But although the rest of the race takes one year for the judge, it takes only .866 year for the pilot. The difficult part of the problem is what does the pilot see. Well the pilot does not see the light start out when he is halfway to the finish line but when he has gone a third of the remaining distance past that point. He sees the light leave .57735 light years behind him when he has about .288675 light years left to go. So the light takes only .57735 light years to reach him and it takes him .57735 light years to reach the finish line so that both reach the finish line at the same time.You may notice that when you add the .57735 light years to the .288675 light years you only get .866025 light years not a whole light year and this is why the whole trip takes him only 1.73205 years instead of 2 whole years.

Oops looks like the last quote in the last post was missing a quote termination and my reply was inside the quote.You cannot catch up to something going the speed of light because no matter how fast you go it still races ahead of you at the same speed. This not true of sound for example. If you travel near the speed of sound and make make a noise, the sound from that noise move ahead of you very slowly. This is what creates a sonic boom. The sound of a jet traveling close to the speed of sound barely moves ahead of the jet as the jet moves so the sound just keeps building up in front of the jet so when the jet passes all of the sound hits you at the same time.But something like 95% of the speed of light is deceptive because when you are moving that fast and you shine a light, that light moves out ahead of you as were not moving at all. You could say that we have a much more meaningful measure of the speed when you are moving close to the speed of light called gamma.75% of the speed of light is gamma = 1.595% of the speed of light is gamma = 3.299% of the speed of light is gamma = 799.5% of the speed of light is gamma = 1099.995% of the speed of light is gamma = 100100% of the speed of light is gamma = infiniteThis gamma tells you a great deal about the effects of relativity but for now lets just consider two things. The first is that the energy required to get to the higher velocities is basically proportional to gamma, so it takes 10 times as much energy to get to 99.995% of the speed of light as it does to get to only 99.5% of the speed of light. The second is that gamma is much more like a speed because it adds up. Here is what I mean. If you travel 75% of the speed of light then you shoot something away from you in the same direction so that it moves away from you at what looks like 75% of the speed of light then how fast is it going. Well it is not going 75%+75% = 150%, not at all. But you can get the correct answer adding gamma 1.5+1.5 = gamma 3.0, which is 94.3% of the speed of light.The point here is that the speed of light is really like an inifinite speed, because no matter how much faster you go you never really get any closer to the real speed of light.

I reread the Lord of the Rings every few years so I know the story inside and out. That maybe one reason I don't mind the deviations from the book. It is like seeing an new variation on the old vampire theme seeing a new interpretation breathes new life into the story. Stories told by different people about the same event are supposed to be different. I liked the development of the character of Arwen who is practically a nobody in the book.My one regret is that the movie wasted time on the story of the Gray Havens at the end and skipped the hobbit's reconquest of the Shire and the final end of Saruman, which was far more interesting. But I suppose the Gray Havens choice was consistent with the movies' thematic focus on the rings of power (although it did not reveal, like the book did, who held the other two elven rings) and makes it possible to say the movie ends exactly the same as the book.By the way, what do think about my own how shall a call it (theory or addenum or rational) about why and when Gandalf is wearing the third elven ring? I think he was given it after his battle with the Balrog. The most likely original location of that ring would be the Gray Havens. What do you think?