Is it theoretically possible to be moving in all directions at once?

Ok. Let’s say you are walking or even sitting. The Earth is spinning and orbiting the Sun. The Sun is orbiting the center of the Galaxy. The Galaxy is moving within the local group. The local group is moving (towards the great attractor?). Our SuperCluster is moving. The Universe is expanding. Now if we kept extending it theoretically and had larger and larger reference frames moving, spinning ect., could a person be moving in all directions at once? Am I missing something here? Also in this model, how would we look to be moving to a person in a different reference frame who in our reference frame appears to be not moving (perfectly still)?

Yes and no; you can be considered to be moving in any direction at all, merely by defining a reference frame that makes it so, but this has nothing much to do with ‘real’ motion, but then it isn’t possible to determine an object’s absolute state of motion - you have to choose a reference frame, which is arbitrary.

You can’t be moving in two opposite directions at the same time, in a single reference frame, in fact you can’t be moving in any two different directions at the same time in a single reference frame.

OTOH, I suppose that if you consider Brownian motion in bodily fluids, little bits of you could conceivably be viewed as moving in several directions simultaneously.

A guy walking south onboard a northbound train is moving north, not north and south. That’s how vectors add up. You could accurately describe your motion while sitting still in a chair as the sum of moving north, east, west, south, up and down all at the speed of light, but what would be the point?
OTOH, a belly swelling from the ingestion of hot garlicky pasta is moving in every direction.

Basically, everything can only have velocity in one direction at a time. Different parts of you can have different velocities, but averaged out you will only ever be moving in one direction at any given instant.

It’s easy to move in all directions at once. However, you wouldn’t survive the experience, because you would be exploding.

Thanks for the replies. It is hard for me to wrap my mind around the concept of reference frames.

To move in all directions at once (except for -t), simply expand. My vehicle of choice for multi-dimensional travel is the Oreo.

Wheeeee!

Peace.

What about you exploding? :smiley:

Think of it this way. If you took all the diferent directions and speeds that someone was moving in and put them together you would get one resulting vector at any one time. Add those vectors over time and you’d end up with a weird curved path through the universe. It would still be a linear path though.

Two problems with that:

  • It isn’t ‘you’ moving in multiple directions simultaneously, but rather, different parts of your body moving in different directions.

  • After the explosion occurs and the parts start to disperse, there is no longer a ‘you’ to be moving in any direction (metaphysics aside).

It moves down, up, and expands in all directions during a snowfall.

In england, he would probably be moving south.