By George Templeton
Gazette Blog Columnist
Believing Einstein
"A
human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part
limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and
his feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical
delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for
us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few
persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this
prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living
creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. “ Albert Einstein
As
Paul Tillich put it, man’s belonging yet separation makes it possible
for him to ask questions and find answers. This he called the moral
imperative. But questions challenge us.
The Cosmos Changed
It
started with James Clerk Maxwell (1873), the “father” of
electromagnetism. Maxwell is often credited with establishing the speed
of light waves, and hence the age of the universe. Then came
Einstein’s Special Relativity in 1905.
Special
Relativity holds that (1) the laws of physics are the same in all
inertial (constant velocity) frames of reference and (2) the speed of
light in a vacuum is a constant. It's not just an obscure theory. It's
in your smartphone, GPS, and the atomic bomb. If you think deeply, you
will find it in the mystery of many things we take for granted.
Situational Relativity
It
is not ethical but it is situational. It isn’t just the way you look
at things. It’s the way our everyday world is, but we didn’t realize
it.
You
can start with situations and try to find a governing principle that
explains them. If you can’t explain it with words or pictures, you
don’t understand it. Or you can start with mathematics. It is more
comprehensive but then you have to find the situations which apply to
it. Nature reveals her secrets to us in the shape of equations.
Irrelevant Relativity
Students
experience relativity every time they look out the car window and
wonder whether they are moving or the car next to them in the adjacent
lane is. Newton’s laws hold for both inside a parked car and one moving
at constant velocity. Within the cars, it is impossible to distinguish
between the one that is at rest and the moving one.
All
motion is relative. There is no rest frame. Consequently, we do not
care which “car” we refer a motion to. However, motion looks and
calculates differently depending on viewpoint. How you look to me and
how you see yourself is different.
You
can see the beginning and the end of your ruler simultaneously because
it is there with you. Nothing is more “real” than a measured quantity.
Can you measure everything that exists in nature? At what point, if any, do we count proxies in measurement?
The length of an object differs for observers in relative motion. The
moving ruler’s back is catching up with its front! Thus apparent length
is not absolute. This is called the Lorentz Contraction.
If
we could drive along with a light beam, the image of a clock behind us
would never catch up. Time would stop. Like length, time is also not
absolute. Time slows down for the moving man. Time, in the Lorentz Transformation is not a constant.
For
Newton, length, time, and mass seemed absolute, but they are not. It
is not possible to describe space or time separately. We cannot acquire
information instantly. Nothing can move faster than light.
Consequently, there is no absolute simultaneity.
Gaussian Geometry
Gauss
was a 19th-century mathematician who gave us a small, local geometry
like the one we learned in high school but at the same time, it could
become cosmic and curved. Riemann, a student of Gauss, generalized the
vector (size and direction) into a tensor (all directions
simultaneously) quantifying distance on twisted surfaces like Klein’s
bottle. We can’t press a string along all curved surfaces, straighten
it out, and then measure it.
This math relied on the infinitesimals denied by the 17th-century
Catholic Church. Newton used them to create Calculus. Einstein
adapted them to create his gravitational field theory.
Minkowski Space-Time
We
think in 3 dimensions: X, Y, and Z. We need 4: X, Y, Z, and T to
describe Einstein’s cosmos. It is not x,y,z and then add time
afterwards! We are inside 4-dimensional space. We cannot view it from
the outside. The interval between two “events” is a squared
relationship (curved) and it includes the speed of light.
Minkowski, Einstein’s school professor, developed the “light-cone”
coordinate system. The future was inside a top cone and the past was in
a cone below it.
Every
event is “now” for someone. For disconnected observers they are
equally valid. Consequently, the past is eternally present but hard to
get to. The initial conditions are different and there are disturbances
along any journey.
Intelligence
The
people in the Iowa Caucus explained that President Obama was too
“professorial”. They wanted a candidate who had no need or desire to
contemplate any further. But this was not the case for Einstein. He
was interested in physics and philosophy. He knew that the truth was
incomplete. He thought deeply about things that science took for
granted. He could not accept orthodoxy concerning the unseen. He
wrestled with the connection of ideas among themselves, unifying the
work of scientists in disparate fields.
Einstein’s Character
We
cannot explain Einstein with IQ tests. He never did well with rote
learning, embraced nonconformity, and rebelled against authority.
Einstein failed to complete his Ph.D. degree and could not get a job
teaching physics, so he accepted a position as a patent examiner. He
did his revolutionary work in theoretical physics, alone, with no
laboratory, and in his spare time after work.
Aristotle’s Physics
Given
only the gift of life, how would you see things? Aristotle was the
author of hundreds of scrolls treating nearly every subject. Physics
was philosophy in his day. He lacked our viewpoint influenced by 2500
years of progress. His “science” unified what I call our subjective and
objective properties. It was more human than ours is.
A Geocentric Earth
Is
the earth immobile and fixed at the center of the universe? It is
argued that the Bible says so. Is it the heavens that rotate around the
earth, or your viewpoint that moves the stars in the sky? Which is the
simpler explanation?
Waves
A
wave is a disturbance in a medium. For electromagnetic waves,
scientists thought that they traveled through the ether, but Michelson
and Morley could not find it.
Electromagnetic
radiation carries its own medium. Electromagnetism is one of the
fundamental forces of nature. It is in the ionic bonding of materials,
your TV, and kitchen appliances. It is in nearly everything we take to
be real.
Lorentz
showed that the speed of light could not be different (the anisotropic
synchrony convention) for light coming towards you and light moving away
from you. It was constant as Michelson-Morley had found. It had to be
different from Galileo’s physics where time was a constant flow.
Otherwise, Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations would be wrong.
Newton’s Gravity
They
say that Newton discovered the law of gravity while sitting under an
apple tree. A falling apple hit him on the head. People trivialize
Newton so they will feel more intelligent.
Einstein
found that matter makes space-time curved and curved space-time tells
matter how to move. He realized that there is no difference between
gravity and acceleration. We are still learning about gravity.
Newton’s gravity was instantaneous and everywhere. He used God to fill
in its gaps. Einstein’s relativity corresponds with Newton. He did
not replace Newton or God.
My Fear
When
a mass (inertia) moves it increases. For a particle to travel at the
speed of light, its mass must be infinite. Nothing can travel faster
than light. All masses have energy and energy has mass. From this
comes Einstein’s famous equation (E=mc^2) and the atomic bomb.
Einstein
never accepted the bomb that he laid the foundation for. He would not
have liked Trump’s contention that we are all sovereign nations,
justified by narcissistic self-interest.
Humanity reveals its psychology with the recent war in Israel.
Eventually there is no choice but to fight it out. Now we have Russia’s
100,000,000-ton nuclear torpedo, and the Satan MIRV.
More than 100 years ago, James Allen saw the solution.
“Mind is the Master-power that moulds and makes,
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills, Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills:-
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking-glass.”
