Well, it has been a hundred years since young Einstein (1879 – 1955) submitted his most famous works, turning the Physics world upside down, and completely changing our perception of reality (E = mc2)
I would never pretend to even be in the same league as this great and good man, most rightly honored and admired. But it has been exactly a century, this year, and there are some things about Relativity that is troubling. – perhaps minor things, actually. Or not.
Relativity is something that novices like me can grasp and work with, because it can be talked about in English. That is something rare in mathematics and physics, because without the math, most concepts cannot be properly discussed. After all, Einstein considered the reality of the physical world as something to be viewed ‘just-as-it-is.’ And with the most basic and fundamental concepts of reality, a person should be able to talk about it without resorting to (a lot of) math. So lets play in reality for a while, shall we? Thought problems can be fun – a lot more fun than Quantum Mechanics, anyway.
The single thing that has always bothered me about Relativity is Einstein’s concept of time. He called it the Fourth Dimension, and a good deal of his work depends on that. The good man spent the rest of his life, even to the last hours of that life, trying to extend his Relativity into a final solution that would include Gravity – a grand Unified Field theory (UF).
He never succeeded. In fact, his last work was almost worthless, since Mie, Hilbert, Ishiwara, Nordstrom and others, building on him, had taken Quantum Mechanics a lot further. Einstein detested QM, refusing to use it in his final work. His last theories are still around, which he likened to Geometrization (Gik = – kT ik). His ‘fatal’ flaw was believing that things on the quantum level resembled things on a galactic scale, and in reality, they do not.
It has been very slightly over 50 years since his death, and although many very capable and brilliant people have tried to build on his work of a UF, there has been little progress.
So perhaps if we look again at Relativity, we can see another way through it all.
“Time keeps on slipin,’ slipin,’ into the future . . .â€
One of the basic problems with Relativity is that the people who deal with it assume that Time also comes in Quanta, just like Matter and Energy are quantisized in discrete and measurable particles, bits or packets. In fact, a great deal of research has been done to ‘prove’ that time also is quantisized. But no one to date has ever discovered a ‘quanta’ of time. I don’t think there is any.
But what if time cannot be quantisized? Suppose there is no such thing as ‘Time?’ Suppose it is not really another dimension? Suppose that time is really Sequence and Duration, a product of Space, Matter and Energy, and that ‘Time’s Arrow’ flows only in one general direction, completely dependent upon its matter/energy matrix?
Think about it.
If time is not a dimension or a separate force, but is a product of the existence of Matter and Energy, then it is affected by these things and does not affect them. In other words, time is not a force at all, if it can be affected by physical things.
We can observe things in relativity, as Einstein said, yet without making time another dimension to the physical three. For instance, our perception of duration is extended (time seems to slow down) as matter is moved closer to the speed of light. In similar fashion, duration seems to slow down when Matter slows down, as in matter being chilled to 0 degrees Kelvin. But to the observer, regardless of his speed or lack there of, the duration of his journey appears ‘normal’ to him. He will not notice any change in his time.
So what do you think about Time? Is it a separate force? Or is it simply a product of the existence of Space, Matter and Energy?
The other thing that happens with increased speed is increased gravity. A natural question to ask, therefore, is gravity a force? Yes, it is. Is gravity also quanisized? No one has proved this yet. Does the force of Gravity (gravity waves) move at the speed of light? People intuit that it does, which means that perhaps gravity waves are just a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Answer these questions and you may discover the UF theory. Interestingly, duration also appears to slow in the presence of extreme gravity, as in the presence of a black hole. But then matter also is foreshortened there too.
Yet another thing about what happens to duration or time is that light is not constant (299,792,458 metres per second), as Einstein supposed. His entire theory of Relativity depends on the Universal Constant (UC) of the speed of light. Light can be slowed down within a medium, and even be made to stop. Our current observation of the universe might be ‘off’ a little, because in recreating ancient experiments to gauge the speed of light, our results have a slower speed. Science has depended upon the UC (Planck’s Constant) to determine how far away stars and galaxies are from Earth. Suppose that speed is different elsewhere from out neighborhood or at times in the past? There are indications it might be true. (Not per Setterfield’s discredited hypothesis, but per Davies’ C-Decay – an order of magnitude in difference: see References.)
“Time is nature’s way of making certain that everything doesn’t happen all at once…â€
Also, there is the argument that, ‘Things Tend To Slow Down’ – which means that duration, or the passage of time, is dependent upon the existence of matter, energy and space, which are in turn, dependent upon the Laws of Thermodynamics. If matter and energy are continually losing energy/force, and that energy/force cannot be regained, then the duration (passage of time) of these things will slow down as well. Part of this is the relative speed and time of different bodies in motion – a true paradox in Relativity.
It gets much worse, when you consider the length of a meter at relativistic speeds. To the outside observer looking at a speeding ship, the ship will appear shorter or compacted. But the same thing is true for the observer on that ship, looking at his slower friend out in the universe, because the slower friend and the universe will appear foreshortened too.
What does this mean? It means that the physical things change at speed. The appearance of slowing of time does not really exist. Time is tied to the physical. If the physical changes (things become foreshortened at speed), then duration will also appear to slow – but not to the on-site observer.
Interesting. Or as Spock would repine, “Fascinating.†Time appears to the outside observer to slow if observed in an object at great speeds, or in an object within a deep gravity well, or within extremely low temperatures, or by viewing the rest of the universe while traveling at relativistic speeds.
The question becomes; ‘what if the whole universe is changing?’
So, light could very well be slowing down, with time ‘relative’ to the observer. What it means is that it doesn’t matter to us personally, for no matter how fast we might be going, or how slow light is becoming, within our frame of reference, it all looks right and proper. An hour on the clock is an hour long – to us. Everything is just-as-it-is. For someone outside of our frame of reference, duration would appear slower. Or for them, time might not even exist.
“If your time to you, Is worth savin’ Then you better start swimmin’ Or you’ll sink like a stone, For the times they are a-changin’.â€
Sources and Terms:
http://relativity.livingreviews.org/
http://get.ilja-schmelzer.net/
Relativity:
“Galileo first developed the principle of relativity, which is the postulate that the laws of physics are the same for all observers. Einstein’s theory of relativity consists of special relativity’ and general relativity, which are built on the principle of relativity and the local constancy of the speed of light. In these theories space and time became unified as spacetime. In general relativity, the concept that this spacetime could be curved was introduced. This curved spacetime replaced Newton’s force of gravity and the source of gravitation.†– A synthesis of the laws of mechanics and of electromagnetism†Biezunski, M., Histoire de la physique moderne, (La Découverte, Paris, 1993).
Quantum Field Theory:
“The dichotomy between matter and fields, in the sense of a dualism is minimised as every field carries its particle-like quanta. A satisfactory inclusion of gravitation into the scheme of Quantum Field Theory still remains to be achieved.†– Kojevnikov, A., “Dirac’s quantum electrodynamicsâ€, in Balashow, Y., and Vizgin, V., eds., Einstein Studies in Russia, 229-259, (Birkhäuser, Boston/Basel/Zürich, 2002).
Geometrization:
“General relativity’s doing away with forces in exchange for a richer and more complicated geometry of Space and Time than the Euclidean remained the guiding principle throughout most of the attempts at Unification. In view of this Geometrization, Einstein considered the role of the Stress-Energy Tensor, the source-term of his field equations (T ik), a weak spot of the Geometrization Theory (Gik = – kT ik) because it is a field devoid of any geometrical significance.†– Struik, D., and Wiener, N., “A relativistic theory of Quantaâ€, J. Math. Phys. (MIT), 7, 1-23, (1927).
Grand Unified Field Theory:
Today’s unified field theories appear in the form of Gauge Theories; matter is represented by operator valued spin-half quantum fields (fermions) while the “forces†mediated by “exchange particles†are embodied in gauge fields, i.e., quantum fields of integer spin (bosons). The Space-Time Geometry used is rigidly fixed, and usually taken to be Minkowski Space or, within String and Membrane Theory, some higher-dimensional manifold also loosely called “Space-Timeâ€, in some number of dimensions larger than four. A satisfactory inclusion of gravitation into the scheme of Quantum Field Theory still remains to be achieved. “A theory joining the gravitational and the electromagnetic field into one single hyperfield whose equations represent the conditions imposed on the geometrical structure of the universe.†– Tonnelat, M.A., La théorie du champ unifié d’Einstein et quelques-uns de ses développements, (Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1955).
Universal Constant:
The concept that light, electromagnetic energy, maintains a constant speed of 300,000 meters per second, and therefore is viewed as a universal constant in the physical world, so that other physical fields can be measured by it. – Einstein, Albert. Comments on the Note of Mr. Paul Ehrenfest: “The translatory Motion of Deformable Electrons and the Area Law” (Bemerkungen zu der Notiz von Hrn. Paul Ehrenfest: “Die Translation deformierbarer Elektronen und der Flächensatz”); Annalen der Physik, 23 (1907)
Electrodynamic Field:
James Maxwell – “.. we are acquainted with matter only as that which may have [mechanical] energy communicated to it from other matter, and which may, in its turn, communicate [mechanical] energy to other matter. Energy, on the other hand, we know only as that which in all natural phenomena is continually passing from one portion of matter to another.†Maxwell postulated that this energy is transitted through ‘Ether’ which is (supposedly) the medium or matrix in which all thing sit. – Stachel, John. “Einstein’s Search for General Covariance, 1912-1915;” Einstein from ‘B’ to ‘Z’, Birkhauser, Boston MA, 2002, pp. 301-337. ISBN 0-8176-4143-2
C –Decay:
“Already known: the fine structure constant a = 2 Pi e2/hc, where e is the electronic charge and h is Planck’s Constant. Paul Davies claims that a is increasing over time. This increase in a could be due to increasing e or decreasing c. – http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/fine_structure.asp
Time and Space:
“Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Continuity,” is the latest chapter in a story that begins with Zeno and runs through Newton and Einstein to today. The question they struggled to answer: How does matter move through time and space?†– Peter Linds, http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0310055
Excellent TexMex Recipes
There is no greater reality altering, time distorting thing in the universe than authentic TexMex, served in a ‘real’ Mexican restaurant in some corner downtown strip mall (only in the Southwest – sorry). However, to help those disappointed souls living elsewhere (both of you), here are links to some nifty recipes, so you can explore relativity for yourself – be careful with the chipotle. . . “California Fish Tacos With Dry-Roasted Peppers and Mango, White Chicken Enchiladas, Lime-Cilantro Pork Tacos, Crab Enchalidas, Stewed Chicken Taco Meat” – Recipe Czar and Knowledge Hound – and – The Best of All
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