Relativity+

[Farsight]

RELATIVITY+

 

I’ve always held Albert Einstein in the highest regard. I admire his ability to think outside the box, and empathise with his curiosity and desire to understand the world in terms we can grasp and understand. Interestingly, when you read about Einstein, you realise that some things are incorrectly attributed to him, and there have been some subtle but crucial shifts in interpretation that he wouldn’t agree with.

 

 

If Einstein was still alive today, I think we would have a different interpretation of Relativity. I think he would have explained the postulates he used in Special Relativity and General Relativity, and would have united both theories into something new. I’d like to introduce you to my vision of where Einstein would have gone. I’ve given it a name that is easy to remember and hopefully conveys the right message: RELATIVITY+. There’s already a General Relativity+, but I want something even more general, and RELATIVITY++ isn’t so easy on the tongue.

 

We start with time. Albert said “time is suspect”, but we’ve rather forgotten that. We’ve also rather forgotten his Princeton years with Godel. We misinterpreted Godel’s rotating universe as something that permits time travel instead of rendering it impossible, and we have brushed aside Einstein’s conclusion. This TIME EXPLAINED essay describes how time is a relative measure of change, and whilst it's a dimension in the measure sense, it really isn't a dimension like the dimensions of space where we have freedom of movement. It exists like heat exists, but like heat, it is a “derived effect of motion” rather than something fundamental.

 

 

Time is the guilty party. Because once you understand time, you hold the key to all the doors in Physics: Spacetime is a Space. It’s rather difficult to accept this, because it’s difficult to analyse your own long-held concepts. There are psychological factors at work, associated with the phrase “Catch ‘em young”. Since ”Time is Money” and as an illustration, I offer an essay: MONEY EXPLAINED.

 

 

No, time is not money. But it isn’t quite what you thought it was, and if you can accept this you’re starting to understand ontological thinking. It’s a matter of looking at what’s really there, and asking yourself soul searching questions about the concept you hold dear. In the picture below, squares A and B are the same colour. Sounds amazing, but it's true. Follow this echalk optical illusions link to check it out.

 

 

One searching question is: ”If I understand it, can I explain it?” If you think you understand something but you can’t explain it, then perhaps you don’t understand it after all. That's why I have written these essays, and even then we can never be too sure. You perhaps already understood money, and you may already be aware of some parallels between money and energy. But do you understand energy? Read ENERGY EXPLAINED.

 

 

Energy is basically stress, quantified by volume. It’s that simple. In empty space with nothing to hold it in place, a stress travels, like a ripple in a rubber sheet. We call it a photon. It has momentum. But it’s all relative. If it’s the photon moving, you feel its momentum when it hits you. If it’s you moving, you feel its inertia when you hit it. When you really understand this relativity, you realise just how simple mass is: MASS EXPLAINED.

 

 

In its barest essence, mass is energy going round in circles. When you push an object you deform these circles in the direction of motion, creating a partial spiral. The energy now moves in a helical fashion, rather like a spring. To stop the object you have to push the “springs” back into circles. It’s wonderfully elegant, and what’s more it tells you that everything is basically made of light. We live in a “hard light” world. Everything is drawn in light, and when we measure the speed of it, it’s like we’re measuring the length of our shadow with the shadow of our ruler. We can now understand what Einstein meant in chapter 22 of General Relativity about the non-constancy of the velocity of light. And we can now understand Gravity: GRAVITY EXPLAINED.

 

Gravity is not really a force. That’s why unification was so difficult. It’s like an extended tension gradient opposing matter/energy stress. The speed of light is always 300,000km/s but light defines our time. The speed of light isn’t constant, and that’s what the gravity is. There’s no magical mysterious spacetime curvature. Not when spacetime is a space. Not in a world drawn in light. It’s just the permittivity of space that changes. The capacitance. The thing we call c changes, it is not flat. And it all comes down to charge, which is a story of something and nothing.

 

 

Understanding this is the next challenge. And once we understand it all, we can set to work. And if we can make it work, we’re on the road to the stars. And I like to think that the name of the road is: RELATIVITY+.

 

Edit 22/6/2007: I've recently written a few more essays, and plan to rearrange things a little. CHARGE EXPLAINED will come after Mass Explained, and REFERENCE FRAMES will then lead into Time Explained with Gravity Explained and others to follow.

 

© “Farsight" aka "Popular” 2007

[spectrum disorder]

I found this topic very interesting, like your other stuff on time - that which was fantastic.

 

I dont think gravity is constant for a start, for various reasons. As well as my own thoughts on why gravity cannot be constant, superstring theory seems to suggest that gravity is weaker/stronger according to the brane it is located on.

[Farsight]

Thanks spectrum.

 

You know, I think a lot of the problems people have with physics is to do with the word "particle". It comes with this mental baggage that makes people think of a solid little billiard ball, but of zero size. This gives rise to infinities, which don't actually exist in nature. String theory started as a way to get rid of these infinities by starting with lines rather than points. It then grew into "membranes", which are surfaces rather than lines, which was better. But things like photons don't have surfaces. When we add an extra dimension and start talking about volumes, then we're cooking on gas. But personally I'm not really happy with the "brane" mental concept along with all the other extra dimensions. I'm not even happy with the time dimension, and think that somewhere along the line the original meaning of dimension, which was "a measure", has become confused with a newer meaning to do with freedom of movement and the dimensions of space. Did you know that temperature used to be considered a dimension?

 

All very interesting stuff, and I guess that's why we find physics so fascinating.

[spectrum disorder]

I'm not a fan of superstring theory, though I wouldnt discount it entirely, it has some contributions to make even if it turns out to be an incorrect theory as the trend seems to be currently pointing - personally I'm not even sure that branes are a way to explain things, such as gravity is more powerful on one brane and weaker on the other. What I perhaps should have said is that at least scientifically there is some thought that gravity is not constant, as I dont want to be accused of saying things that do not have any fairly reasonable scientific backing.

 

I agree physics is fascinating that is why I love it and of course it is a great form of mind exercise trying to work out the many different conundrums

[Farsight]

I'd go along with all that, spectrum.

 

Talking of theories, I find myself a tad unhappy that the Loop Quantum Gravity guys and the String Theorists seem to spend their time looking for bones of contention instead of common ground. But maybe that's just the impression I get, I'm not sure of the truth of it.

[ErlyRisa]

That's great! ---this is my first post....it is nice to see people trying to explain the in-explainable...

 

..more laymen should be reading articles as such

 

..slowly we will all be able to understand.

[Farsight]

Thanks ErlyRisa.

 

IMHO it would be even better if professional physicists tried to do this sort of thing. The bottom line has to be that if you can't find a way to explain something to the layman, you can't really understand it yourself.

[Farsight]

I was looking for something on Google just now and came across this:

 

ENERGY IS EVERYTHING

 

ENERGY IS EVERYTHING

Quantum Explanation of Gravity and Inertia

David W. Talmage and Richard J. Sanderson

Webb Waring Institute at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center

Denver, CO 80262

 

This paper argues that the infinities that have plagued previous attempts to quantize gravity can be avoided by changing the causal sequence by which the quantum field produces the attractive force. Instead of acting directly on matter particles as with electromagnetism, we are proposing that in the case of gravity the quantum field acts indirectly through a change in the speed of light. This difference permits us to use the same explanation for the inverse square laws that characterize both forces, while giving unique explanations for the unique properties of the gravitational field: its relative weakness, its non-absorbability and its ability to produce a change in the clock rate of matter particles and a curvature of light path. At the same time, our proposal that the speed of light controls the energy content of matter particles creates a central role for the isotropic light speed frame. Although this frame cannot be detected, the energy content of matter particles will be affected by their motion relative to this frame. In this way the equivalence of gravity and acceleration and the requirement for energy exchange to produce the latter can be explained...

 

Uh oh, this sounds exactly like RELATIVITY+