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. The TIME EXPLAINED essay below 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 EXPLAINED
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 why you should persevere, I offer an essay MONEY EXPLAINED:
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 such question is: ”If I understand it, can I explain it?” If you think you understand something but you can’t explain it, then you don’t understand it. You perhaps already understood money, and you may already be aware of some parallels between money and energy. But do you understand energy?
ENERGY EXPLAINED
Energy is in essence 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 understand 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+.
© “Farsight” 2007
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. The TIME EXPLAINED essay below 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 EXPLAINED
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 why you should persevere, I offer an essay MONEY EXPLAINED:
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 such question is: ”If I understand it, can I explain it?” If you think you understand something but you can’t explain it, then you don’t understand it. You perhaps already understood money, and you may already be aware of some parallels between money and energy. But do you understand energy?
ENERGY EXPLAINED
Energy is in essence 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 understand 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+.
© “Farsight” 2007