Chapter 6
General Theory of Relativity and God
Because Einstein understood that light has a
fixed speed and nothing in the universe could travel faster than light, it led
him to conclude that gravity and every other force in the universe must obey
that speed limit as well. There was a famous thought experiment of that day, if
the sun were to all of a sudden cease to exist, what would happen to the
planets orbiting the sun? In the classical model of physics, the earth and all
the planets would immediately fly off into space. Einstein recognized that this
was impossible, because that would mean that gravity would travel faster than
the speed of light since it takes light 8 minutes to travel the distance from
the sun to the earth.
With these thoughts in mind, it was proposed
that gravity had to travel at a speed, in fact, traveled at exactly the speed
of light. Thus it would take 8 minutes for the earth to experience any
difference in its orbit. This posed a huge problem for Newtonian Physics. It
was realized that gravity could not just be the attraction of two masses to
each other. It had to be something completely different all together, and it
had to be related to the speed of light.
Einstein had another famous thought experiment.
If you are in an elevator and the cable holding that elevator at the top of the
building is suddenly cut, you will fall at the same speed as the elevator.
Thus, relative to your view inside the elevator, you float and there is no
gravity, the only thing that tells you gravity still exists is when you hit the
ground and suddenly you realize that gravity did not disappear, but you were in
fact falling. Now transfer this thought to a rocket in space. In space there is
no gravity, so you will float inside the spaceship, you will float as if there
is no gravity until the rocket begins to accelerate. When the rocket
accelerates you will hit the floor as if there was gravity. Thus Einstein
recognized that gravity and inertia are essentially the same force. There would
be no way for you to tell whether or not gravity or inertia was having its
effect, as long as the ship continued accelerating. Yet it proposed a problem.
It only happens so long as acceleration is maintained. So what is the
fundamental difference between inertia and gravity?
It was proposed that our universe is spread out
on a surface of space-time. Space and time were proposed to be one and the
same. Spread out in a fabric that could bend and warp, kind of like the surface
of a trampoline. Thus heavy masses create a depression on this surface that
warps space-time around it. In essence, there is no such thing as the
attractive force of gravity, as previously thought. The orbiting of planets is
simply one mass falling down the space-time curvature of another heavy mass.
In this
model, everything in the universe is simply traveling in the straightest line
possible. Relative to space time, there is no such thing as a circular orbit.
The planets and moons are simply traveling in what appears to be a straight
line, but in following that path they fall into the depression of a heavier
mass and cannot escape. Think of those coin collectors you might see at
Wal-Mart. When you drop in a quarter it travels in a straight line down the
ramp, and tries to continue in that line. That is why the quarter goes round
and round the funnel on its decent into the coin collector. The coin “tries” to
follow the straightest line possible, which is why it does not just fall down
the funnel.
Even light is subject to this force. Einstein
theorized that in the rocket, if you were moving fast enough, a beam of light
would appear to bend as you passed it. If this was true for inertia, than it
must be the same for gravity. This fit nicely into the idea of space-time.
Light attempts to follow the straightest path through space, but as it travels
this space-time fabric, light bends slightly around heavy objects. Observing a
total solar eclipse of the sun proved this idea.
By viewing this event it was seen that stars
were observed at slightly different positions than they were in actuality. This
was caused by the lensing effect of the bending of the space-time fabric by the
sun. As the light passed the sun, it followed a straight path down the
space-time curvature and exited its path toward earth in a slightly different
direction, so that our observations of the position of these stars were
different than their actual position. Stars were observed that were in
actuality behind the sun, yet we were able to see them as though they were
right on the edge of the sun. This was one of the first experimentally verified
evidences that even light could not escape the depressions made by heavy
objects on the fabric of space-time.
The most intriguing part of this theory, in my
opinion, is the idea that gravitational fields actually warp time around them.
All things travel in a straight path, it is only because we split space and
time into 2 separate dimensions that we see things traveling in elliptical
orbits etc. In a space-time graph the earth is traveling in uniform motion, thus
its graph is a straight line. In a space and time graph the earth still travels
in a straight line, but to us it appears that earth actually follows an
elliptical orbit around the sun. This warping of space and time actually gives
us our illusion of time, just as the speed at which an individual moves effects
the rate at which time passes.
This suggests that time is different depending
on the mass of the object you happen to be orbiting. If you were orbiting a
massive black hole for instance, everything would appear normal to us, because
our time is relative to our frame of reference, but to people looking from
outside in it would appear that we were moving extremely slowly because the
warping of space and time are different around much more massive objects. In
theory this would allow for time travel to the future. We could orbit a very
massive object for a relatively short period of time and travel years into the
future, in the exact same way that the twin on the space ship could travel
years and years into the future by traveling very close to the speed of light.
Thus it can be clearly seen that time and space
are closely linked. This holds extreme implications for the universe. I hope
that if you haven’t seen it before this that you will now. Our universe is a
created dimension. Our very understanding of time itself is only based off our
frame of reference; it is not standard, or fixed. There have been many
experiments that seem to prove this theory true. Using extremely sensitive
instruments it has been shown that time even runs slower at the base of a
building when compared to the top. This is known as the Mossbauer Effect. As I
said before, I happen to be dating an identical twin. If she wanted to be older
than her sister, I would tell her to work at the top of a building because she
would actually be older than her sister working at the base of the building.
Granted it would be by a billionth of a second, but she would actually be older
than her sister.
One more
interesting point is the complexity of our universe. Our universe is
irreducibly complex. Take inertia for instance. Inertia is based purely off the
reference frame of the universe. If not for the other galaxies billions of
light years away, no inertia would be experienced thus no movement would be possible.
Think of it this way, if nothing existed in the universe, to say you were
accelerating toward anything would be meaningless. You would experience no
inertia at all. You would be falling into your own space-time depression and
would not be able to move at all. The galaxies actually affect how we behave
here on earth, and how physical laws behave as well.
When we view the universe with a relativistic
mind set we can see the true nature of creation. Mankind has such a high view
of himself. We only think in terms we
understand. The earth rotates because we compare it to everything else around
us. Picture this though, what if nothing else existed but the earth? It would
be ridiculous to state that the earth rotated, because there would be no frame
of reference to base such an observation on. We wouldn't notice any movement of
the earth at all because relative to nothing, the earth does not move because
nothing rotates at the same speed as the earth.
If the entire universe rotated at the same speed
and in the same direction as the earth, we would not consider the earth to be
rotating at all, but in fact see the entire universe as standing absolutely
still. This puts creation in a totally different frame of reference for me. I
see clearly how created we really are. We live in a universe that is relative
to our understanding of it and our point of reference. In other words, our
complete understanding of space and time is rolled up in what has been created
around us. I began to see a universe that is not self-existing but was created,
with each piece being put into place in order to make the others make sense.
Even time was created and needs a cause. A supreme intellect built a universe
in which things could make sense to creation.
How crazy is that thought! God is outside of our
universe and understanding, yet he could not bring creation into that reality,
this is the one thing I presume God cannot do, God cannot make another god. His
creation is a 3 dimensional representation of his mind, and this creation is
extremely limited in their ability to comprehend the non-3 dimensional. God,
since he is outside of our space and time, can step into our reality at any
point in space or in time. This brings a new meaning to what God claims in the
Bible,
“And it shall come to pass,
that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will
hear.”[1]
Whenever
I think of relativity I realize how created we really are. We still know very
little about our universe and what happens inside of it. Mankind likes to think
he knows how things happen and why, but in the future we will look back in the
present and laugh at our puny understanding of the universe. We are not like God;
we are so very small and our understanding so very limited. How on earth do we
presume to assume there is no God?
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