Understanding Relativity and Quantum Mechanics (Earth, Torah, soul, creation)

[Mr Spinkles]

There's a big myth out there that says that no one but Einsteins can understand advanced physical concepts like relativity and quantum mechanics. As a physics major, however, I find that the more I learn about these concepts, the more I am convinced that you do NOT have to be a super-genius to understand this stuff.

Instead, what you need is three things:

1) Knowledge and understanding of the "weird" empirical observations which lead to relativity and quantum mechanics. It's important to realize that there really are these "weird" things out there, things which, not surprisingly, may require "weird" explanations.

Here's an example of such weird observations: If you're in a car going 50 mph, and you throw a ball forward at 20 mph, someone standing on the side of the road sees the ball traveling at 50 + 20 = 70 mph. You see the ball traveling at 20 mph.

However, the same is not true of light. Light travels at the same speed (3 x 10^8 m/s, represented by the letter c) no matter how fast you're going. So if you're in the same car going 50 mph, and you shine a flashlight forward, the person standing on the side of the road sees the light beam traveling at c, and you also see the light beam traveling at c! This weird observation, not surprisingly, has weird implications, implications which both explain and predict further 'weiridities' concerning time and space (namely, that time and space are different for you than for the guy standing on the roadside--in other words, measurements of time and space are relative to one's frame of reference [this effect is tiny at speeds much less than the speed of light, which is why we don't notice this sort of thing in our common experience]).

2) An open mind. We have to remember that our brains are limited, and the universe has no obligation to make sense to us at all. As Einstein said, "The only incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." Indeed, given the circumstances, it is quite remarkable that we can make sense of the universe at all (if only partially). Therefore, it should not surprise us if we come across something that contradicts "common sense" assumptions. We have to remember that "common sense" is relative, and assumptions are only valid insofar as they agree with observation. Not too long ago, it defied common sense that the Earth orbits the Sun. It's still quite an amazing concept, if you think about it. If the whole Earth underneath us is moving at thousands of miles per hour, why don't we all fly off? How does the Moon "keep up" with the Earth?

It's not like people back then weren't in every way as smart as we are today. They just had a hard time (understandably) overcoming the "common sense" notion that the Earth is motionless under our feet.

I find that, in a similar way, things like relativity and quantum mechanics are NOT so very difficult to understand; they are simply difficult to accept. There is a difference between something being nonsensical/illogical and something being counter-intuitive. For example, the idea that the Earth moves and rotates and high speed, and the idea that three-dimensional space can be curved and distorted by massive objects, are not illogical. (The mathematics behind both curved space and the forces which make the Earth appear to remain motionless to us show that these ideas can be expressed in terms of strict logic.) These ideas are simply counter-intuitive. If one keeps an open mind, however, the difficulty in accepting counter-intuitive things can be overcome.

3) Imagination. What else can I say? You need to be able to get outside you box, leave your own perspective, and--perhaps most importantly--realize that no matter how we describe Nature or how we imagine it, the only "true" representation of Nature is Nature itself. Everything we say about it is an approximation, a sketch--a map, as Deut would say (sometimes this map can be used to make extremely accurate predictions, of course). Analogies are limited, and break down when carried too far.

I am convinced that most people can understand things like relativity and quantum mechanics if they just keep these three things in mind. You don't have to be a genius. Knowledge of the mathematics behind the concepts helps, but it's not absolutely necessary, nor is the math too advanced for most people. All you need is knowledge of the empirical facts, an open mind, and some imagination.

If anyone has any questions about relativity or quantum mechanics, I'd be happy to answer to the best of my ability (I'm still wrestling with this stuff myself, of course ), or find a resource that can better answer your questions.

[Jayhawker Soule]

Perhaps you would like o take on this?

[Scuba Pete]

You know Spinks... you make great sense. It might have taken an "Einstein" to put all the pieces to the puzzle together, but we don't need to re-invent the wheel.

[BUDDY]

Originally Posted by Mr. Spinkles

There's a big myth out there that says that no one but Einsteins can understand advanced physical concepts like relativity and quantum mechanics. As a physics major, however, I find that the more I learn about these concepts, the more I am convinced that you do NOT have to be a super-genius to understand this stuff.

That's too bad for me, because I can't understand a bit of it.

[Mr Spinkles]

Originally Posted by Deut. 10:19

Perhaps you would like o take on this?

I'd be delighted.

Originally Posted by Dr. Gerald Schroeder

Let me clarify right at the start. The world may be only some 6000 years old. God could have put the fossils in the ground and juggled the light arriving from distant galaxies to make the world appear to be billions of years old. There is absolutely no way to disprove this claim.

He's absolutely right. I just find "it can't be disproved" a very unconvincing reason to take a claim seriously.

Originally Posted by Schroeder

We have a clock that begins with Adam, and the six days are separate from this clock. The Bible has two clocks.

That might seem like a modern rationalization, if it were not for the fact that Talmudic commentaries 1500 years ago, brings this information. In the Midrash (Vayikra Rabba 29:1), an expansion of the Talmud, all the Sages agree that Rosh Hashana commemorates the soul of Adam, and that the Six Days of Genesis are separate.

Why were the Six Days taken out of the calendar? Because time is described differently in those Six Days of Genesis. "There was evening and morning" is an exotic, bizarre, unusual way of describing time.

"Evening and morning" is an unusual way of describing time? He had it right when he said it himself.

Originally Posted by Schroeder

In trying to understand the flow of time here, you have to remember that the entire Six Days is described in 31 sentences. The Six Days of Genesis, which have given people so many headaches in trying to understand science vis-a-vis the Bible, are confined to 31 sentences! At MIT, in the Hayden library, we had about 50,000 books that deal with the development of the universe: cosmology, chemistry, thermodynamics, paleontology, archaeology, the high-energy physics of creation. At Harvard, at the Weidner library, they probably have 200,000 books on these same topics. The Bible gives us 31 sentences. Don't expect that by a simple reading of those sentences you'll know every detail that is held within the text. It's obvious that we have to dig deeper to get the information out.

What's obvious is that it is a foregone conclusion that Genesis constitutes an accurate account of the big bang, and thus Dr. Schroeder is willing to pursue flexible reasoning in order to squeeze what he believes those 31 sentences should mean.

Originally Posted by Schroeder

Imagine in your mind going back billions of years ago to the beginning of time. Now pretend way back at the beginning of time, when time grabs hold, there's an intelligent community. (It's totally fictitious.) Imagine that the intelligent community has a laser, and it's going to shoot out a blast of light, and every second it's going to pulse. Every second --- pulse. Pulse. Pulse. It shoots the light out, and then billions of years later, way far down the time line, we here on Earth have a big satellite dish, and we receive that pulse of light. And on that pulse of light is imprinted (printing information on light is called fiber optics - sending information by light), "I'm sending you a pulse every second." And then a second goes by and the next pulse is sent.

Light travels 300 million meters per second. So the two light pulses are separated by 300 million meters at the beginning. Now they travel through space for billions of years, and they're going to reach the Earth billions of years later. But wait a minute. Is the universe static? No. The universe is expanding. That's the cosmology of the universe. And that does not mean it's expanding into an empty space outside the universe. There's only the universe. There is no space outside the universe. The universe expands by its own space stretching. So as these pulses go through billions of years of traveling, the universe and space are stretching. As space is stretching, what's happening to these pulses? The space between them is also stretching. So the pulses really get further and further apart.

Billions of years later, when the first pulse arrives, we say, "Wow - a pulse!" And written on it is "I'm sending you a pulse every second." You call all your friends, and you wait for the next pulse to arrive. Does it arrive another second later? No! A year later? Maybe not. Maybe billions of years later. Because depending on how much time this pulse of light has traveled through space, will determine the amount of stretching of space between the pulses. That's standard astronomy.

His analogy is flawed. If Earth and the 'Intelligent community' in his analogy were motionless relative to each other except for the expansion of space between them, we would simply use the rate of expansion of space to calculate the original time spacing of the pulses, and we would indeed find that the universe is around 14 billion years old. Their clocks would also read 14 billion years old. The only way you would find that the universe is 6 days old is if you either

a) define a "day" to be 14/6 billion Earth years, or
b) if you were moving close to the speed of light relative to the entire universe, which is impossible.

Even if you were moving relative to Earth, you would still find that the age of the universe is about 14 billion x the time it takes for Earth to orbit the Sun once.

Originally Posted by Schroeder

The Torah doesn't say every second, does it? It says Six Days. How would we see those six days? If the Torah says we're sending information for six days, would we receive that information as six days? No. We would receive that information as six million million days. Because the Torah's perspective is from the beginning looking forward.

Six million million days is a very interesting number. What would that be in years? Divide by 365 and it comes out to be 16 billion years. Essentially the estimate of the age of the universe. Not a bad guess for 3300 years ago.

Sloppy math--what a mess. He's treating Special Relativity like Galilean Relativity. If someone on the other side of the universe sent us information for six days, we would recieve that information as a longer than six days, but we could easily calculate the time spacing of the original signal based on the known expansion of space. Our estimates of the age of the universe are not based on how things "appear to be" but how things actually are. The estimate of 14 billion years (e.g. the time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun x 14 billion) is true for all reference frames in the universe because nothing can move relative to the entire universe! Things that move relative to Earth might see the Earth orbit "faster", but then it sees everything that it is moving relative to going "faster", and so even in those reference frames the age of the universe is still about 14 x the time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun.

[Jayhawker Soule]

Bravo!

[mr.guy]

Did this fellow not also write "the science of God"? That book sat behind my toilet for almost two years.

[Mr Spinkles]

Originally Posted by mr. guy

Did this fellow not also write "the science of God"?

Well he has some terrible misconceptions about Relativity, so I hope not....

Originally Posted by EEWRED

That's too bad for me, because I can't understand a bit of it.

Sure you can. Here's a great introduction to quantum mechanics: http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000...ger/index.html

[Sunstone]

What do you think of the muti-universe theory, Spinks? Is there any evidence for it, or is it all speculation?

[Mr Spinkles]

Originally Posted by Sunstone

What do you think of the muti-universe theory, Spinks? Is there any evidence for it, or is it all speculation?

I haven't learned very much about theories involving multiple universes. As far as I know, there is little if any evidence for such theories.