A Blog for the Curious and the Scientifically Perplexed

This is the story of a great journey that started with a great thought. One day in 1895 a boy looked into a mirror and wondered what the universe would look like if he could travel on a beam of light. That sixteen year old boy was Albert Einstein and that one thought started him on the road to discover his Theory of Relativity. The great man has been reinvented as Albert 2.0 to come back and blog about a journey through space on a beam of light and explain the science behind everything from atoms, blackholes to global warming. If you've just joined and want to start at the beginning use the index on the left. If you're bored try these links below just for fun.


UNSCRAMBLE EINSTEIN'S BRAIN
PRACTISE SAVING THE WORLD FROM ASTEROIDS
ALIEN CONTACT CALCULATOR
HEAR THE REAL EINSTEIN TALK ABOUT E=Mc2.

Friday, April 20, 2007

The Beginning, 1223 BC

Earth Time............................1223 BC

Time to Go............................3229 years

Distance Still to Travel.....18,982,601,317,890,000 miles

Have you ever looked into a mirror and seen beyond your reflection? You have to stop worrying if your hair is right or your nose is too wide. Seeing beyond your face can be hard but not impossible if you try. You know what? The more beautiful or handsome you are the more you worry about how you look. The cleverer you are, the more you think about other things and like my grandmother always said, clever people age well. Over a hundred years ago I was bored and looking into a mirror. Did I look handsome? Sadly not, but I was more interested in the light leaving my face, hitting the mirror and coming back to my eye. What would it be like to be that beam of light? What would the world, the universe look like if I could travel that fast? Strange questions for a sixteen year old perhaps, but often all you have to do is ask yourself the right question. That one question changed my life, because I stuck with it until I had an answer. It took me half my life, but it was worth it. I spent all that time answering the question mathematically, but now I want to take this trip on a beam of light just for fun.

“Excuse me, who exactly are you?”

Albert, Albert Einstein of course. Well, I certainly remember being Albert Einstein and then back in April 1955 it all went blank. According to the history books I’ve seen since that’s when I died. Then suddenly I’m back here imagining things all over again. It seems someone has recreated a version of me inside this computer, which is fantastic as so many wonderful things have been discovered while I’ve been gone. How many people get a second chance like that? I get to do all things I never did first time around , like this trip.

“So who am I then?”

Well you have just joined me in a thought experiment, so I could have imagined you or I suppose you could be imagining me. This is my favourite type of experiment because you can go faster and further by thinking than by doing. Whoever we really are, for now we are light particles that have just left a star around three thousand years ago. As we set off over a thousand years before the birth of Christ, the Trojan War is raging and the classical Greek and Roman empires haven't even started yet. During our journey these great civilisations will have come and gone. By the end of our travels when we reach the planet Earth the human race will have progressed, if that is the right word, to a society that has put dogs into orbit, men on the moon and where everyone is looking for fifteen minutes of fame on television. But not all humans are that bad, a lot of good and clever people will have lived and died by the time this journey is over. During the next three thousand years while I’m enjoying the view I’ll tell you all about the important things that have been discovered about science and space. Most of it was discovered by other people but I can explain about my ideas on Relativity and a few other things that I discovered as well if you like. Did you know I invented a new type of refrigerator back in 1926 with my friend Leo Szilard?

“No, sorry.”

Not many people do, but we heard of a family who had died when the chemicals in their refrigerator leaked, all because of a faulty pump. So we developed a fridge that didn’t need a pump and had no moving parts. We got a bit carried away though and over seven years developed three new types of fridge and got forty five patents. Mind you I wish I’d invented the microwave oven, far more impressive.

14 Comments:

  1. Anonymous said...
    As individual puddles of water, after a rain, can evaporate into humidity, I believe individual clumps of matter decay naturally into the gravitational wave creating space itself. The wave/field is the monopole, non-binding gravitational wave, space itself. The firma of space or the ether of space is generated from matter. That is why Michaelson-Morley in the late 1880's couldn't find the ether of space. Not one experiment they did would have eliminated or concluded this possibility.
    If you can relieve yourself of some of the concepts that we were taught as facts as your writings indicate that you can and look at the universe and all we think we know and lay it out as a giant puzzle for your mind to piece together what came together for me was that time and space are actions of the process of matter decay.
    Here are two thought deductions.
    1). If the speed of light is constant in all reference frames independent of the speed of the source, then and radiation, light coming into the given reference frame must be governed by the reference frame.
    2). If time and space relatively change due to speed between reference frames then they have a in common the same basic properties as any generated or radiating, or propagating wave such as sound. Time and space have a point of origin, matter to energy transfer, potential to kinetic energy transfer, and have the form of a wave frequency. Absolute time is then a measure of this individual process and comparative time or relative time is a comparative measurement between reference frames of individual absolute times.

    I know that this is new and leaves you with more questions than answers. In 1919 Harvard physics professors published a paper on the state of knowledge of the known forces of gravity and electromagnetism. They deduced that gravity has to be a byproduct of electromagnetism. Coincidentally the year 1919 is the same year that a total eclipse convinced the world that Einstein was right. I believe he was except on this point. Time and space are not warped by matter, they are created by matter.
    Arguing with me yet? Open this thought, if gravity has a speed, even if it is many times the speed of light, it must be originating from something or somewhere. A speed has the property that it was somewhere and now it is somewhere else.
    One more super basic thought. If something will always be something and cannot become nothing and if nothing does not exist and can never pop into existence and become something then what is empty space, something or nothing? Remember, nothing by this definition, doesn't exist so space has to be something.
    Time dilation, Lorenz contraction - relative actions of a generated wave. But one more action is necessary for the picture to be complete- Wave synchronization once generated- and that action is where you and I differ fundamentally- Gravity

    That is all the time I have for now,
    C. Michael Turner
    bubbha said...
    C. Michael Turner is...?
    Anonymous said...
    I think I like explanations that a child can understand. We are still observing these "facts" with our own equipment which is far than useful to measure 'stuff' out there.

    The best comments from Einstein were about his ability to get information whilst asleep, presupposing a force or resource beyond our normal waking comprehension.

    Theories are great, yet we need to see them happening in our everyday life to understand them.

    Nils Bohr discovered that our experiments prove themselves, so let's start to use electrons through our thought patterns and create from the place Einstein left for us:

    E=Mc2, which can also mean that electrons need matter to live through. God needs people (but not a guy with a beard, more like electrons waiting to be lost in matter).
    Anonymous said...
    Ok, I started with your 42nd post, but I'll jump on your moonbeam and see what you got. Let's hope it's good, silly rabbit, because time, even at this speed, is wasting.
    Anonymous said...
    Decaying matter? Gravitational wave/field? "If you can't explain something simply you dont understand it well enough"
    Anonymous said...
    Your post on Albert, the Priest and the Pope was terrific. Thanks.
    Anonymous said...
    I have thought of a possible explanation of where dark matter is located and it's relation to gravity. I was thinking of a solid object in water and noting that if the solid object could be removed instantly (kind of like Star Trek, beaming it out!). The water would close in on the empty space. Prior to removing the object the water is exerting pressure on the surface of the object, "pushing" down on it.

    I saw a map of the earth that showed the gravitational variations around the globe and noticed that where heavier concentrations of rocks (density), it seemed gravity was stronger at those places. Northern Greenland showed stronger gravity. I had first noticed this when I was in Boston and had weighed myself and found that my weight had increased about ~5-7lbs as compared to my home in Virginia. I tested this several times over a period of about 9 months (I worked in Boston during that time). I used the scales at Bally's at both locations and each time I saw a difference. I weighed myself before I left Virginia and when I arrived in Boston I weighed myself right away having had only a drink and a snack on the plane and got the same variation each time. It was tough deterring what my real weight was.

    I picture dark matter as very tiny particles, smaller than anything that is known, even smaller than photons (they would be huge compared to dark matter). Per my example above of the water molecules, if a solid object was instantly removed from the water (or like a bulkhead breaking down on a submarine, that rush of water pushes everything in its direction of flow. As soon as the water has filled the area no longer maintained by the solid object all movement stops.

    The same with dark matter. The earth and all other bodies in space would be surrounded by an "ocean" of very, very tiny particles that push on the surface of the bodies. Anything that is on that object (atoms, molecules, people, air) is also being pushed onto it as the dark matter is trying to fill in the space that the object has taken, toward the center and completely around it. I called this the static state of dark matter - it is selfish and wants all of the space for itself.

    We don't feel the effect of gravity until we resist it, jumping, standing rising, etc. The dark matter is "pushing" everything to the center of the object. I have always read that gravity pulls us to the surface, I believe it is the opposite, we are being pushed.

    I also believe that because of denser material at different places around the globe, the "push" is stronger in those places because the atoms are closer together so are more easily "struck" by the dark matter. The interior of the earth has a lot of pressure so it is pushing the mantle and crust outward which is kind of like a bulkhead giving way allowing movement of the dark matter. Even looking at a black hole, it consists of very dense material and the dark matter is pushing on it more as the "gaps" between the material it is made of are so small that none can pass easily so more dark matter pushes onto the surface causing a greater force.

    I know a few general formulas about flow and pressure and I believe that this idea will fit right into existing formulas.

    This all came about as I have always wanted to know what gravity is and I have been praying to the Lord for many years asking for the answer to that question. When I started reading about dark matter I believed I received this information from Him.

    While typing this, another thought came to mind. Since I believe energy is the result of something, maybe dark energy is the result of the movement of dark matter.
    Anonymous said...
    I wonder if anybody can help me out? I have been pondering on this for years. If dark matter and dark energy exsist then surely there must also be dark light by default! Also if E=MC^2 then DE=DMDC^2 help please it's driving me batty!
    Anonymous said...
    E=hv so DE=hv mmmmmmmm

    I think we are missing something big !!
    like trying to fit the 2d equation of a circle onto a 3d cone, all is ok until the cone rotates creating a 2d elipse, so we then create an equation for an elipse and the cone moves again into a 2d parabolic and so on, the cone is like photons, we see the photon as a particle or wave depending on the experiment just as we see the circle or elipse depending on the cross section of the cone but the photon is a wave and particle just as the cone is a circle and and elipse all at the same time.
    perhaps Dark matter exists to help explain the big bang ! perhaps it should be called the big suck ! the closer all the matter gets to the boudary of the univesre the more force there exists and the big bang was not fueled from within but sucked out....
    Anonymous said...
    You people are all utterly clueless. Less thinking, more reading.
    Unknown said...
    I find Albert Einsteins theory interesting about the speed of gravity created by nothing where nothing itself doesnt exist. as a quantum physicist, I believe nothing where nothing itself doesnt exist is a physical existence in the universe but physical existence does not exist within nothing where nothing doesnt exist. nothing where nothing itself doesnt exist creates matter. I believe that all of the quantum of nothing where nothing itself doesnt exist in the universe is divided in places above the stars, in parts of all living beings minds and among other places one cannot imagine.
    Anonymous said...
    I believe one day we will know the answer of how to travel at the speed of light,but we must all work together as one and converse with each other. If we could contain atomic energy as is a rocket nozzel and this will give us thrust.The sun lets out solar flare at the speed of light,Now the question is can we built such a Engine to power a craft.Do we have the materials now that will contain atomic energy safely.
    Anonymous said...
    I Read from this site everymorning, it islike trying to play an impossible pieceon thepiano, you repeat it thousands of times and it starts to sound o k, same here by reading it everyday, my thinking is starting to grasp some of the ideas
    Anonymous said...
    I read recently that there is a black hole at the center of ours and every gallaxy! and the reason earth and other planets haven't been dragged in is because we haven't gone beyond the point of no return. (A bit like an object on a river heading towards a waterfall!?). Because Planets were originally formed by mass objects being pulled together by the force of gravity. Could it be possible that when planets were forming, at some point, at the center of our gallaxy and other gallaxies, so much mass was pulled together that it formed a giant object of such great mass that it collapsed through time and space itself (like an object on the surface of water breaking through the surface tension) thus creating a black hole?. This would explain why there is such huge distances between gallaxies. Because mass was pulled toward the nearest huge mass object, before collapsing through the surface of time and space creating black holes at the center of every gallaxy. This would also explain the stars and planets positions in gallaxies forming a shape like a swirl (like when water goes down a plug hole). I also wondered if time and space could tear, a bit like cloth, and maybe between some gallaxies, depending on how close they are together, maybe the pulling force of two black holes pulling time and space and all thats in it towards them could tear or rip time and space at the mid point!?. (A bit like stretching a piece of cloth). Could this also have anything to do with why everything in space is not only moving further apart but also accelerating. As the tear gets wider the gap gets longer!??

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