The New Concepts of Time and Space

Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation by Albert Einstein, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. The New Concepts of Time and Space

THE NEW CONCEPTS OF TIME AND SPACE

The Essay in Behalf of Which the Greatest Number of Dissenting Opinions Have Been Recorded

BY MONTGOMERY FRANCIS NEW YORK

We have all had experiences, on trains and boats, illustrating our inability to tell, without looking off to some external body, whether we are at rest or moving uniformly; and when we do so look, to tell, without reference to the ground or some other point external to both systems, whether ours or the other be the seat of motion. Uniform motion must be relative, because we find nowhere in the universe a body in the unique state of absolute rest from which alone absolute motion might be measured.

True, the wave theory of light with its homogeneous space-filling ether seemed to provide a reference standard for the concept of absolute motion, and for its measurement by experiment with light rays. But when Michelson and Morley looked for this absolute motion they found no trace of it. To the physicist, observational student of the external world, nothing exists save observationally; what he can never observe is not there. So: I. By no [182]means whatever may we regard uniform straight-line motion as other than relative.

This the Special Theory of Relativity does. It accepts Postulates I and II above; their consequences it deduces and interprets. For extensive demonstration of these I lack space, and this has been satisfactorily done by others so it is not my chief duty; but clearly they will be startling. For the very ray of light which refuses to recognize our relative motion is the medium through which I must observe your system and you mine.

It turns out that I get different values for lengths and time intervals in your system than you get, and [183]vice versa. And we are both right! For me to accept your “correction” were for me to admit that you are at absolute rest and I in absolute motion, that your measure of light velocity is right and mine wrong: admissions barred by the postulates. We have nothing to correct; we can only recognize the reason for the discrepancy; and knowing our relative velocity, each can calculate from his own results what the other’s will be. We find, of course, that at ordinary velocities the discrepancy is many times too small for detection; but at relative velocities at all comparable with that of light it rises above the observational horizon.

To inquire the “true” length is meaningless. Chicago is east of Denver, west of Pittsburgh, south of Milwaukee; we do not consider this contradictory, or demand the “true” direction of Chicago. Einstein finds that the concept of length, between points in space or events in time, does not as we had supposed represent an intrinsic property of the points or the events. Like direction, it is merely a relation between these and the observer—a relation whose value changes with the observer’s velocity relative to the object. If our ideas of the part played in the world by time and space do not permit us to believe this, we must alter these ideas. Let us see how we may do this.

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