The Universe of Space-Time

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 Universe of Space-Time

The Universe of Space-Time

We have found the thing in nature which is independent of all observers, and it turns out to be the very structure of time-space itself. The motion of the free particle obviously is a thing unconditioned [226]by accidents of observation; the particle under the influence of gravitation alone must go a way of its own. And if some observer in an artificial field of force produced by the acceleration of his reference framework describes the path as knotted, he merely is foisting eccentricities of his own motion upon the direct path of the particle. The conclusion is rational, for we believe that time-space exists independently of any man’s way of perceiving it.

Incidentally note that this space is that of the physical world. For only by measurements of distances and times can we become aware of our extension in time and space. If beyond this time-space geometry of measurements there is some “absolute geometry,” science can have no concern with it, for never can it be revealed by the one exploring device we possess—measurement.

We have followed a single particle. Let us now form a picture of several. Any event can be analyzed into a multitude of coincidences in time-space. For consider two moving particles—say electrons. If they collide they both are in very approximately one place at the same time. We imagine the path of an electron through time-space plotted by a line (in four-dimensional space), which will deviate from a “most direct” (geodesic) path if the electron is subjected to forces. This is the “world-line” of the electron. If the world lines of several electrons intersect at one point in time-space, the intersection pictures the fact of their coincidence somewhere and somewhen; for all their world-lines having a time-space point in common, at some instant they must have been in collision. Each point of a world-line [227]pictures the position at a certain place at a certain time; and it is the intersections of world-lines which correspond to physical events. Of what lies between the intersections we have no experimental knowledge.

Imagine the world-lines of all the electrons in the universe threading time-space like threads in a jelly. The intersections of the tangle are a complete history of all physical events. Now distort the jelly. Clearly the mutual order of the intersections will be unchanged, but the distances between them will be shortened or lengthened. To a distortion of the jelly corresponds a special choice (by some observer) of a reference framework for describing the order of events. He cannot change the natural sequence of events. Again we have found something which is independent of all observers.

We can now recapitulate our conclusions and state the principle of relativity in its most general form.

(1) Observers describe events by measures of times and distances made with regard to their frameworks of reference.

(2) The complete history of any event is summarized in a set of equations giving the positions of all the particles involved at every instant.

(3) Two possibilities arise. (A) Either these equations are the same in form for all space-time reference frameworks, persisting formally unchanged for all shifts of the reference scheme; or (B), they subsist only when some special framework is used, altering their form as they are referred to different frameworks. If (B) holds, we naturally assume that the equations, and the phenomena which [228]they profess to represent, owe their existence to some peculiarity of the reference framework. They do not, therefore, describe anything which is inherent in the nature of things, but merely some idiosyncrasy of the observer’s way of regarding nature. If (A) holds, then obviously the equations describe some real relation in nature which is independent of all possible ways of observing and recording it.

(4) In its most general form the principle of relativity states that those relations, and those alone, which persist unchanged in form for all possible space-time reference frameworks are the inherent laws of nature.

To find such relations Einstein has applied a mathematical method of great power—the calculus of tensors—with extraordinary success. This calculus threshes out the laws of nature, separating the observer’s eccentricities from what is independent of him, with the superb efficiency of a modern harvester. The residue is a physical geometry—or geometrical physics—of time-space, in which it appears that the times and spaces contributed by the several observers’ reference frameworks are shadows of their own contrivings; while the real, enduring universe is a fourfold order of time and space indissolubly bound together. One observer separates this time-space into his own “time” and “space” in one way, determined by his path through the world of events; another, moving relatively to the first, separates it differently, and what for one is time shades into space for another.

This time-space geometry is non-Euclidean. It is “warped” (curved), the amount of warping at [229]any place being determined by the intensity of the gravitational field there. Thus again gravitation is rooted in the nature of things. In this sense it is not a force, but a property of space. Wherever there is matter there is a gravitational field, and hence a warping of space. Conversely, as long ago imagined by Clifford, wherever there is a warping of space, there is matter; and matter is resolved ultimately into wrinkles in time-space.

To visualize a warped space, consider a simple analogy. A man walks away from a polished globe; his image recedes into the mirror-space, shortening and thinning as it goes, and thinning (in the direction of motion) faster than it shortens. Everything around him experiences a like effect. If he tries to discover this by a footrule it automatically shortens faster as he turns it into the horizontal position, so his purpose eludes him. The mirror-space is warped in the direction of the image’s motion. So is our own. For all bodies, as evidenced by the Fitzgerald contraction, shorten in the direction of motion. And just as the image can never penetrate the mirror-space a greater distance than half its radius, so probably time-space is curved in such a way that our universe, like the surface of a sphere, is finite in extent, but unbounded.