Einstein spent much of the latter part of his life trying, without a lot of success, to reconcile Relativity with Quantum Physics. His final conclusion about the importance of uncertainty in Quantum Physics was that "God does not play dice".
But could there have been another theory of Relativity? If there had been what might the third Theory of Relativity have been about?
What about electromagnetic radiation? The Special Theory of Relativity has the speed of light as it's center point and the General Theory successfully predicted that gravity bends light but neither theory has much about the effect of electromagnetic radiation on space.
The Special Theory of Relativity has mass and energy as being interchangeable. That is what his famous formula, E = MC squared means. C stands for "constant", which is the speed of light. So the formula is Energy equals Mass times the speed of light squared.
What that basically means is that a little bit of mass contains a tremendous amount of energy. The energy in mass is often referred to as the Mass-Energy Equivalence, where a certain amount of mass is always equal to a certain amount of energy.
We can see how much energy mass contains by reacting matter and antimatter together. There is nothing mysterious about antimatter, it is just matter with the electric charges reversed. The matter and antimatter mutually annihilate in a tremendous burst of energy. The energy that was in the matter and antimatter is released as electromagnetic radiation.
So mass and energy are interchangeable and the energy is usually in the form of electromagnetic radiation. It is much easier to convert matter into electromagnetic radiation than vice versa but radiation can sometimes convert into matter. It is called "Pair Production" and produces a pair of particles. The trouble is that one of the particles will be matter and the other antimatter, so that they mutually annihilate back into radiation.
The General Theory of Relativity describes how gravity affects space. It is not actually that objects attract each other by gravity in space. It is that mass warps or curves the space around it so that another mass, moving through space in a straight line, will fall either into the first mass or into orbit around it. So a mass in orbit around another is moving in a straight line, but through curved space.
So if mass and electromagnetic radiation are interchangeable, both being different manifestations of energy, and mass affects space, then shouldn't electromagnetic radiation affect space also? Neither theory of Relativity deals with this and I believe that it could have been the third theory of Relativity.
The difference between matter and electromagnetic radiation is that matter is a concentration while radiation is a dispersion. In my cosmology theory space is composed of an alternating checkerboard of near-infinitesimal negative and positive electric charges, in multiple dimensions. The electric charge usually perfectly balances out. Electromagnetic waves are so-called because they disturb this underlying balance.
Matter is a concentration of like charges, held together against their mutual repulsion by energy. This is why the particles of matter, such as electrons, have electric charge. This energy is what is meant by the Mass-Energy Equivalence and is released if we react matter and antimatter together.
This provides a simple explanation for what gravity is. If the two electric charges, negative and positive, are equal then the two basic rules of the electric charges, that opposite charges attract while like charges repel, must also be equal. If matter is the overcoming of like charge repulsion by energy then that means it must leave a net attractive force. There is indeed a net attractive force associated with matter, it is what we call gravity.
So if matter is the overcoming of the mutual repulsion of like charges by energy, and matter can readily be converted into electromagnetic radiation, then what do you suppose electromagnetic radiation might be? There is one simple and obvious answer. It is the overcoming of the attractive force between opposite charges by energy. This is why it disturbs the underlying balance of the electric charges composing space.
Then if matter is a concentration of like electric charges from space, and electromagnetic radiation is the opposite of matter, then electromagnetic radiation must be a dispersion that expands space by overcoming the attractive force between opposite charges.
Around the same time that Einstein was publishing the second, General Theory of Relativity, it was being discovered that, not only was our galaxy far from being the entire universe but the universe was expanding. The further galaxies were from us the faster they were moving away from us. The obvious conclusion was that the universe had begun from one point. This began the theory of the Big Bang and indeed the leftover radiation from the Big Bang was discovered.
The names most associated with this are Edwin Hubble, for discovering that the universe extends far beyond our own galaxy, which was one among countless others, and Georges Lemaitre, for deducing that the universe must have begun with the Big Bang. The Russian Alexander Friedmann is also credited with seeing that Einstein's Relativity theory implies an expanding universe.
But this might have been Einstein's third theory of Relativity. My belief is that electromagnetic radiation increases the energy density of space and that is really the "dark energy" that is causing the universe to expand. My cosmology theory is called "The Theory Of Stationary Space" because we really live in four dimensions, one of which we perceive as time. Our consciousness is what is really moving, proceeding along the strings of matter comprising our bodies and brains, at what we perceive as the speed of light. This is the fulfillment of String Theory.
We perceive the strings as particles, such as electrons, because we can see only in three of the four dimensions. This means that electromagnetic radiation is really stationary ripples in space, and thus increases the energy density of space. The continuous outflow of electromagnetic radiation from fusion in stars is what is gradually turning matter into electromagnetic radiation and increasing the energy density of space. This is what is causing the universe to expand.
This third theory of Relativity that never came to be would have been the logical conclusion of putting the first two theories together. The first theory was that matter and energy are interchangeable and energy can also take the form of electromagnetic radiation. The second theory is that the mass of matter warps or curves space, which we percieve as gravity.
Putting these two together indicates that electromagnetic radiation should also affect space, since matter affects space and electromagnetic radiation is interchangeable with matter. But matter and electromagnetic radiation are opposites, matter is an overcoming by energy of the mutual repulsion of like charges by energy while radiation is the overcoming of the attractive force between opposite charges by energy. Matter is thus focused inward while radiation is focused outward. Since matter curves space inward radiation must be pushing it outward.
This is what drives the expansion of the universe and might have been the third theory of Relativity.
No comments:
Post a Comment