Do we really understand the world we live in (Part 2)

Years ago, I can remember watching a Saturday Night Live episode (I think it was SNL, I don't know for sure) but anyway, Robin Williams was on the show and was doing his thing. All of a sudden, he picked up a picture of Albert Einstein, he took on a serious tone and said "Look at those eyes, the lights are on and everyone's home".

I told a friend at work about that recently, she asked "Why did he say that?"
At the time Robin Williams did that, I didn't understand, not sure that I do now, but my guess is because Albert Einstein completely changed our understanding of the world we live in.

When Einstein was alive, there was a lot of work going on by many scientists in trying to understand things like electricity, magnetism, nuclear forces, gravity and light. These are the basic forces that our world operates under.

Light was a particularly interesting subject. In many ways, light behaves like sound it is a 'wave' that is transmitted, there is no physical particle of sound. The problem though, is that a wave must have a medium. Without water, there is no such thing as a wave in the ocean. Without air (or some other medium such as water) there is no sound. The problem with light was that it travels through the vacuum of outer space.

Scientists at the time theorized that light was a wave and therefore, there had to be a medium, we just didn't know what that medium was. They referred to it as the 'ether' and spent a lot of time and energy trying to find it. All of these experiments led to an interesting observation. No matter what they did, the speed of light was always the same. Let me take a stab at demonstrating.



Pardon my crude diagram, but imagine you are looking at two people from above. They are standing next to each other and 'Blue' throws a ball at a target that is 45 ft away. He can throw the ball so that it travels 90 ft in a sec (about 60 miles per hour). Both guys see the ball as traveling 90 ft/sec and it take half a second to travel the 45 ft to the target.



Now picture the same scenario, with a change, 'Blue' and the target are on a platform (picture they are on a train)that is traveling by at 60 miles/hr. 'Red' is watching from the ground. 'Blue' throws the ball at the target at the same speed. From his perspective, the ball has traveled the same 45 feet. But think about what 'Red' sees. Since the whole thing is passing by at 60 miles an hour, he sees the ball as traveling 180 ft/sec and the ball has traveled 90 feet instead of 45.

This is referred to as the concept of 'Relativity'. What you see and how you perceive things is based on your particular perspective. But what would happen if the ball had a speed limit that it couldn't break?

See, Einstein started thinking about the fact that the speed of light was the same no matter what they did during the experiments, and they did a lot. And he came up with the notion that "The speed of light is the same for all observers"

Now picture in diagram two that instead of throwing a ball, 'Blue' has a flashlight and turned it on. 'Red' and 'Blue' are (somehow) able to watch the light and tell you how fast it is going. 'Blue' says "it's going the speed of light" (big number), Red looks at it and says "you're right, it's going the speed of light". But hey wait just a second 'Red', it's going the speed of light plus 90 ft/sec right? Nope, it's going the speed of light. See, light has a speed limit, it travels at its speed limit all of the time. You can't add to it, it can't go any faster.

This fact has some huge implications.

Einstein was thinking about it and started thinking about questions like "What happened to the 90 ft/sec we just tried to add to the speed of light?" Well, the conclusion he came to was pretty startling. Time and space are adjusted to make up the difference. This was the basis of The Theory of Special Relativity.

This gets pretty difficult to explain, but work with me here. Let's assume that instead of going 60 miles/hour, 'Blue's' platform is traveling much much faster. And, let's say that 'Red' and 'Blue' have watches on and were able to see each other's watches (I know it's hard, work with me) When 'Red' looks at 'Blue's' watch, he sees it as being slower than his own. What's weird is, when 'Blue' looks at 'Red's' watch, he sees 'Red's' watching as being slower than his own. The greater the difference in speed between them, the bigger the difference in their watches would be.

It is at this point, you are saying, Donnie hasn't seen his marbles in a long long time. Just in case you think I'm making this up, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity. Einstein, changed our perception of the world we live in. His theory of Special Relativity has been verified by experiments. If you don't believe me, just google around on 'Special Relativity' and 'Time Dilation' stuff like that.

Ok, so I'll get to the point. Many times, religious folks look at the Bible where God says "In the first day I did this, in the second day I did that" and scientists look at the apparent age of the earth and say that Christians are nuts.

Was God speaking in Relativistic terms? I have no idea. When the Bible says "A thousand years is like a day" did he mean it literally, again, I have no idea. What I am saying is that time is not a physical constant in our universe. Christians need to include that into their interpretation of the Bible.

Holding it all together
I know that this is getting incredibly long, but like I told you, I've been thinking about this for a long time. In part one, I mentioned that a physics teacher told me about a verse in the Bible that really caught my attention. If I haven't lost you yet, please stay with me just a bit longer.

I mentioned that in Einstein's day, scientists were studying gravity, nuclear mechanic, electricity and magnetism. In simple terms, these are the forces that 'hold are world together'. I won't bore you with equations and stuff, but if you look at these forces mathematically, they are all very very similar, but different. Einstein theorized that these forces were all manifestations of a single force that exists. He called this his Unified Field Theory. Back in 1820, a big step toward unifying everything was made by James Clerk Maxwell. Prior to his time, magnetism and electricity were thought to be different. He found that magnets could be used to produce electricity and that electricity produced magnetism. Thus we now have the electromagnetic theory (and generators and hydroelectric dams).

Einstein was unable to find the Unified Field. Scientists are still working on it. Check out the Theory of Everything Scientists are working hard to formulate some explanation for how our world is held together.

Colossians 1 has a very interesting verse where Paul talks about the Supremacy of Jesus Christ. Here is the verse that is so interesting....

15He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Are scientists searching for the connection between our physical world and the spiritual? I don't know, but, in my humble opinion, I think they are. Like I said, if we are all searching for the truth, we will wind up at the same place...

P.S. When I finished this, I thought about a similar post that I wrote a year or so ago. If you are interested please read A Geek Finds God?