In the beginning… #1

by Whabby

Over the last 500 years or so, painstaking work by generation after generation of scientists has produced an enormous but internally consistent “bank” of knowledge that encompasses biology, physics, chemistry, geology, and astronomy. Unfortunately, there’s now way too much knowledge in the bank for any one person to acquire more than a small fraction of it, and scientists are making new deposits at a faster clip than at any time in history. Making matters worse, most people haven’t enough formal training in science and mathematics to understand the specialized language in which much scientific knowledge is expressed, creating an insurmountable barrier between them and the bank.

This past January, a dear friend that I met through my husband Jim, named Karl Baker, died unexpectedly from complications of colon surgery. Barely into his 60’s when he met this decidedly untimely death, Karl had long since established himself in my eyes as “uncommonly uncommon”. For example, although Karl lacked formal training in the hard sciences, he had a keen interest in cosmology, the study of the nature, history, and fate of the universe. So strong was his curiosity that he actually learned enough about the topic to write a lengthy and quite interesting essay on the Big Bang.

Right after Karl died, I decided that I wanted to write a blog to mark and honor his unusual willingness to wrap his mind around an esoteric scientific concept. Little did I know that this decision would mushroom into a series of blogs, complete with figures, diagrams, and even (horrors!) a little simple mathematics (very simple, I promise). The work behind these blogs is entirely dedicated to Karl.

My goal with these blogs is admittedly ambitious. I aim to slowly, carefully, and cautiously introduce you to “time dilation”, one of the most important aspects of Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity (as opposed to his “general” theory of relativity, which he developed years later). Why did I choose to tackle this particular nugget from the bank of science? Several reasons. First and foremost, time dilation ranks right up there with Newton’s laws of gravity as one of the most important additions ever made to our understanding of physical reality. If you come to understand it, you’ll have mastered one of the bigger deposits in the bank. Second, there’s good old fashioned bragging rights. Einstein is such a famous figure, but almost no one understands why he’s so revered. Imagine the satisfaction that will come with living the rest of your life, smuch with the knowledge that you understand an important aspect of one of Albert Einstein’s theories! Imagine the thrill of being able to explain it to your children, grandchildren, or your students.

And, last but not least, learning about time dilation is actually fun! The details are so eerie, so bizarre, and ultimately so breathtaking, that much of it seems like science fiction. At the same time, the phenomenon rests on a breathtakingly simple and very real-worldly set of conditions, so concrete that they can be grasped with just the slightest use of elementary mathematics.

The story of time dilation started in 1905, a year that has gone down in the history of science as “Annus Mirabilis” because of four papers published by Einstein. One, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Objects”, created a whole new way of thinking about space and time. We’ll start into the nitty-gritty of time dilation tomorrow. Today, I just wanted to introduce you to what it is we’ll be doing while I hijack the nest over the next week or ten days. In the meantime, thanks so much to Carol for indulging me in this very unusual “nesting behavior”! If I succeed in even a small measure, and get even a few of you to make it to the finish line with me, I know Karl would smile.

Are you ready? Are you ready to scream at me in the comments section as soon as you hit something you don’t understand? Are you ready to take me up on my daily challenge, which is to guess what the solution is to a mystery or conundrum that I’m going to pose at the end of each day’s blog (and then answer the next day)? Ok then… let’s be off! To start things off, I’d love to know: have you ever given Albert Einstein’s scientific contributions any serious thought? What they actually were, I mean, and what he actually found? Go ahead, owls… share away!