Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Relevancy of Relativity

This week, rather than posting a piece written specifically for this blog, I am going to go green and recycle. Hopefully the topic is interesting, although it does not perfectly match the format of what I have been posting. I'll be back next week with content written just for you.


This is a paper I wrote to the prompt "Is Einstein's Theory of Relativity relevant in today's culture?"


This is what I wrote:


Einstein's famous theories of special and general relativity live on in our modern culture beyond academia and the fact that “E=mc2” is a wonderfully elegant equation. Technologically, they account for the accuracy of GPS, keep the ISS on time, and relativistic effects between Earth and Mercury was discovered to be the slight perturbation in its orbit, rather than the delightfully mysterious “planet Vulcan” at Earth's L3 point. At least the latter lives on in Star Trek.

While people count on GPS, many don't care what time it is on the ISS, or spend time thinking about what is lurking on the other side of the sun, messing up the Mercurial procession. If you ask (pester?) your friends about relativity, as I have recently done, they will generally have the name Einstein come out of a holster, then mumble something about the speed of light, and maybe even mutter something about time moving slower. The science-y ones may know the name “Lorenz” has something to do with all of it. This is a bit of a shame, because since the early 20th century there has been a profound change in many part of the scientific community that had led to many breakthroughs, and it all involved leaving your common sense and intuition at the door. Relativity is a large part of this new phenomenon.

Special relativity posits that as you speed up, you shrink down relative the person who stayed still. It also posits that things don't happen at the same time at different speeds, that time moves slower when you speed up and general relativity posits that being in a gravity well changes everything you thought was real as well.

None of this is at all intuitive. Abandoning intuition is an extremely valuable trait among scientists, and can be useful in everyday life. It allowed nearly every great advancement of human scientific thinking. Thinking that there exists an invisible army of creatures living inside you is preposterous enough as to be worried for whomever suggested it, yet it's true. The idea that the earth is hurtling through space at many kilometers per second is immediately dismissed by the evidence that we don't feel it, yet it's true. Opening oneself up to these strange ideas had proven beneficial in the past, and retains its place today.

Relativity is an excellent tool to train yourself to mistrust intuition. Learning about how a 10 meter ladder can fit in an 8 meter barn with both doors closed forces you to rethink the intuitive answer. There are other areas in which this is an invaluable tool. If a loved one faces a difficult medical choice between invasive surgery or an alternative remedy, one's intuition screams to avoid surgery where it may be the only effective option. If vaccinating your children sounds like child abuse to you, abandoning intuition may indeed help your child live longer.

These examples are not direct effects of relativity in modern culture, and the truth of the matter is that few people are interested in what they think of as Einstein's century-old dusty theories and equations. Many people are much more concerned about if they need a second mortgage, or if they need to take away their teenagers keys after a speeding ticket, even if it means shutting them to their high school. Even so, those who have spent some time with their brain in the kitchen mixer of scientific theory and inquiry can influence those around us. Family members asking for advice or friends facing tough decisions can really benefit from a bought of critical thinking and cognitive dissonance. Science is much more than math, equations, and physicists talking about Star Trek's holodeck or Alcubierre's warp drive in a faculty cafeteria, it is a way to move through life, evaluating the best course of action and persuading others to do the same, a way to avoid fooling yourself, or allowing others to fool you.

Einstein’s relativity has a knack for kick-starting this train of thought with just a small initial investment of research required, or a friend willing to talk about it.


Cheers,

  - Scott



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