Relativity and Its Roots

INTEREST

CHAPTER 1

A Hint of What Is to Come

ALTHOUGH THIS QUESTION WILL SEEM silly, consider it anyway: Why do the flight attendants on an airplane not serve meals when the air is turbulent but wait until the turbulence has passed?

The reason is obvious. If you tried to drink a cup of coffee during turbulent flight, you would probably spill it all over the place.

The question may well seem utterly inane. But even so, let us not be satisfied with only a partial answer. The question has a second part: Why is it all right for the flight attendants to serve meals when the turbulence has passed?

Again the reason is obvious. When the plane is in smooth flight, we can eat and drink in it as easily as we could if it were at rest on the ground.

Yes, indeed! And that is a most remarkable fact of experience. Think of it. In smooth flight a plane can be going at 1000 kilometers (about 600 miles) per hour relative to the ground, and yet inside the plane we do not notice any effect of this uniform velocity.

The same would hold if the plane were any other closed vehicle: There would be no interior effect of its uniform motion. This general statement is of central importance to our story. It is called the principle of relativity, and, as will be seen, it has had a strange history. At this stage there is little, if any, indication of how this principle could be related to nuclear energy, or to the possibility of a man being years older than his twin sister, or to the resolving of a discrepancy between the calculated and observed motions of the planet Mercury. Nor is there any indication of the changes the principle has led to in scientific ideas of time and space. But, as will be seen, the principle lies at the heart of a two-fold revolution that stands out as one of the glories of the scientific era.

Do not underrate the importance of time and space. They may seem to be intangible nothings, less palpable even than the faintest breeze. But they are the very stuff of existence; just try to imagine the world without them—or any world at all.

Shakespeare well understood the power and poignancy of time and space. Here, for example, is the song he wrote for Feste the clown in Twelfth Night (Act II, Scene III):

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?

O, stay and hear; your true love’s coming,

That can sing both high and low;

Trip no further, pretty sweeting;

Journeys end in lovers meeting,

Every wise man’s son doth know.

What is love? ’tis not hereafter;

Present mirth hath present laughter;

What’s to come is still unsure;

In delay there lies no plenty;

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,

Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

At first this seems artless and lighthearted, as befits the song of a clown. But read it again and note how Shakespeare devotes the first six lines to absence and reunion and thus to imperious space; note also how vividly he devotes the remaining six lines to inexorable time.

The physicist, too, is concerned with space and time. In his work he does not cry out Journeys end in lovers meeting or Youth’s a stuff will not endure. Instead, he talks of motion and rest, of distance and duration, and of centimeters and seconds. He measures intangible space and time, and by fitting them quantitatively into equations he makes them sport the formal mathematical garb of his craft. Yet the scientist is no cold automaton. Like the poet, he cannot create without emotion. Behind his equations are audacious imaginings and imperious feelings that transcend logic and give his science an artistry all its own—an artistry that can be made manifest without recourse to detailed mathematics.

Space and time are immensely powerful. In running from physical danger do we not confess the power of space by hoping to use mere distance—space—as a shield? Certainly if space can thus protect us, it is not a soft nothingness.

Nor is time. How safe we would be from death by nuclear bomb had we been born in the time of Shakespeare.

So familiar are time and space that we are apt to take them for granted, forgetting that ideas of time and space are part of the shaky foundation on which is balanced the whole intricate and beautiful structure of scientific theory and philosophical thought. To tamper with those ideas is to send a shudder from one end of the structure to the other. And to effect a profound change in them is to create a major revolution in science and philosophy. In his theories of relativity, Einstein revolutionized our ideas of time and space not once but twice.

Since relativity has roots that reach back to antiquity, Einstein does not officially enter our story until the penultimate chapter. Nevertheless, his ideas haunt these pages. Our tale is that of the historical path to relativity, with its open roads and seeming detours, and Einstein’s ideas have been important in determining the attitude here taken toward the past.

In first reading what follows, focus on the overall picture. Details can always be returned to later.

Bon voyage.

CHAPTER 2

The Path to Newton

DOES THE EARTH MOVE? PRIMITIVE people would have unhesitatingly said no. Indeed, they would have wondered how such a question could even be asked. For them a moving earth was unthinkable. The wounded warrior fell to the earth, the stag sped across its surface, and the eagle soared above it. But the earth itself could not fall to the earth like a leaf, or skim its own surface like the wind, or soar above its surface like the sun. Other things could move. But not the earth.

Surrounding the earth as if attesting to the earth’s cosmic importance was the awesome vault of the heavens, which seemed to be a sphere set with fixed stars that gleamed like precious jewels, a sphere rotating majestically once a day about the earth. Prominent amid the fixed stars were several wanderers, their total being the mystic number seven: the sun, the moon, and the five starlike planets. (The word planet comes from the Greek word meaning wanderer.) They were called wanderers because, although they shared the daily rotation of the heavens, they moved slowly against the background of the stars.

The sun and the moon were obviously important for humanity. As for the five starlike planets, they came to be named after Roman gods—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn—and, with the fixed stars, were thought to have a major influence on human affairs.

It was natural for mankind at first to think of the earth as fixed with the heavens rotating about it. Much time went by before people of enormous intellectual courage dared to imagine that the earth might move. Two obstacles had to be overcome. The lesser was that everyday experience makes it seem obvious that the earth does not move. The greater obstacle was that a moving earth could not be thought of as the fixed center of the universe, and therefore humanity would be dethroned from its central role in the scheme of things—a frightening conclusion that neither laymen nor theologians, whatever their faiths, would be likely to welcome.

The names of the early heroes of the mind who first proposed that the earth might move are probably lost in the mists of prehistory. The first recorded proposal that has survived belongs to the fifth century B.C. It was made by Philolaus, a member of a brotherhood founded by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who is probably best known because of the famous theorem concerning right triangles.

PϒTHAGORAS PHILOSOPHE

Grec. Chap. 25.

Key developments in relativity will emerge from the Pythagorean theorem. It states that in a right triangle the square on the hypotenuse is equal in area to the sum of the areas of the squares on the other two sides. Thus in the diagram below, the area of the largest square is equal to the sum of the areas of the other two squares.

Often, the actual drawing or visualizing of the squares is dispensed with, and the theorem is stated in the powerful but less vivid form that if ABC is a right triangle with the right angle at C, then AB² = AC² + BC².

The Pythagoreans correctly believed that the earth is spherical. They believed that the heavenly bodies in their motion give forth musical tones blending into a sublime harmony—a celestial music lost to human ears only because we have been exposed to it every moment of our lives. They looked on numbers as the primary reality and particularly venerated the number 10—the sum of the first four natural numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4, graphically represented by the dots in the mystic triangle below by which they swore their oath of brotherhood. Above all, the Pythagoreans sought beauty in the universe—a theme that will reverberate throughout our story.

According to Philolaus, the earth traced out a circular orbit once a day, always keeping the same face turned toward the center. Nowadays scientists would describe this motion by saying that the earth circled in its orbit once a day and also spun on its axis once a day. The spin accounted neatly for such things as the observed daily rotation of the sphere of the fixed stars, although it is thought that Philolaus ascribed a small motion to this sphere.

To the extent that his system involved both a travelling earth and an earth spinning on its axis once a day, Philolaus had strikingly anticipated modern ideas. But at the center of all things he placed not the sun but a central fire, around which circled not only the earth and the moon but also the sun and the five starlike planets. The circling objects, even counting the sphere of the fixed stars as moving, numbered only nine, and that was an affront to the mystic triangle of ten dots embodied in the sacred talisman of the Pythagorean brotherhood. With beauty and piety alike demanding a tenth moving body, Philolaus introduced a counter-earth that moved so as always to be between the central fire and the circling earth, thus shielding the earth from direct exposure to the fire.

Philolaus’ astronomical system

The system of Philolaus came at the dawn of science. For all its quaintness, it deserves our respect. The earth of Philolaus may move in a curious way. Nevertheless, it moves.

At an unknown time in the third century B.C., the Greek mathematician Aristarchus of the island of Samos, the island where Pythagoras himself had been born, made a proposal that was even more remarkable than that of Philolaus. What Aristarchus proposed was that not the earth but the sun is at the fixed center of the universe, and that the earth spins on its axis once a day and circles the sun once a year. With such a moving earth there should be perspective changes in the observed positions of the stars, but no such changes were apparent. Nevertheless, Aristarchus did not abandon his idea. Instead he proposed boldly that the stars must be vastly more distant than had hitherto been supposed.

The prophetic concepts put forward by Aristarchus did not evoke any immediate echo of belief. On the contrary, because of his irreverent treatment of the earth, Aristarchus was attacked as impious. There was still powerful resistance to the idea of a moving earth eighteen centuries later, when Copernicus proposed it anew.

This resistance came, in part, from arguments of which the following are two examples. In the fourth century B.C. the Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that objects thrown straight up fall back to the earth at the same place from which they are thrown. If the earth was moving, he asked, would not the thrown objects be left behind during their journeys up and down?

Ptolemy’s astronomical system

In the second century A.D. the Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy argued that if the earth spun on its axis once a day, places on its surface would have speeds of about 2000 kilometers (1200 miles) per hour. Such speeds would create winds and dust storms of unimaginable fury foundering ships, blasting forests, smashing cities, and devastating the face of the earth.

Arguments such as these are indeed persuasive, and to people already disposed to believe in a fixed earth they must have seemed irrefutable. Nowadays scientists respond to such arguments by saying that thrown objects, the atmosphere, and the like are carried along by the moving earth.

Despite Aristarchus, the ancient Greek astronomers continued to place the earth at the fixed center of the universe. In the Greek tradition, the laws governing the heavens were believed to be quite different from those that held sway on the earth—and with good reason, for does not the apple fall vertically from the tree and, on rolling, quickly come to rest even as the moon circles the earth unceasingly?

The work of the ancient Greek astronomers culminated in Ptolemy’s masterpiece, known as The Almagest, the basic aim of which was to account for the observed motions of the cosmic wanderers. The five starlike planets moved strangely against the background of the fixed stars. Though their main motions were all eastward, each passed through a variety of stages during which it moved westward against the background of the stars. In view of this complexity, the Ptolemaic system is surprisingly simple.

In the heavens, it was believed, there must be eternal perfection, and what more natural and beautiful a representation of eternity could one have than ceaseless motion in that most perfect of figures, the circle? All celestial motions must therefore be circular.

It was a fine ideal, but the facts were against it. The observed motions of the planets could not be accounted for by means of circular orbits around the earth. Remaining as faithful as possible to the ideal of heavenly perfection, the Ptolemaic system accounted for the motions by having the planets move on epicycles—circles whose centers move on other circles.

The agreement with observation was good, and a fixed earth was profoundly satisfying. So, in spite of problems, the Ptolemaic system endured. As century followed century astronomy made no major advances, and the earth remained officially immobile in men’s minds. Then, starting in the sixteenth century, a succession of dazzling advances by five great men of widely different temperaments and attainments created not merely a new astronomy but, indeed, a scientific revolution that outshone even the achievements of the Greeks in their heyday. A Pole, a Dane, a German, an Italian, and an Englishman, five towering figures linked by the accident of time and genius, between them ushered in the modern era—in less than two centuries.

The first of the five was Nicolaus Copernicus, who was born in 1473 in the town of Torun, in Poland, and who became a Canon of the Cathedral in Frauenburg, where he now lies buried. Despite his ecclesiastical post, his theological training, and the official belief of the Church of Rome that the earth is at rest at the center of the universe, he dared to propose that not the earth but the sun is fixed at the center of all things, and that the spherical earth spins on its own axis once a day while moving around the sun in a circle once a year. That is just what Aristarchus had said. But Copernicus said it with such cogency and with such a wealth of mathematical detail that at last the idea of a moving earth prevailed—though not in his lifetime.

Aware of the risk involved, Copernicus was reluctant to publish his ideas despite friendly encouragement from high-ranking members of the Church. He did allow a sort of summary to be circulated, but by the time he consented to publish the ideas in full detail, in his famous book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, it was almost too late. A copy rushed from the printer reached him as he lay dying, but he was enfeebled in mind and memory, and it is doubtful that he realized what precious thing had been placed in his hands.

The Copernican system, which is pictured on the following page, had clear advantages over the Ptolemaic. For example, in the Ptolemaic system, with its circles and epicycles, the motion of each of the five planets involved a rotation that takes one year. From the Ptolemaic point of view, that is no more than a fivefold coincidence—an unexplained accident. In the Copernican system, it becomes a fivefold reflection of the annual motion of the earth around the sun, and this is a beautiful simplification. Moreover, the Copernican system allowed the calculation of the relative distances of the different planets from the sun—something quite beyond the capabilities of the Ptolemaic system.

Yet, although this is often not mentioned, there was a strange inconsistency of spirit in the Copernican system: It did not wholly banish the earth from a central role. The unmoving sun was not at the center of the earth’s orbit but somewhat displaced, and the pivotal point of the planetary motions was not the sun but the empty, unsubstantial center of the earth’s orbit. Even if less directly than before, the earth was still dominant. Moreover, the Copernican system was not as simple compared with the Ptolemaic as is sometimes thought, since both needed such things as epicycles in order to account for the observed motions of the planets.

Copernicus’ astronomical system

A few astronomers were quick converts