Collected Works:
FIRST DAY
ESSAY ON GOD
On Relativity and Symmetry Regarding the Death of Grandpa John
POLITICS, BREAD AND BOOKS
PHILOSOPHY AND BELIEF
Introduction to the Thought of Contradictory Whole
FIFTY YEARS TO THE WAR
Six Stories of Socialism from a Personal Point of View
THE PATTERN AND KANT
Six Stories of Human Nature from our Point of View
THE KISS
THE STORY ABOUT FATHER AND FATHERLAND
THE LITERARY AUTOBIOGRAPHY
THE FOUR SEASONS
Mister X's Ode of Joy
THE OTHER LONG DAYS
The Detective Documentary Story in Witch Also the Author Might Be Killed
Copyright © Milan Nesic
Milan Nesic
Through Socialism to War
The Dual Problem of The Indubitably Constant Velocity of Light
In his first work on the theory of relativity, the famous treatise "Zur Elektrodinamik bewegter Körper" ("On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies") published in 1905 in "Annalen der Physik" Einstein did not account for the postulate about the constant velocity of light. Unless we take as an explanation the idea that the electromagnetic laws, unique in their logic, cannot but be unique in their mathematical expression, i. e. cannot be asymmetrical. (In terms of moving electromagnetic media, the postulate c = const. does simplify mathematics, i. e. makes it symmetrical). Judging by his later popular scientific publication – Relativity: The Special and the General Theory – one cannot really say that he succeeded to explain that postulate. In Chapter IX Einstein writes about a very long train traveling along the rails with the constant velocity v, and that every event, which takes place along the line, also takes place at a particular point of the train. For example, the two strokes of lightning A and B, which are simultaneous with reference to the railway embankment (an observer in point M). They will not be simultaneous relatively to the train (the observer M’ coinciding with the point M when the flashes of lightning occur) because the train is hastening towards the beam of light coming from B, whilst he is riding on ahead of the beam of light coming from A. Etc.
This short Einstein's text, this unfortunate example and inadequate interpretation wreaked such havoc in the understanding of the theory of relativity that it has not recovered to this day. Namely, if c is constant, if, that is, the velocity of light is the same whether the source of light is moving or not, whether approached or not, then it is absurd to claim that the ray will reach point M’ first just because it is coming towards it (and that because of that the two events are not simultaneous). And this puzzles not only perplexed students, because the lesser they think about these flashes of lightning the better they fare at examinations, but — judging at least from what I could lay my hands on (at this moment only I have four books and two articles on the relativity theory before me), this is the state of affairs in general. How else could it be if Einstein himself was unable to explain his c = const? When for a long time science as a whole was not up the real explanation? Because, let's not forget, at the time when Einstein invented those lightning, Rutherford's model of atom still held, i. e. only two elementary particles, electron and proton, were known. More exactly, Einstein had to thrust upon people the third one: photon as a quantum of light was not yet considered a particle even though it earned Einstein the Nobel Prize at the time. Just think: only two particles; in Einstein's lifetime (died in 1955) slightly over a dozen, and today more then one hundred fifty! A completely new god, our God in fact! These Einstein’s lightning would perplex us too if we had not found our own God. Oh, yes, as we have seen, to lay down the special theory of relativity only one its half suffices, the one about the Absence of Reason. However, to understand this theory, well, here one needs the second half too, yes, the one about the All-Encompassing Possibility. How? A simple application of the simple § 43 and § 45 — and nothing else.
§ 50
So, if it is true that all properties of all elementary particles depend on all properties of all other particles, if it is also true that equal elementary particles are not identical — the minimum of difference deriving from their own environment — then there are no two identical photons. Or, relative to the problem v + c = c, it means that now holds the following
Postulate: Even the photons from one and the same source of light are not identical; each will be such one to get to its own receiver at velocity c whether this receiver is moving with respect to the emitter of light or not.
(This may prove of utmost importance for the theoretical physics, and thus warrants a few more words. You see, in an atom photon is only a virtual particle, only a possible difference in electron's energy levels. Accordingly, photon becomes real only when an electron changes its energy level. In relation to what it becomes real? One could say that it was also real before, i.e. per se, in the atom, even if only as a possibility — things that are real in atoms! Now it also becomes real relative to the receiver. Conversely: since it has lost its original point of support in the atom, its only other reality is the emitter-receiver part, the distance Δl = (Δx2 + Δy2 + Δz2)1/2. However, transitory for any other specificity, i.e. longer or shorter from one moment to the other, for this photon it is everything: all that is real and constant during its lifetime, or more exactly, its only modus vivendi. This Δl = const. is what makes it specific as against the generality of all possible photons, the basis and the minimum of its specificity. On the other hand, c = const. is a property of all photons and constitutes the minimum of their togetherness. Hence the conclusion: since cΔt = Δl and since this Δl is practically the specific measure of every photon, in all inertial systems, i.e. every photon individually, the relation c2Δt2 – Δx2 – Δy2 – Δz2 = 0 has to be invariant. That is the famous invariance with which Einstein begins to lay down the mathematical foundations of his theory, i.e. its mathematical outcome v + c = c becomes comprehensible only when interpreted as an expression of a specific difference between photons.)
* * *
The immediate consequences of this state of affairs are as follows:
§ 51
a) To the traveler in the train (at point M') and the man on the embankment (at point M) both lightning will flash simultaneously. All rays of light from A and all rays from B will reach point M' simultaneously. And all rays from A and from B will arrive simultaneously at point M.
§ 52
b) The difference, however, rests with the following: whilst to the man on the embankment both lightning are of the same color, to the traveler the flash from A will be ever so redder and the flash from B ever so slightly bluer because of the Doppler Effect. (Just as to the traveler the thunder from A will sound deeper than the thunder from B whilst to the man on the embankment they will sound the same.) And this difference is not negligible. Namely, blue is not only an indication of higher frequency but also of higher photon energy. Photon energy, on the other hand, equals the energy difference of electron levels in atoms, the levels that define every atom. Not only that lightning A in one reference system is not the same as that selfsame lightning in another reference system, but even the atoms themselves vary from one reference system to the other. Hence the
Postulate: Every event is unique, complete and unrepeatable, only what it is in its own reference system.
§ 53
c) Accordingly, it is not true that all events taking place in a reference system necessarily take place in another system as well. The observer in a system cannot see, or measure, or record with any instrument whatsoever, a single event from another system: as soon as he has seen it, measured it, recorded it, it has happened within his own system, in his own way, or more exactly, as his own event. There is, however, another possibility. Since the traveler in the train realizes that he cannot record a single event as it is happening on the embankment, he asks for information the man on the embankment. He stops at point A in the train and when the man on the embankment, also standing at point A, tells him that the embankment was struck by lightning, he will note that time on his watch. He also asks a fellow traveler to do the same with another man on the embankment standing at point B. The two travelers can thus note the discrepancy between the recorded times. It is only in this sense that one can speak of the relativity of simultaneity. Otherwise the travelers can calculate themselves the simultaneity of both lightning on the embankment (the only place where they have any raison d' être) based on times recorded by them.
* * *
Therefore, all this trouble was needed to solve just one problem of the indubitably constant velocity of light. A less important one at that, mostly the problem of man's ability or inability to fully grasp v + c = c. Nevertheless, on the way to the solution of this almost purely subjective problem a non-negligible objective consequence arose: light propagates by virtue of difference between individual photons. What revelation might then bring us the solution of the other riddle of light, the objective, virtually the only real problem posed by light? Even it is constant, why is the velocity of light such as it is?! Having come face to face with this question, one is also inevitably faced with a whole range of questions of the same order:
Why is the gravitational constant exactly 6.67·10 -11?
And Planck's 6.62·10 –34?
Why is the electron’s electric charge exactly 1.6·10 -19?
And its mass 9.1· 10 -31?
Why is proton mass 1936 that of electron mass?