Einstein - the man who began to take us out of the matrix (part two)

In the first part I presented one of the key insights of the special theory of relativity that Einstein published in 1905, this time we will also deal with the general theory of relativity

This is the continuation of the post Einstein - The Man Who Started Taking Us Out of the Matrix (Part 1)
Einstein's theory of relativity changed the way we understand the reality around us. Like in the movie Matrix, it shows us that the reality we live in is completely different from our everyday life and from what we are able to imagine. With the help of these understandings, Einstein began to take us out of the illusion in which we think we understand the world around us towards an understanding of the true and strange reality in which we live (see Secular spirituality - is there meaning in a world without God? (In the process, he also shows us what the matrix is ​​that we live in, or the infrastructure on which we exist. With the understanding of the matrix that we exist in, we can also start to check if it is possible to get out of it and where we will end up?

In the first part I presented one of the key insights of the special theory of relativity that Einstein published in 1905, time does not flow from the past, through the present to the future, but is a fourth dimension. Another direction that cannot be seen and in which all times, past, present and future exist simultaneously. Everything we have done and everything we will do already exists at the same time. Therefore, in principle, it is possible to try and change our progress along the direction of time and thus reach the future faster or move back to the past. It may be that in the future we will be able to develop a time machine and do this. The matrix we live in is called space-time and is the infrastructure of our universe. We are "drawn" on the space-time surface and therefore have three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. If we were not part of this space-time, we would not have these four dimensions. We have existence only because we are part of space-time in a similar way to a balloon on which people and stars are drawn. Just as the drawings on the balloon have no meaning outside the front of the balloon, so we have no meaning outside of space-time, and just as the people drawn on the surface of the balloon can only move on the surface of the balloon and cannot see what is outside the front of the balloon, so we also cannot know if there is anything else outside of space. The time we are "stuck" in. It is therefore the matrix of our universe.

More precisely, it was not Einstein who realized that time is a fourth dimension but another physicist named Hermann Minkowski. Minkowski read Einstein's article in which he describes the special theory of relativity and realized that a profound insight is hidden here. He saw that according to the theory of relativity length and time have mathematical properties that correspond exactly to the situation where time is simply another dimension in addition to length. Note that this is not just about two sizes that influence each other, but they have additional properties that imply that time should be treated as a real dimension that is added to the other dimensions of space that we know. Minkowski wrote about this to Einstein, but Einstein was not impressed by this mathematical game. Only after another time in which Einstein tried to extend special relativity to the most general case possible, he realized that Minkowski was probably right and time must be treated as a fourth dimension. As soon as Einstein did this, he was able to extend the special theory of relativity to the general theory of relativity, push the Newtonian mechanics that dominated physics for three hundred years and reach additional amazing insights about the matrix in which we live.
But is time really a fourth dimension and does there really exist something real called space-time, or maybe all gods are just mathematical games we invented, without any reality in reality?

Herman Minkowski (from Wikipedia)
It took Einstein ten more years in which he continued to develop his theory and in the end he published the theory of general relativity according to which space-time is a real physical entity just like matter. It turns out that there is an interaction between matter and space-time. We are not just characters drawn on it, we also influence its shape. As matter has more mass (or more precisely, greater mass-energy densities), it distorts the four-dimensional space-time around it! We don't have a lot of mass and therefore we distort the space-time to a very negligible degree, the earth already has a large enough mass to significantly distort its space-time circuit and the sun has a much greater mass than the earth and it distorts the matrix environments in which we live much more .
How do we know something exists? We assume that if it can be sensed or interacted with, then it probably exists. I, for example, see the keyboard to my left thanks to interactions between the light hitting my retina and cells that are sensitive to light. I also feel the keyboard in my hands with the help of interactions between the plastic of the keyboard and the nerve endings in my fingers. Thus, according to the sense of touch and the sense of sight, I assume that the keyboard exists. In the same way, thanks to the interrelationship of matter with space-time, we are supposed to understand that space-time is also not just a mathematical concept, but something real physical that changes and is in interrelationships with matter that is "drawn" on it. It is true that we do not sense the interrelationships with space-time with the help of one of our senses, but this is because our mass is small and the curvature we cause in the space-time around us is negligible. We can, however, measure the effect of the interaction between much larger masses and the space-time around them and thus know that it does exist.
The interesting thing is that a curved space-time causes the material "drawn" in it to move in curved lines so that two bodies that are in its environment will start to approach each other as if they are exerting a force of attraction between each other. Einstein realized that actually there is no such thing as gravity but there is a mass that distorts the space-time around it and therefore bodies seem to attract each other in this environment. This insight completely contradicts Newton's mechanics and what we are taught from a young age. We are taught that a stone we threw into the air will return to the earth because God exerts a gravitational force on it, and here comes Einstein and shows us that there is no gravitational force at all. Kdhua distorts the four-dimensional space-time around it and this causes the stone to approach Kdhua again. Einstein dismissed gravity as a real force, replacing it with geometry. Geometry of a curved space where parallel lines approach each other until they finally meet. The more mass a body has, the more it distorts its space-time and the space-time around it and we will see it as if there is a stronger gravitational force there.

The interrelationship between matter and space-time begins with matter that stabilizes space-time and continues with the fact that matter must move in space-time, there is no other option (it is "drawn" on it), therefore it moves in space-time in a curved way that looks to us like a force attraction. This is how space-time affects matter again. We can see this interplay between stars and space-time, measure it and check whether it fits the calculations of general relativity. To date, in all the tests that have been done, the experimental results have completely matched the results predicted by the theory of general relativity. This is how we know that space-time is a real entity.
One of the strange results that comes out of this insight is that there can be stars with such a large mass that they will distort the space-time around them infinitely and essentially tear the space-time (or the matrix) they are in! We call these strange stars black holes. Today it is known that there are many black holes and that there is even a giant black hole in the middle of every galaxy, including our galaxy (don't worry, it is very far from us). What happens inside such a black hole? What does it mean to reach an area where space-time is torn? Could such a rift take us to different regions of our space-time? Is it possible to go through it to a space-time different from ours and thus move to another matrix? These are all excellent questions and we still don't have a solution for them. The theory of relativity does not know what happens inside the black hole and for that we will have to wait for the next theory in line that will know how to deal with the infinite sizes that appear in general relativity once we calculate what happens in the center of the black hole.
When Einstein saw the mathematical solution from the theory of relativity that predicts the invention of black holes, he did not think that they really exist and that this is just a mathematical result without physical reality. It took several decades before they were able to confirm this solution and discover the black holes throughout the universe. This is a wonderful example of the power of mathematics and why it is considered the language of nature and how it is more powerful than even those who developed it and found the appropriate mathematical solution. Every theory about nature starts from an idea, turns into the appropriate mathematics and from it emerges fascinating and new insights that we never thought about. The amazing thing is that all these mathematical games do describe nature and time and time again we see how mathematical solutions, no matter how strange, turn out to be correct in laboratory experiments.

But how do we even know that time is a fourth dimension? How can you check that there is a four-dimensional space-time? Note that one of the conclusions of the first part of the theory of relativity (the so-called special theory of relativity) is that time is another dimension, fourth in number like the length, width and height that every body has. Only after this understanding could Einstein continue the theory of relativity and expand it and explain with its help what the force of gravity is (general relativity). This is how they succeeded in predicting the existence of black holes, the beginning of the universe as the Big Bang and many other predictions that were confirmed by rigorous experiments. All these prophecies were developed with the help of the conclusion that time is a fourth dimension and that space-time is a real physical entity that reacts to matter and affects matter. Without this conclusion it would have been impossible to develop the theory of general relativity, and therefore because these predictions are currently met by all experiments, it is likely that the conclusions that time is a fourth dimension and that there is a space-time are also correct.

After Einstein published the theory of general relativity in 1915, in which he completely contradicted Newton's mechanics, scientists all over the world tried to experimentally test who was right, Newton or Einstein. According to Newton there is a force of attraction between masses and according to Einstein there is no force of gravity but a curved four-dimensional space-zemo between the masses. These two descriptions give slightly different results for some of the phenomena, so the scientists tried to find and measure these phenomena. In 1919 in the middle of World War I, several groups of scientists managed to measure such a phenomenon and show that the prediction of relativity is more accurate than Newton's prediction. There is no gravity, there is a curvature of space and time. This was the first confirmation of the theory of relativity, following which Einstein became the first celebrity of the 20th century, and many more confirmations followed.

Another impressive confirmation is related to the question, what exactly is curved time? It is possible to understand what curved space is, but what is curved time? As we have seen, time is another direction, therefore curved time means that this direction also curves. Can it be proven? After all, we can't see the fourth dimension, so how do we know that time is really warping?

The mathematics of relativity shows that the curvature of time can be measured simply by measuring times. When we measure how long it takes for an event to happen in an area where time is curved, we will measure that the event takes more time than it should take. Time appears to us as lengthening when there is a curvature in time. For example, a television program that takes 25 minutes on Earth will seem much longer to us when we try to see how long it takes on the television of the astronauts who are on the surface of the planet Jupiter, and this is because Jupiter is about 300 times larger than Earth, has more mass and is more curved The space-time around him than the earth. To the astronauts on Jupiter everything will look normal and the program will show them exactly 25 minutes, but when we look at them, because their environment is more curved than ours, time there will seem to move more slowly.

If so, you can measure the curvature and the time and check if this is a real phenomenon or not. Scientists took two precise clocks that show the same time with great precision (atomic clocks) and put one of them in the plane and left the other on the surface of the earth. The plane flies into the upper parts of the atmosphere, where the curvature of the Earth is somewhat smaller than the curvature of the Earth's surface. The clocks were accurate enough to measure the small time changes that should occur according to the theory of relativity due to the change in curvature around the equator. And really, after returning the clock to the ground, they measured that it moved slightly faster than the clock that remained on the ground and felt more curvature in time. The time difference between them was exactly the difference predicted by the formulas of general relativity. It seems that time is indeed a fourth dimension that curves around masses.

One of the more everyday proofs of the theory of relativity is the GPS device. It turns out that in order for the satellites to be able to be precise and say where we are at every moment, the formulas of the theory of relativity had to be taken into account. The formulas describe what happens to the space and the fourth dimension around the earth and how it affects the measurement of the distances and times of the satellites. When they tried to operate the GPS devices without taking into account the theory of relativity, they saw that the accuracy of the GPS was fading very quickly, so they added to the satellites the corrections required by the theory of relativity and what a miracle, suddenly the device worked perfectly. ZA that the curvature of the fourth dimension affects our GPS measurements and only by taking this into account can we track our position with good accuracy.

These experiments confirm the strange mathematical conclusions regarding time as a fourth dimension and the existence of a real entity of space-time that curves in an environment where there is a very large mass and energy density. But in my opinion the most beautiful example that we are really "drawn" on a real time space is the big bang theory and the expansion of the universe that developed following the theory of general relativity. Now we can also try and answer exciting questions like what is outside the universe and what was before the universe was created? About that in the next post..

It's amazing to me the fact that we don't see all of reality, yet we can understand what this reality is! This is the reason why I chose to study and focus on physics - the study of the laws of nature. The nature around us is completely different from what we think. Nature is much bigger and more mysterious than we are able to sense. We live in a kind of boring illusion that we invented for ourselves, and we actually have no idea where we live and how strange, exciting and different the real world is than we think. With the help of physical research we are slowly uncovering our sublime and beautiful real world in the hope of leaving behind the small and casual illusion we have created for ourselves.

You are invited to join us naturalists and you are invited to explore and understand what the real reality is and thus perhaps also understand our meaning. Ready to take part in the significant and interesting journey to discover the truth?

THE WORD & OM – THE MOODY BLUES

You don't have to be a physicist to study nature. It is possible to embark on a journey to the depths of reality with the help of science, philosophy and art, and it is best to combine the powers of all three. Each of these fields adds a different point of view and a different understanding of reality. Here, for example, is the Moody Blues band from the sixties. They made seven concept albums in which all the songs connect to one long piece that tells a story. Each album dealt with the investigation of reality, each time from a different angle. They show an example of how art contributes to our understanding of our reality. The song (the word) and the song (om om) come together and end the second Moody Blues album - in search of the lost chord (in search of the lost chord) from 1968.

The album and these songs are about our search for meaning and understanding of true reality. The lost chord" is a symbol of the heavenly harmony of nature, of the sublime and infinite reality that we are trying to understand and touch. The songs "The Word" and "Om" symbolize our desire to understand the infinite. In the first stage of understanding, before the real understanding, we simply give the phenomena names and then try to understand what these phenomena are (this is the situation today with the phenomenon known as "dark energy" for example). Therefore, they start with a song called "The Word". The songs describe the sublime beauty of nature, a beauty that we sometimes know about but cannot see as in the case of light frequencies and colors that the human eye cannot perceive (or as in the case of the fourth dimension). In the song they talk about the frequency of the infrared and purple for example. Then they describe the words we were looking for to describe this beauty, words like "God" or "Om". The words symbolize the sublime and our desire to understand and touch the mystery and infinite beauty hidden in nature. Science and physics are the best ways mankind has found to move towards this goal. The music in the songs also expresses these ideas by using the sitar, an Indian instrument used mainly for religious music. "Om" is among the only rock songs that have a sitar solo instead of a guitar solo, and they do it well! These songs did not have a music video, so I edited this music video myself, with the help of clips from the enigmatic film "The Spring" and parts of performances by the Moody Blues. All these symbols turn the songs into a complex, profound and beautiful work that discusses the exploration of the mysteries and the exploration of the reality around us.