Universe
Chapter 1 - Worldview
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Welcome to the Universe page
This is the second item of the first building block.
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On this page, we present you with the first part of the first building block, reality on a universal scale: Einstein's idea about the relationship between time and space.
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Key takeaway
- Einstein stated that relationships are the fabric from which reality is built.
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Core ideas
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Energy
| The Equivalence of Mass and Energy |
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| Einstein correctly described the equivalence of mass and energy as “the most important upshot of the special theory of relativity” (Einstein 1919), for this result lies at the core of modern physics. Many commentators have observed that in Einstein’s first derivation of this famous result, he did not express it with the equation E = mc². Instead, Einstein concluded that if an object, which is at rest relative to an inertial frame, either absorbs or emits an amount of energy L, its inertial mass will correspondingly either increase or decrease by an amount L/c².
The two main philosophical questions surrounding Einstein’s equation, which are the focus of this entry, concern how we ought to understand the assertion that mass and energy are in some sense equivalent and how we ought to understand assertions concerning the convertibility of mass into energy (or vice versa). |
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The relationship between space and time
| The Simple Idea Behind Einstein’s Greatest Discoveries - K.C. Cole - Quanta Magazine - 2019 |
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| This endless morphing of matter into energy (and vice versa) powers the cosmos, matter, life. Yet through it all, the energy-matter content of the universe never changes. It’s strange but true: Matter and energy themselves are less fundamental than the underlying relationships between them. We tend to think of things, not relationships, as the heart of reality. But most often, the opposite is true. “It’s not the stuff,” said the Brown University physicist Stephon Alexander. The same is true, Einstein showed, for “stuff” like space and time, seemingly stable, unchangeable aspects of nature; in truth, it’s the relationship between space and time that always stays the same, even as space contracts and time dilates. Like energy and matter, space and time are mutable manifestations of deeper, unshakable foundations: the things that never vary no matter what.
“Einstein’s deep view was that space and time are basically built up by relationships between things happening,” said the physicist Robbert Dijkgraaf, director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where Einstein spent his final decades. |
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Astronomer and famed science communicator Carl Sagan famously said that "we are made of star stuff." Elements flung out into the dark reaches of space by dying stars in the early universe coalesced into the disk of dust and debris that formed our solar system, and that eventually formed us. Without the violent death of stars, we would not exist.
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What science can tell you
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| Frontiers |
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| Gutfreund H (2022) The Solar Eclipse That Validated Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Front. Young Minds. 10:747040. doi: 10.3389/frym.2022.747040 |
| https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2022.747040 |
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