I was reading this online article by the senior editor of Newsweek magazine, and in it he describes his struggle to understand physics and the general theory of relativity. For me, it’s already a jump to think about this sort of thing. But it was comforting to hear a far more trained and intellectual mind say similar things. Remember now, The principle of General relativity is that the laws of physics must be the same for all observers (accelerated or not).
“The Special and General Theory” was the prototype for all subsequent efforts to explain the universe in words rather than equations. It marked the earliest appearance of that ubiquitous character, the man on the train, a faceless stick figure glimpsed through a coach-car window as he zooms past at nearly the speed of light. Remarkably, we can observe him as he goes about his obsessive tasks: bouncing a Ping-pong ball on a table, or shining a flashlight at a mirror on the ceiling, or holding up a clock for us to compare to the identical one we just happen to hold. Many hours have I devoted to contemplating his inertial frame of reference and trying to reconcile it to my own, standing motionless on the platform. I have engaged him in my own thought experiments, even conjuring a gedanken companion who rides a train on the adjacent track. If they each pass my position at the same instant, traveling at three-quarters the speed of light in opposite directions, then their speed relative to each other is one and a half times the speed of …wait a second, that can’t be right, can it? What I’m up against here is a problem in translation; the laws of nature are written in equations, but I read only English.” – Jerry Alder
Have you ever thought that perhaps one day after you wake up from the grave, you will find out that all the equations you ever knew in your former life were just the failing sparks of something far more mysterious? Perhaps the final state of physics will one day extend into the the metaphysical, even the spiritual. Boy, who knows.
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