The dude to your left is my father, retired Colonel Walter Lee Watson, Jr. He flew various aircraft for the Air Force for over 10 years. One of the planes that he flew, the SR-71, actually went three times the speed of sound! He was the only black man ever to touch its controls.
One day I was speaking with my father about quantum physics(I did not study it in school, but somehow I felt like I kind of got it). Basically I was asking him how flying at supersonic speeds effects the body. My father (who is a brainiac my nature) rattled off a formula to me, humbling me into recognition of the fact that I may have felt quantum physics, but I didn't get it. Anyhow, he told me that once you reach a certain speed, time and space begin to alter. He said that because there was a time when he flew at such speeds, his physical age is not the same as his age according to his birth certificate. At points in some of his flights, time was standing still or moving in reverse! Essentially that made my father Marty McFly and that SR-71 his DeLorean(see "Back to the Future" for reference).
My question to you is this: If speed can make time and space transform, how concrete are they?
1 comment:
Time is relative. Einstein concluded that time depends on the observer and the observer's relative position to what they are observing. Einstein's theory proved mathematically that the faster you move through space, the slower you move through time.
Speed is relative. All measurement is relative. Newton's laws put an end to the idea of absolute motion. Two people playing ping pong on a moving train would measure the distance the ball bounces on the table as lesser than a person standing along the track watching the ball bounce. Both measurements are equally valid since there is no absolute standard of rest.
But if you think about the fact that we already knew time to be relative; then speed has no choice but to be relative. Speed is distance divided by time.
If time and speed are relative and depend on the observer’s position in relation to what is being observed, it would seem that neither speed, time, nor space are concrete by themselves.
It is you, as the observer, that holds the validity of any such concepts and measurements.
Post a Comment