relativistic spacetime and the essence of Light

“A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm,” as Hamlet says

Taken together, the theories of Special and General Relativity propose a conception of the universe that is fundamentally different from Classical physics and many of our ordinary intuitions about the physical world. Whereas Classical, Galilean-Newtonian physics takes as its departure point our ordinary understandings of the meanings of “space,” as measured by a yardstick, and “time,” as measured by a chronograph, the Relativistic paradigm proposes a view of the universe in which space and time are essentially related and, in a certain sense, identical just as a sound is the same as a pitch. A sound can be “warped” and “flexed,” but not without warping and flexing the pitch. While space and time share in a fluid relational matrix of identity, both together, according to the Theory of Relativity, are indexed in an absolute bond to the mystical “Universal Constant”— the enigmatic “C” in the notorious equation:

E=mc².

According to Special Relativity, space and time together are a function of the observer’s motion, or inertial reference frame. This means that concepts such as simultaneity and the order of events can appear different to different observers. Was Kennedy assassinated before or after a distant star went supernova? Did the king eat the fish that ate the worm or did the fish eat the worm that ate the king?¹ We say one thing with conviction but, in the view in question, are compelled to affirm that another observer travelling at near relativistic speeds would be liable to come to an entirely different conclusion on the same basis by which we came to ours. Does this fact corroborate, by theoretical physicists vis-á-vis the so-called “real physical universe,” what the relativists and nihilists and sorcerers and postmodernists have been insisting all along in the realm of the rest of life?

Let us leave the issue unresolved for the moment. As to the question of which sequence of events is correct, the question both does and does not admit of an answer. Relativistically, the answer must indeed remain contingent on the observer’s frame of reference. Hence, relativism may indeed appear to have carried off the palm. But there is another answer to this question that is neither equivocal nor relative, which I will attempt to sketch out, that promises to reconcile the apparent contradiction.

Consider that, per the Special Theory of Relativity, the faster an observer travels, the more his mass increases. This has the concomitant effect that time will appear to dilate for him relative to an inertial reference frame. This is illustrated by the famous “twins paradox,” in which one twin departs on a rocket ship and returns to find his other half long since having walked out of biological life. Having established that time is a function of an inertial reference frame, and that it stretches out with increase in mass and velocity, let us then extrapolate these relations towards ever-increasing mass and velocity. It will be seen that light, eo ipso, as the Universal Constant, is a limiting case and singularity in which all time, all space, and all mass are summarized and drawn together in simultaneity.²

Hence, “the Theory of Relativity” is somewhat ironically so-called because it does just what one would not expect, given that title: the Theory of Relativity postulates a single, absolute reference frame—viz. l i g h t —against which all other reference frames are relatively measured. Photons, therefore, do not “travel” because travel is a function of space per time, and neither space nor time exist at the “speed” of light, which has no speed in itself for the same reason, but only for us. Time does not pass for light for the same reason that it does not travel. Returning to the question about the sequence posed above, “who has ears, let him hear”: everything happens at once in eternity. But regardless of this, let no one tell you, with the mantle of scientific authority, that “starlight from distant galaxies proves the Universe is 13.8 billion years old.”³ By its own logic, the statement makes no sense without a very specific qualification. As it was written, “the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.”⁴

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

1. cf. Hamlet IV.3:

HAMLET: Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that’s the end.

KING CLAUDIUS: Alas, alas!

HAMLET: A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and cat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

2. Did not the one who called himself “The Light of the World” (John 8:12, 9:5) also proclaim:

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. (Revelations 1:8)

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. (Revelation 22:13)?

3. According to various sources, including the Planck Collaboration, the age of the universe is estimated to be around 13.8 billion years old. This estimate is based on various observations and calculations involving the expansion rate of the universe, the cosmic microwave background radiation, and the distribution of matter in the universe. Prior to 1999, astronomers had estimated that the age of the universe was between 7 and 20 billion years, but with advances in technology and the development of new methods for measuring the age of the universe, this estimate has been refined to this current value.

4. 1 Corinthians 3:19