relativistic spacetime and the essence of Light
how old is the universe?
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, and space and time should be seen in the same way. 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, as they can be measured, 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—according to this theory, which would seem to have been experimentally verified—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.
To further confound the plot, Rupert Sheldrake reported on a problematic discrepancy between measurements when the speed of light itself, which is supposed to be invariant, was observed to have different values at different times:
Not surprisingly, early measurements of the speed of light varied considerably, but by 1927, the measured values has converged to 299,796 km per second. At the time, the leading authority on the subject concluded, “The present value of c is entirely satisfactory and can be considered more or less permanently established.” However, all around the world from about 1928 to 1945, the speed of light dropped by about 20 km per second. The “best” values found by leading investigators were in impressively close agreement with each other. Some scientists suggested that the data pointed to cyclic variations in the velocity of light. In the late 1940s the speed of light went up again by about 20 km per second and a new consensus developed around the higher value.2
Do these facts, taken together, corroborate, by theoretical physics, what the relativists and nihilists and sorcerers and postmodernists have been insisting all along in the realm of the rest of life? In Classical physics, stillness or immobility is an absolute standard against which motion—and distance and time, terms in which motion is defined—can be measured. Relativity seemed to evert the Classical conception by identifying the speed of light as the unwavering standard by which yardsticks of measurement were calibrated. But then the speed of light was observed to vary. As a result, physicists took two steps that might seem to complicate the question beyond recovery. As Sheldrake observed, the speed of light was first established on a definitional rather than empirical basis, and subsequently, the very units by which light’s speed are measured were redefined in terms that would guarantee the definition be preserved:
In the late 1940s the speed of light went up again by about 20 km per second and a new consensus developed around the higher value. In 1972, the embarrassing possibility of variations in c was eliminated when the speed of light was fixed by definition. In addition, in 1983, the unit of distance, the meter, was redefined in terms of light. Therefore if any further changes in the speed of light happen, we will be blind to them because the length of the meter will change with the speed of light. (The meter is now defined as the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.)3
Hence, relativism may indeed appear to have carried off the palm and, fittingly, we would never be able to decide one way or the other.
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. If the structure of physics as the Theory of Relativity envisions it is correct, the answer must indeed remain contingent on the observer’s frame of reference. Hence, any observed sequence of events is correct from the reference frame in which it was made but not necessarily generalizable to others.
Let us explore the situation. 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.4
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 therefore has no speed in itself, but only for us. Time does not pass for light for the same reason that it does not travel. Hence, when we say “light has such and such a speed,” or even that “the speed of light has changed,” we are, in principle, making a statement about our own situation and inertial reference frame. On the basis of the above, it can be seen that light is no longer conceived as an ordinary phenomenon but as a sort of standard, or limiting case, against which other phenomena are measured. As indicated, by our ordinary Galilean-Newtonian intuitions, stillness or immobility is conceived to occupy the same station in the court of physics that light has now assumed. Relativity, then, is a sort of paradigmatic “Copernican Revolution” and “turning-inside-out” of the entire discipline.
Returning to the question about the sequence posed above, “who has ears, let him hear”: everything happens at once in eternity, which seems to be the perspective of light. Let no one tell you, therefore, with the mantle of scientific authority, that “starlight from distant galaxies proves the Universe is 13.8 billion years old.”5 By its own logic, the statement makes no sense without a very specific qualification as to the inertial reference frame in question, and acceleration from any given reference frame will lead to the calculated age appearing to diminish all the way up to near relativistic speeds, at which it would appear as fresh as the day it was born.
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.
Sheldrake, Science Set Free, pp 92-3
ibid.
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)?
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.
Thank you Max - These thoughts call to my mind an integrating quote from Rudolf Steiner, given at this time of year in alignment with the Pentecost forces, which you have no doubt worked with, but which bears a shared repeating:
“Man only looks up to the Sun in the right way (even if it be but in his mind) when, as he gazes upwards, he forgets Space and considers Time alone. For in truth, the Sun does not only radiate light, it radiates Space itself, and when we are looking into the Sun we are looking out of Space into the world of Time. The Sun is the unique star that it is because when we gaze into the Sun we are looking out of Space. And from that world, outside of Space, Christ came to men. At the time when Christianity was founded by Christ on Earth, man had been all too long restricted to the mere Ex Deo Nascimur, he had become altogether bound up in it, he had become a Space-being pure and simple. The reason why it is so hard for us to understand the traditions of primeval epochs, when we go back to them with the consciousness of present-day civilisation, is that they always had in mind Space, and not the world of Time. They regarded the world of Time only as an appendage of the world of Space”. ~Rudolf Steiner. The Festivals and Their Meaning: Ascension and Pentecost, GA 236, lecture 6, The Whitsun Festival. Its place in the study of Karma, 4 June 1924, Dornach
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/AscenPent/19240604p01.html
Christ came to bring the element of Time again to humanity, and when the human heart, the human soul, the human spirit, unite themselves with the Being of Love in Wisdom, then we receive once more the stream of Time that flows from Eternity to Eternity.
“Space is the outer condition, time is the inner condition” Novalis
Thank you ML for your good workings
xox
~hag
Achievements in science have blurred the line in people's minds between so-called “natural laws” (regularities) and their quantitative models—theories. Even renowned scientists have fallen for this illusion, even though scientific theories have a limited lifespan—they die and are replaced by new ones when new facts contradict the models. The next step was to grant theoretical models the status of absolute truth. Therefore, theories are created that, in principle, cannot be tested—it is impossible to confirm or reject them empirically. The origin and constitution of our universe are explained by two theories: the Standard Model and General Relativity Theory. These models define matter and all known fundamental forces and rely on 26 fundamental constants (model parameters). These theories suggest that our universe exists solely because the fundamental constants are exactly what they are – the case of extremely low probability. If the value of any of them changed by even a fraction of a percent, the universe would disappear as soon as it came into existence. This paradox only highlights how the boundary between reality and its theoretical models becomes blurred. Fundamental constants are model parameters, not necessarily an expression of reality. The mathematical framework is also not necessarily an expression of reality, although it helps us describe our observations. Reality is what it is, and we may never rationally understand its inner laws. Reality exists; thus, it is stable, even without the help of any models. Reality is unified and dissecting it with the reductionist method of scientific analysis leads to a dead end.