From what it is, to its impact on the world at large, join us as we explore Einstein's
Theory of Relativity, and explain it so everyone can understand it.
So where do we start with something as big and as complicated as the Theory of Relativity?
I'm sure some of you wouldn't even know what it is outside of its name, which is fine.
But I'm sure you do know the man who came up with the idea, Albert Einstein.
Einstein is revered as one of the smartest people to ever live, and he helped shape how
we perceive both our world and our universe.
So it might surprise you that this very brilliant man once started off as nothing more than
a patent clerk.
No, really, he did, and that's part of the origin story to the Theory of Relativity.
Because one day, after doing his work at the patent office, he went on a trolley car to
go home.
And he would do this day after day after day.
This is important because while he was on that car, he would think about the universe
at large.
He would ask himself questions and try to figure out the answers as best he could with
the information he had.
And one day, he was going away from a clock tower when he asked what would happen if the
car he was on was going away from the clock tower...at the speed of light.
This may seem like an odd question to ask, but lightspeed travel is something that scientists
are honestly trying to achieve right now, and these questions were truly the building
blocks of this really happening.
Anyway, back to the clock tower.
Einstein theorized, as well as realized, that if he was moving the speed of light (which
if you don't know is 299,792,458 meters per second), the hands on the clock tower (meaning
the minute hand and the hour hand) would quite literally appear to stop in place.
But, he also knew that while he himself was traveling at the speed of light and seeing
everything stop more or less, everyone who was at the clock tower, and seeing things
in "normal time" would not see them stop.
The clock tower and its hands would keep ticking along as if nothing wrong.
Yet in this experiment, for Albert Einstein, time had literally slowed down, and it was
at this moment that the "light bulb" went off in his head.
Because it was through this experiment that he realized that if you go faster and faster
through space, you're actually causing time to go slower around you.
But how was this possible if time was quite literally a constant force in the universe?
To try and answer this, Einstein would look to some of the other fathers of science to
try and figure out the missing points in his equation.
For example, he looked at the three laws of motion via Sir Isaac Newton.
Newton notes that while objects do move at a certain speed, their values are never an
absolute.
Mainly because every speed we go at is based on a force imparted on something, or relative
to something else.
Such as how a car can go 65 miles per hour on a highway...but that's only because the
ground and friction ALLOW it to do so.
No friction on the road?
You're not going that speed.
Thus why he notes that every speed has to have "in respect to" another force or object
that is allowing or perceiving that object's speed.
However, in contrast, there is James Clark Maxwell, the father of electromagnetism, who
notes that of all the things in the universe, it is light that is fixed.
And as noted, light goes 299,792,458 meters per second.
That will never change.
That speed is another constant force in the universe.
Anyone, anywhere in the world, or even anywhere in the universe will be able to determine
that the speed of light is the same, it won't change, and that's part of the reason why
the universe works like it does, because the speed of light is constant, right?
But therein lies the problem, or at least, Einstein realized that this was a problem.
Because Newton said that no speed in the universe could be an absolute.
But then Maxwell counters this by saving the speed of light is ALWAYS a constant.
Which means that these two very universal and very accepted pieces of science are at
a contradiction.
Which is something you never want in the world of science, trust me.
If you're still not getting the full picture of why this is a problem, here's another thought
experiment from Einstein to help explain it.
Imagine you are at a train station, and you are standing out on the platform when a storm
comes.
Then, out of the blue, two lightning bolts strike on either side of you.
Because of your position in the middle of these lightning bolts, you perceive them at
the exact same time, and the light reaches you at that same time.
Everything sounds good, right?
But here's the twist in the equation as it were.
Because now I want you to imagine that you are now on the train passing by the station.
And you're watching as someone else is having lightning striking on either side of them.
Because you are moving, and thus not still like the person on the platform, the lightning
bolts would send their light to you at different rates relatively to your train speed (for
sake of argument the train is going the speed of light) and your position to the lightning
bolts.
So as you can see, both laws were right, and yet, both laws were wrong depending on the
position and situation you are in.
For scientists and thinkers like Einstein, this is a problem, because that kind of flexibility
isn't what you would want in a scientific principle.
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This is where the Theory of Relativity comes in.
Because Einstein had to figure out a way to make his theory make sense while not breaking
either law by Maxwell or Newton.
Because if Newtons laws were wrong, then physics wasn't what we thought they were.
But if Maxwell was wrong, and the speed of light isn't a constant, then something much
different is happening with light in the universe, and we would have a whole bunch of other questions
to have.
Breaking either would be a problem, and that's when Einstein realized that with a small non-destructive
tweak to the Newton laws, but principles could still be true in the wider world that we live
in.
He called what he created "Time Dilation".
Proving via his theory that time itself can be stretched or scrunched depending on the
speed of the person moving through space.
What's more, he realized that not unlike space itself, time deserved to be not just a principle
of the universe, but in fact deserved to be its own dimension.
But as Einstein later theorized, this shouldn't be a separate dimension, but rather a dimension
in which both space and time would exist as one.
Thus was born his belief in "spacetime".
Where space and time were together in such a way that all the events of the universe
happened because they were combined.
This also helped him paint a different picture of what the universe was doing in terms of
its formation and orbits.
Because most people believe that the force of gravity and other elements help keep solar
systems and galaxies together.
But for Einstein, he felt he had the better explanation.
Mainly in that he felt that spacetime itself was being warped by massive objects like the
sun, and that the Earth, other planets, other stars, and the other things in galaxies and
systems were just trapped in this "valley".
A radical theory to be sure, but Einstein truly believed that this would explain much
of what was just "accepted" in the field of space science.
If you're having trouble picturing that, how's this for a visual?
Imagine yourself on a trampoline.
Now imagine that you put a bowling ball onto it.
What would it do?
Simple, it would sink to the middle, right?
Now, with the bowling ball in the middle, what would happen if you put a marble on the
edge of the trampoline?
The answer is it would go into the "valley" that was created by the bowling ball.
Due to the sun having the biggest "valley", it is the center of our system, and we all
rotate around it.
But, all the other planets in our solar system (and by extension all of the ones in space
itself) have their own mini valleys, and that's why the moons of various planets (including
our own) rotate around them.
But wait, this gets deeper if you can believe it.
Because this Theory of Relativity applies not just to the distortions caused by planets,
but the masses and gravities of said planets.
Because as you move through space, the time is relative to your time, right?
Well that would mean that with planets that have heavier gravities that they experience
time a lot slower than ones with lighter gravities.
This was actually a major plot point in the film Interstellar.
In that movie, some astronauts went to a world that was on the edge of a black hole, and
thus gravity and light were much different.
The black hole put a lot of strain on the planet, and by that token, light had a different
effect on it because of its mass, gravity and "speed".
To the extent that a single hour on this planet was 7 years back on Earth!
But let's ask the real question here, while it's nice to know that there are ways to perceive
time outside the norm, does it really affect us in our daily lives?
Well, yes and no, it's a complicated question to be sure, so allow me to answer it as best
I can.
While it's true that there are ways to "distort" time by going faster in terms of speed, the
way you're doing it is so small in its dilation that it honestly won't matter to you.
But there are ways to notice how time is distorted if you pay attention enough.
Such as how there are clocks that are always a few seconds apart from one another despite
them being "locked in" on the "correct" time.
Some are based on mathematical figures, while others are dictated by other forces.
So thus, there is a disparity depending on how you "receive" your time.
And if you really want to be creeped out, because of how the Earth works in its time,
it's technically true that your head is older than your feet because your feet are closer
to the core of the planet where you're being "pulled" at a faster rate.
E = MC Squared is the now legendary formula that helps show off the Theory of Relativity,
but no matter how you spell it out, it's now a key part of our understanding of space,
time, spacetime, and the universe itself.
Even though it does have kind of a big flaw.
What is that flaw?
It's simple, think about the name of this principle.
The THEORY of Relativity.
Remember, at its core this is a thought experiment.
One that is predicated on having a manmade object traveling at the speed of light.
We can do that right now, and it's unlikely that we'll be able to do that for at least
the next few decades, if not the next couple hundred of years.
So until we are able to get into the realms of lightspeed travel, we're honestly not going
to be able to know if Einstein was right.
And there are many accredited scientists who legitimately wonder if Einstein is right at
all.
And what that would mean for the universal principles we believe in if we do find out
that this theory...is wrong.
However, that's not stopping others from taking this notion and seeing how far they can go
with it.
How so?
Well, remember the idea of spacetime and how things like the Earth and the sun are distorting
the spacetime around them?
Scientists are using that concept to see if they can make a ship that can go beyond the
normal speeds of our own technology.
Basically, they're trying to make the Warp Engine from Star Trek.
But in this instance, the "Warp" part of the engine is to warp spacetime around the craft
so that it can go incredible speeds.
Something that wouldn't have even been thought of if not for Einstein and his Theory of Relativity.
To help wrap this all up, you need to ask why this theory matters at all.
Beyond the potential spacecraft, or even how it may or may not help us understand the universe,
why does it matter?
The answer is that it is a question that deserves to be answered.
The Laws of Motion and the Speed of Light seem like very strong constant things, and
yet they directly contradict each other in key ways.
How is that possible when they're both proven to be true?
Einstein's thought experiments may seem like the musings of a man trying to make his mark
in the scientific world, but that's exactly what happened to Newton, Maxwell, and others
across time.
They had a thought, a notion, a theory, and they took it as far as they could go in order
to see where it led them.
And for Einstein, it led him to the Theory of Relativity, which helped him start a very
long and prosperous career in science.
Thanks for watching everyone!
What did you think of this breakdown of the legendary Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein?
Do you have a better understanding of it, its principles, and how it affects our world?
Or...are you still lost and need more help understanding things?
Let me know in the comments below, be sure to subscribe, and I'll see you next time on
the channel!