The Hundredth Anniversary of Einstein's Annus MirabilisThe Big Bang - by Roman Kezerashvili 2005 - Article review

The Hundredth Anniversary of Einstein's Annus Mirabilis - by Roman Kezerashvili 2005 - Article review

This document contains article review "The Hundredth Anniversary of Einstein's Annus Mirabilis" by Roman Kezerashvili written in 1989
To order to read the article select: https://www.academia.edu/48666613/The_Hundredth_Anniversary_of_Einsteins_Annus_Mirabilis?

Contents

Reflection


1. Theory of Special Relativity .

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The most revolutionary conceptual change arrived in 1905, 30 June, when Einstein submitted his first paper [5] on Special Relativity “On the electrodynamics of moving bodies”.
First of all just what was meant by the word relativity? A more bassic question, what was the reason behind this concept ? Bodies don't move by them selves. So what causes them to move (I suppose relative to each other)
The term refers to the relative motion of two reference frames.
Reference frames cann't move. Only objects can move.
The special theory of relativity concentrates on the relationship between events and physical quantities specified in different inertial reference frames.
General speaking all events happening in one frame, also happen in any other frame.
The theory of special relativity can be derived from two postulates proposed by Einstein, one rooted in experiment, the other stemming from aesthetic, even natural philosophy as well as experiment, and argument about the apparent experimental equivalence of all inertial reference frames.
All experiments should be rooted in experiments, such that they (by preference) can be repeated, if they are accurately described.
It should be mentioned that in reality there are no inertial reference frames. All frames, linked to material objects, are subject of acceleration.
The first postulate states
• All fundamental laws of physics must be the same in all inertial reference frames.
What does that really mean. Specific the word must.
This raises the most important question: How is that decided?
The second postulate encompasses all measurements, early and modern, of the speed of light and the prediction of the speed of light by Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory and states:

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• The speed of light in a vacuum has the same numerical value c when measured in any inertial reference frame, independent of the motion of the source of light and/or observer.
The second postulate contradicts our intuitive ideas about relative velocities.
Strange sentence to describe something about my ideas.
My understanding is that if a signal is transmitted from a fixed light source at point A to a point B and simultaneous from a moving lightsource at point A, both signals will arive simultaneous at point B.
However that does not say anything about the actual speed.
It tells us that the speed of light in a vacuum is always the same, no matter what the speed of the observer or the source.
You can only claim something about the speed of light in a vacuum, when the experiment is performd in vacuum.
Thus, a person traveling toward or away from a source of light will measure the same speed for that light as someone at rest with respect to the source.
What is a already mentioned if two light signals are compared, which are created simultaneous, the arriving times are also simultaneous. The point is that the distance is the same. How the signals are generated is not important.
The real question is if the speed of light is the same in both directions. Starting point of the experiment (by preference) is that the distances travelled should be the same.
This conflicts with our every day experience: we would expect to have to add in the velocity of the observer.
How is the velocity of the observer measured? It is wrong to use the velocity of the observer in this discussion.
Regardless of the confounding nature of the second postulate, it reflects the way nature is, and physics must take nature on its own terms.
This sentence is not clear. What means nature?
Relativity in Newtonian physics involves certain unprovable assumptions that make sense from everyday experience.
This sentence is not clear.
It is assumed that the lengths of the object are the same in one frame as in another, and time passes at the same rate in different reference frames.
It is difficult to understand when the length of the same rod measured in two different frames.
In Newtonian physics, subsequently space and time intervals are considered to be absolute, and their measurement does not change from one reference frame to another. Einstein’s relativity changes our understanding of space and time. They are not absolute.
Why is that?
We cannot speak meaningfully about space without implying time.
We cannot simply speak about time and compare that with space. All objects in the universe exist in 'time'. You can also call that universal time.
Things exist in spacetime.
No. See above.
Einstein’s postulates change concepts about space and time and are part of a large picture, a revolutionary one that predicts that motion through space causes time to slow down, that objects in motion are shorter and mass is actually congealed energy.

Based on these postulates Einstein derived transformations that make Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations invariant in all inertial reference frames. These transformations known today as Lorentz transformation equations were first proposed in a slightly different form, by Lorentz in 1904, to explain “the null result” of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Interestingly, he justified the transformation on what was eventually discovered to be a fallacious hypothesis. Contradicting Lorentz, Einstein introduced the Lorentz transformation equations to account for the peculiar constancy of the speed of light, an invariance that violates the Galilean transformation equations. According to Einstein the laws of physics are invariant to the Lorentz transformationequations between inertial frames.
One of the important consequences of the theory of relativity is that we can no longer regard time as an absolute quantity. No one doubts that time flows onward and never turns back. But, the time interval between two events, and even whether two events are simultaneous, depends on the reference frame. The time interval between two events that occur at the same reference frame is always less than the time interval between the same events that were measured in another reference frame in which the event occurs at a different place. This is a general result of the special theory of relativity, and is known as time dilation. This relationship between the time intervals is given as
                  tau(0)
      tau = ------------------                                        (3)
             sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)                                        
In equation (3), τ is the rest time interval because it is measured in the frame in which the clock is at rest, τ is the time interval measured by the clock in the frame which is moving with the speed v. Thus, from equation (3) it follows that the moving clock runs
Thus, from equation (3) it follows that the moving clock runs

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slower than the identical clock at rest. This is called a time dilation effect. For example, today common electronic devices on the Global Positioning System satellites have to take dilation effect into account in order to function properly.
Not only are time intervals different in different reference frames. Space intervals – lengths and distances – are different as well, according to the special theory of relativity.
To be demonstrated by means of experiments.
That is
      L = L0 sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2) ,                                              (4)                                  
where v is the relative velocity between observed and observer, c is the speed of light, L is the measured length of the moving object, and L0 is the measured length of the object at rest.
Specific of importance are:
How in detail is the speed v measured
How in detail is L (the measured length of the moving object) measured.
It is important to both measure L and to calculte L in order to test equation (4)
This length contraction was first proposed by George FitzGerald and mathematically expressed by Hendrik Lorentz before Einstein’s paper was published. Whereas these physicists hypothesized that matter contracts in order to explain “the null result” of the Michelson-Morley experiment, Einstein saw that what contract is space itself.
What does it mean that: 'what contract is space itself.'
Nevertheless, because Einstein’s formula is the same as Lorentz’s, we call the effect the Lorentz – FitzGerald contraction. This is a general result of the special theory of relativity and applies to length of object as well as to distance. The result can be summarized by saying that the length of an object in motion with respect to an observer is less than its length when measured by an observer who is at rest with respect to the object. This contraction occurs only in the direction of the relative motion. Einstein linked not only space and time but also mass and energy. A piece of matter, even at rest and not interacting with anything else, has an energy being. This is called its rest energy. Here we have Einstein’s famous formula, which shows how the amount of energy E is related to the amount of mass m E = mc^2 . (5) This is the most celebrated equation of the 20 th century, which brought with it the dawning of the nuclear age. This formula mathematically relates the concepts of energy and mass through square of the speed of light, c^2 – the conversion factor between energy units and mass units. This idea was published in 1905 in a paper entitled “Does the inertia of a body depend on its energy content?” But if this idea is to have any meaning from a practical point of view, then mass ought to be convertible to energy and vice versa. That is, if mass is just one form of energy, then it should be convertible to other form of energy as other types of energy are interconvertible. Einstein suggested that this might be possible, and indeed changes of mass to the other forms of energy, and vice versa, have been experimentally confirmed countless times. The interconversion of mass and energy is most easily detected in nuclear and elementary particle physics. On a large scale, the radiant energy we receive from the Sun is an example of equation (5). When gravitation crunches a mass of the Sun and ignites a thermonuclear fusion, the energy that emerges is accompanied by the corresponding lowering of mass – but only a tiny bit. The helium nucleus produced by the fusion of a pair of deuterium nuclei is about onethousandth less massive than two deuterium nuclei. Sunlight, then, is this small amount of mass transformed by thermonuclear fusion into radiant energy. Sun’s mass is

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constantly decreasing as it radiates electromagnetic energy. The energy produced in nuclear power plants is a result of the loss in the rest mass of the uranium fuel as it undergoes the process called fission. A tremendous amount of energy is released in the fission reaction because the mass of uranium is considerably greater than the total mass of the fission fragments plus emitted neutrons. In chemical reactions where heat is gained or lost, the masses of the reactants and the products will be different. Even when water is heated on the stove, the mass of the water increases very slightly. All the above demonstrated the triumph of Einstein’s “Annus Mirabilis”. He showed that atoms are real, an idea that was still controversial at the time, presented his special theory of relativity, and put quantum theory on its feet. In 1921 Albert Einstein was awarded a Nobel Prize "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". Albert Einstein served Theoretical Physics until the end of his life in 1955 (making 2005 also the 50th anniversary of his death). His remarkable results in the year 1905 so dramatically transformed our understanding and ideas about the microworld and cosmos that after one hundred years it can fairly be said that because of his remarkable achievements humanity occupies a completely different universe from the one that was imagined only three generation

2.

3.


Index

absolute page 5,
inertial reference frame page 4, page 5, page 6,
relativity page 4


Reflection 1 - Understanding the Universe

One of the main problems to understand the physical Universe is: Why does GTR uses 'local' reference frames (plural) and Newton mechanics uses only one reference frame.
From a physical point at any moment in time there exist 'one' universe. This universe defines an almost infinity space, which is filled with dust (small) particles and objects (stars and planets). That any observer can only observe a 'small' part is physical 'not' important.
The explanation of Newton's mechanics why the planets move around the Sun and why the stars rotate around the centre of our Galaxy is because all objects attracts each other. This is called the force of gravity. The concept force is a general concept used in nature. In fact there are 4 fundamental forces:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_interaction.
The difference between STR and GTR is that the second uses the concept space-time, which defines some sort of 4D mathematical space which does not exists physical.
STR uses 3D space and physical clocks to define time. The problem is that there exists no physical clocks which run simultaneous, because they are influenced by gravitational and electromagnetic forces. This becomes vissible when the duration of a clock which travels from A to B and back to A is compared with a clock which stays at A. The durations are different.


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