Einstein's Theory of Relativity

Made Relatively Simple Written for those who want to understand relativity but can't quite grasp the concepts.

Thinking Outside the Box

You've heard all the fancy terms like Einstein's theory of relativity, matter, mass, energy, speed of light, time, dimension, gravity, black hole, quantum mechanics, string theory, the big bang, the creation of the universe, the expanding universe, time travel, event horizon, quantum singularity, Newtonian space, the expanding universe, the uncertainty principle and many others. And you've probably thought, wouldn't it be cool to actually understand what they are talking about. In this article I hope to expose you to enough of the concepts to get you started thinking about it. I can't promise you that you'll understand it because, quite frankly, I don't understand it either. So how can I teach it to you? I can't, but I can let you in on what I understand so far and because I'm closer in understanding to you, I might be able to make things clearer to you than a theoretical physicist would.

Briefly, I am a computer programmer and I have a working knowledge of mathematics. Therefore, I'm not going to get deep into equations but stick with mathematical relationships between different things. Because I think outside the box, I can take one concept that I don't understand, and put it together with other concepts that I don't understand, and come up with logical conclusions that I also don't understand that turn out to be accurate. I encourage you to abandon the idea that you have to grasp all the basics in order to start to see the big picture and make predictions. I would caution you that, since I don't understand a lot of this either, to keep in mind that what I state here has a high margin of error, so don't quote me as an authority, because I'm not. I have the ability to sound like I know more than I really do.

In the process of understanding this, I have gone beyond some of the predictions of Einstein, Hawking, and others and made some of my own predictions. I invite those who know this better than I do to examine my new ideas to see if I'm on the right track or not. I believe I'm capable of making new discoveries and predictions even with my limited understanding because I don't think like most people and I venture outside the limits of conventional thinking far easier than most people think.

Additionally, I want to thank Dr. Kilkis who has really helped me understand what little I know and coming up with new ways to view the relationship between time and space. Some of the ideas here are from his work as he tries to come up with a unified theory of everything and marry relativity with quantum physics. The ideas here represent my understanding mixed with things I don't understand and new ideas introduced by Dr. Kilkis from the perspective of my understanding of his work, and a few conclusions of my own. All these ideas are freely mixed together. Therefore, my description can be perceived as mostly accurate but should be used only to help form the big picture and not as authoritative reference material.

In the early 1900s an Indian Chief named Black Elk visited New York City and saw electric lights for the first time and said that the white man had captured the power of the Thunder Beings. He was describing electricity and from his point of view, his description was entirely accurate based on his knowledge and frame of reference. We now use terms like "The Big Bang" and "Black Holes" to create a mental picture of something that is beyond our ability to understand from our present frame of reference. I think it is accurate to say that Black Elk had a better understanding of electricity than we understand the Big Bang.

Keep in mind that we are trying to determine what happened 15 billion years ago and that I think it's amazing that we know as much as we do. But you should keep in mind that we are just scratching the surface and that some of you reading this for the first time might be the one that unlocks some of the secrets and discovers the things we don't yet understand. It is my hope that this article will add to our knowledge and understanding of the nature of the universe.

Why isn't space flat?

I grew up in a world thinking that space was square and flat. That the universe was an infinitely big cube and you could go near infinitely fast if we ever invented a powerful enough space ship. I believed that time was absolute and everyone with a good clock would all agree on what time it was. I believed that time went infinitely back and forward into the future. I believed in absolute locations in space and that if we could find something that was stopped, that we could measure out absolute speed through absolute space to figure out exactly where we are and where we're going. Life was so simple then.

My experience must have been similar to those who first discovered the world was round. Thousands of years ago, the surface of the Earth was a flat infinite plane and we were on an island surrounded by oceans. The directions Up and Down were absolute and could be very accurately measured. And everyone understood up and down and exactly what they meant. But now the rules have changed. We now know we live on a ball that's orbiting a star in space. In that context the concept of up and down are totally meaningless. What we used to believe in as absolute not longer has any meaning whatsoever. Up can only be described as the direction opposite the current pull of gravity from the nearest large mass.

Similarly, our concepts of flat square space are as inaccurate as a flat earth and absolute up and down. It's just hard to wrap your brain around these concepts that are so different than anything we're used to is. Except for gravity, curved space doesn't directly affect us much. From our point of view, space seems almost flat. We're not super massive objects or moving at close to the speed of light so we don't directly experience these effects. Thus, it's not part of our mental reality. A round Earth is easier to grasp because it explains the Sun and the Moon, and tides, and ships dropping over the horizon. The effects of Relativity aren't something that we run into. The orbit of the planet Mercury being a little off is about all that was observable 100 years ago as something that wasn't quite right for some unknown reason.

Newton and Relative Space

Isaac Newton was our first scientists to dabble in relativity (not Einstein relativity) in that he discovered that speed and distance traveled were dependent on the frame of reference of the observer. For example, if you are on a train and you roll a ball in the same direction the train is moving at a speed of 5 feet per second, you will observe the ball moving 5 feet in one second. Suppose however that the train is moving down the tracks at 10 feet per second. A person standing next to the tracks will observe the ball moving at 15 feet per second and traveling 15 feet in the same one second. So who's right? The both are, but from their own frame of reference.

But how fast is the ball moving? The Earth is rotating and orbiting the Sun. The sun is orbiting in this galaxy, which is in turn moving away from the big bang. So, taking all these motions together, how fast is the ball moving through absolute space?

More than 100 years ago people discovered the speed of light was a constant. In 1887 a couple of scientists, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley devised a method they believed would be able to measure the absolute speed and direction that they were moving through absolute space. By shining a light in different directions, and accurately measuring the time it took to reflect off a mirror, one should see different times if one is moving through space. For example, if you are moving at one mile an hour less than the speed of light, and you shine a light in front of you, shouldn't you see the light coming out at only 1 mile and hour? That's what they thought, and they made their measurement.

To their surprise, the light took the same time in every direction, leaving them to either conclude that they were dead stopped right smack in the center of the universe, or something else was happening they didn't understand. They repeated the experiment at different times, knowing the Earth was spinning, that in case they were at absolute rest at one time of the day they should be moving at another, and the results were the same. No one could explain this because it appeared to violate the laws of physics.

Einstein and Relative Time

One of Einstein's strengths was that he's someone who was comfortable thinking outside the box. Einstein concluded that since they measured the speed of light to be the same in all frames of reference, but the distance the light traveled differed between observers moving at different speeds, and since distance is speed multiplied by time, then Einstein concluded that different observers must see time differently. That the speed that one progressed through time varied with your frame of reference and relative motion to the object you are observing. Einstein theorized, and it was later proven, that good clocks will not always agree in what time it is because they move through time at different speeds.

So, if someone is moving at 99% of the speed of light and shines a light in front of them, one would think it would only go 1% faster, and for a stationary observer (whatever that really means) it would look that way. However, from the point of view of the person moving, it looks to them as if the light is moving away at 100% of the speed of light. How can that be? Well, suppose that the fast moving person is moving into the future at a faster rate than the stationary observer, who is aging faster. Because they are moving into the future 100 times faster, light appears to be moving 100 times faster than it really is. Thus the distortion of time causes the laws of physics to be the same in any frame of reference and all observers agree on the speed of light, but do not agree on time.

If you got in a rocket ship and accelerated you could go what seems infinitely fast to you. You could travel to a star 100 light years away and get they by lunch, turn around, and get back to Earth the same day. But you will find that everyone else is 200 years (and one day) older than you are. From their perspective, you were traveling very close to the speed of light and it take 200 years for light to get to that star and back. But to you, it was only a day. Your aging slowed down because you move forward through time faster. What you observe as linear acceleration in space that obeys Newton's laws, isn't what really happens. You start out accelerating in space but as you gain speed you start accelerating through time instead. You can only move at the speed of light in space, but can move infinitely fast through time.

Matter and Energy

According to Newton, if one applies a constant amount of force on an object, it should accelerate at a constant rate, forever. However, we now have the speed of light barrier that things can't go any faster. How does that work? Does one get up to the barrier and hit a wall? Do the cosmic traffic police pull you over and give you a ticket for breaking the light barrier? What is it that stops you from going faster than light?

If an object became more massive as it's speed increased, then it would take more energy to increase the speed of the object. Thus, if an object doubled in mass, it's acceleration would be half. As it gets closer to the light barrier, the rate the mass increases is such that at the speed of light the mass would increase to infinity, which would take an infinite amount of energy to make the object go faster than light. Since it takes an infinite amount of energy to be at the speed of light, and we don't have infinite energy, then we never actually get there. It is more correct to talk about this in terms of "approaching" the speed of light and what happens as you get close rather than getting there.

The increase in mass limits and object from exceeding the speed of light. At the speed of light an object's mass would be infinite.

As you can see, it looks like I know what I'm talking about here, but I don't fully understand it myself. If you are following me then you have an impression of the concept as well and yet still be thinking, I follow it, but I don't really get it. Well, that's where I'm at too, but because I think outside the box, I'm not going to let that stop me. I have a certain amount of "trust" in the smart people that they have figured this out and, for the purpose of this discussion, I assume these things to be true on the basis that they are commonly accepted. But I have to, at some point in the future, fill in the details.

What Relativity Means

The idea of Relativity is that the laws of physics appear to be the same no matter what you frame of reference. Thus, if I'm moving at almost the speed of light, I wouldn't know it. It would look to me like I'm standing still. It's very much like being in a jet flying at 600 miles an hour from New York to San Francisco. When you're in the plane, it doesn't seem like your going 600 miles an hour. It seems like you're standing on the ground. All the laws of physics are the same. Who's to say that the plane is standing still and the Earth is moving at 600 miles an hour in the opposite direction? In fact, if the plane were being observed from space, it would appear to be standing still and the Earth rotating in the opposite direction because the speed of the plane at that latitude it about the same speed as the rotation of the Earth.. Think about it.

The fundamental postulate of the Theory of Relativity is that the laws of physics will be the same for all freely moving observers.

According to relativity, there is no such thing as absolute space and absolute speed. If these things don't exist, then there can never be a way to measure any changes caused by speed. If relative space and time don't exist, then it is necessary that the laws of physics appear to be identical to all moving observers so that you can't measure something that doesn't exist. If you can measure something, then it's real. For something to not be real requires that it can't be measured. Thus in order for absolute space and speed to be not real means that no measurable changes can occur that would allow you to calculate it. Thus the concept of the laws of physics appearing the same and the lack of absolute space and speed are linked. Relativity depends on the lack of absolute references. Therefore there can be no change in physical laws that could be measured that could lead to a calculation indicating absolute results. I contend that this law not only applies to speed and position in space, but also to the rate of time passage, to the measurement of mass, and to the relative effects of gravity between objects moving at the same speed. More on this new concept later.

Quanta

Quanta, or Quantum Mechanics, is something I don't grasp well. The laws of physics indicate that a hot object should radiate heat at all frequencies evenly and thus should radiate energy at an infinite rate. This isn't what happens and Max Planck theorized that the reason was that there is a minimum packet or quanta that light is radiated at and that these packets can not be divided down any further. A photon is a quanta of light and if the frequency of the light doubles, the energy of the photon doubles. So at higher frequencies you have less photons and at some point the photons at very high frequencies would be zero. The actual observations of energy distribution frequencies agree with this theory.

Hundreds of years ago we thought matter was continuos. We believed that if we had an infinitely sharp knife that we would be able to slice a piece of cheese infinitely thin. Now we know that matter is made up of atoms and molecules that can't be divided down any further. You either have one atom of gold or you have no gold at all. You can't have half an atom of gold. This quantization applies to everything including motion through space. There exists a distance that is the minimum distance that an object can travel for which you can not go half that distance. You either move the whole distance or you don't move at all.

Since then it turns out that we live in a quantized world. Everything around us is made of atoms and other particles where the particle becomes them minimum quanta. Even space is quantized. These is a distance that represents the smallest distance that something can travel, and one can not go half that distance. I don't understand it, but that's the way it is.

Our Expanding Universe

In 1929 astronomer Edwin Hubble (who the Hubble telescope is named after) discovered that distant galaxies were all moving away from each other, and that the farther away the galaxy was, the faster it was moving away. This suggested that the universe was expanding, as if space itself was stretching. But what does the idea of an expanding universe really mean? No one really knows that answer, because the universe could have several shapes, but I have a working concept that is useful for envisioning the expanding universe that I think I can explain here.

Space is three dimensional. We picture space as an infinite cube. If time is considered as a fourth dimension then space-time would be a four dimensional cube with the line connecting the future to the past perpendicular to height, width, and length. That would describe what I would call "flat" or "square" four dimensional space. But four dimensional space is not flat or square, but rather it is more likely round. Four dimensional space is hard to picture. I have a hard time picturing three dimensions.

We could picture a flat universe in terms of a flat sheet of paper extending to infinity. Suppose instead that we picture a round universe as the surface of a balloon. If we were microbes the universe would seem flat to us, but if we walked far enough in any direction, we would end up where we started. In four dimensional space there is a shape called a hypersphere, which is a four dimensional sphere. A hypersphere is to a sphere what a sphere is to a circle. A circle's surface is a line. A sphere's surface is a plane. A hypersphere has a three dimensional surface which is curved space. If we were on the surface of a hypersphere, and went in any direction, we would end up back where we started.

If our universe is a hypersphere, with time representing the radius of the sphere, and this instant in time representing the surface of the sphere, then we have a sphere that is getting bigger with the passing of time. Each sphere is slightly bigger than the sphere in the previous moment. In this picture, it is as if we are on the surface of a balloon as it's being blown up.

Suppose we have a balloon and we blow it up a little bit and we put two three dots on the surface along a straight line. As we blow up the balloon the dots move farther apart, yet the dots aren't moving. The farther the dots are away, the faster they are moving away from each other. In this manner we observe that the dots can stay in the same place, yet move away from each other at the same time. This is exactly what Hubble observed with the galaxies moving away from each other. It is as if the universe as we know it is the surface of a hypersphere that is expanding in time. Thus as time passes the universe gets bigger and galaxies move away from each other because space is a hypersphere that is growing in time.

We don't know if the universe actually is a sphere or not, but the rules of an expanding hypersphere in time do explain what Hubble observed and serves as a good mental model for what is happening in the universe of space-time. It also creates a visual representation that the Big Bang was not a three dimensional explosion that happened at a specific moment in time, but represents the starting point of time itself. That the universe expanded from a point in four dimensions, not three, and that time itself began at the big bang, and the size of the universe in three dimensional space can be calculated by figuring the surface of a hypersphere with a radius of the age of the universe.

Has the universe been expanding at a constant rate? Who knows? I suspect that the rate the universe is expanding is not linear. If I understand it right, no two objects in the universe can move away from each other at a speed greater than the speed of light. Thus if the universe were expanding at a constant rate, then it would hit a size where points on the opposite ends would move away from each other faster than light. If this is so then the rate the universe expands would have to decrease with time to prevent the growth of the universe from exceeding the speed of light on the surface. Galaxies, Hubble observed, are moving away from each other proportional to their distances from each other. If galaxies are on opposite ends of the sphere then they are the ones moving away the fastest. If we assume a limit of the speed of light then the rate the radius grows must slow down to prevent expansion beyond that limit.

But how fast was the universe expanding when it was small? If the universe were expanding slowly in time when it was small, and light followed the surface of the sphere, an individual, if someone existed back then, would be able to look around the circumference of the sphere and see oneself in the past. One would see the light from the past orbit the surface of the universe and come back around to be seen at the same point in space in the future. (Actually, if the universe is an expanding sphere then the light would be taking a spiral course through space-time.)

My gut level feeling (for whatever that's worth) tells me that seeing oneself by light orbiting the universe is probably prohibited. If it were allowed then photons from the past would be allowed to jump forward through time and affect the future by orbiting the universe. Thus the universe can't grow too slowly either. What is to slowly? Anything less that the speed of light is too slowly, acording to my guess. Acordingly, the circumference of the universe can not grow slower than the speed of light, nor faster than the speed of light. This makes me guess that the circumference of the universe is growing at the speed of light. (maybe it's half the circumference)

If this is so then time itself started out growing very fast and is now progressing at a much slower rate and gradually getting slower. This model, which again is my best guess at the moment, neither predicts an "open universe" where the universe approaches an infinite expasnsion rate, nor a "closed universe" where the universe stops expanding and collapses in on itself. This model does continue to expand forever, but at a progressively slower rate.

Dr. Kilkis has also come up with the same idea and he's the guy who does the math. He started with the assumption that objects on opposite ends of the universe would move apart at the speed of light. Therefore half the circumference of then universe is increasing at the speed of light. The "Hubble Constant" is a number that represents the rate that the stars are moving away from each other as the universe expands. If this theory were true, then it would predict that the Hubble constant is not a constant at all, but that the expansion rate of the universe is a function of the age of the universe.

Therefore knowing the present rate the universe is expanding, we should be able to directly calculate the age of the universe based on this rule that the farthest points in the universe are moving away from each other at the speed of light. So he ran the numbers and what did he come up with? He calculated the age of the universe to be 14.8 billion years, which is very close to the 15 billion number that is generally accepted as the best guess as to how old the universe is. Does that mean we're right? No. But it does mean that we might be right.

Quantum Time

Picture this. Suppose space were like still pictures on a movie projector. If we cut the film up into individual frames and then stacked the frames on top of each other we would have square space-time. We are ignoring for now that each of those pictures represents a complete three dimensional picture of the entire universe at an "instant" in time. As time progresses forward, each picture is slightly different from the one before it representing the changes from one moment to the next.

The progress of this film moving from one frame to the next frame is a way we can picture in our mind our motion in time from the past into the future. But in a film the image jumps in increments of 1/30th of a second and is not a smooth transition from one moment to the next. And a lot can happen in 1/30th of a second. At that rate we would be slicing time rather thickly. To be more accurate, the individual frames would have to be very "thin" or represent a single "moment" in time with a very large number of "moments" stacked on top each other to represent a second in time.

This raises the question; is time continuous? If we started dividing the moments in half would we ever reach a point where there is a period of time that is so small that there can exist no period of time in between? Does time move smoothly into the future or does it take little jumps from one moment to the next? The answer is, I don't know. But, since everything else in the universe is quantized, the one could reasonably guess that time would be quantized as well. Based on the idea the "everyone else does it" when it comes to quantum theory, I hereby officially guess that there exists quantum time, and for the rest of the article I will base some interesting arguments about the nature of the universe on the concept of quantum time.

This raises the question; is time continuous? If we started dividing the moments in half would we ever reach a point where there is a period of time that is so small that there can exist no period of time in between? Does time move smoothly into the future or does it take little jumps from one moment to the next? The answer is, I don't know. But, since everything else in the universe is quantized, the one could reasonably guess that time would be quantized as well. Based on the idea the "everyone else does it" when it comes to quantum theory, I hereby officially guess that there exists quantum time, and for the rest of the article I will base some interesting arguments about the nature of the universe on the concept of quantum time.

The idea of quantum time is an interesting concept because it gets rid of the idea that the present moment is flat with respect to time. Quantum time suggests that "now" has some thickness to it and we move forward in little jumps rather than smoothly. It suggests that the universe isn't an expanding bubble, but rather hyperspheres within hyperspheres with very thin layers, but layers nonetheless. The universe is not a balloon that is expanding, but an onion that is adding layers. And each quantum moment adds another layer to our mental model of the universe.

Here's an interesting thought. Suppose a particle is moving through space. We know that space is quantized and that the particle actually jumps from one location to the next rather than moving smoothly through space. It is in one place and then instantly in the next place. At the same time it is moving forward into the future in little jumps of time, so that the "next instant" is a finite instant jump forward into the future. If we plot the trajectory of the particle we might find that in a specific slice of time, that the particle crossed the threshold from one quantum position to the next. Since the thickness of the time slice encompasses both positions, then it is possible that the particle actually exists in both places at the same time. If a particle is in both places at the same quantum moment, it might explain "the uncertainty principle" which states that one can not accurately measure both the speed and the position of a particle to a greater precision than that of Planck's constant. We now combine position and velocity into a single term called the "Quantum State" of the particle. I suggest that perhaps the combined effects of quantum space and quantum time would also result in a small amount of uncertainty as to the position and velocity of a particle. If one knew the thickness of the universe in quantum time, that the amount of uncertainty would result in the amount as Planck's constant predicts.

If the rate of expansion of the universe is decreasing, based on the assumption that objects on opposite ends of the universe are limited to moving away from each other at the speed of light, and if the universe is expanding in time more slowly, then the layers of the universe are getting thinner and the constant for quantum time is getting smaller as the universe gets older, bigger, and cooler.

Relative Mass and Gravity

Here's the point where I indulge myself in my own conclusions. Here are some ideas that I haven't heard anyone mention before and neither has Dr. Kilkis. So we're excited about this. So, if you're someone who really understands this, I'd like to get some feedback on this idea.

Just as we like to think that all good clocks would agree, we also are comfortable with the idea that if an object has specific mass, that all moving observers will agree on how massive the object is. I suggest this is not the case. Here's why.

As an object approaches the speed of light, Einstein predicts that the objects mass will increase as energy is turned into matter so as to prevent an object from traveling faster than light. Now, suppose two objects are moving in parallel at this same high speed. According to Einstein, the mass of both objects will increase and therefore the gravitational attraction between the two objects must also increase. At very high speeds the pull would be so great as to cause them to crash into each other.

If this were the case then as an object increased in speed then one could measure the increase in gravitational attraction any calculate ones speed through absolute space. But wait! Red flag here. There is no such thing as absolute speed and absolute space. Einstein's relativity depends on the idea that position and speed are relative, therefore there can be no method for which one can measure absolute speed through absolute space. But if the gravity increases with speed, the gravitational increases can be measured.

The only way to prevent someone from being able to measure one's absolute speed in space is if the gravitational attraction between the objects stays constant. If gravity doesn't change, then speed can't be measured and that gravity remains constant for all freely moving objects. The laws of gravity appear the same in all frames of reference. Since gravity doesn't change with speed, one can not calculate speed by measuring gravity.

"But!", those of you who are sharp will point out, "How can gravity not increase if mass increases since gravity is proportional to mass, and mass increases as one approaches the speed of light." It appears that Einstein contradicts himself here because based on E=MC^2, the increase in mass of an object moving near the speed of light would create a measurable gravitational change that could be used to calculate speed through absolute space, which doesn't exist. It would appear Einstein created a paradox.

Since we have an Einstein problem, we need and Einstein solution. Have any of you noticed that this is similar to the problem that Michelson and Morley had when they were trying to calculate the absolute speed of the Earth through the universe. Einstein's solution was to abandoned the idea that time was absolute, and that different free moving observers would measure time differently. Similarly, this gravity paradox can also be solved if we were to abandon the idea that all free moving observers would measure the same mass. If we abandon the idea of absolute mass, we no longer have a problem.

We can preserve the laws of physics at high velocities if we are willing to abandon the idea of absolute mass and gravity.

Note also that Einstein also predicts that the moving object will move faster into the future through time and will therefore age slower. Because the aging process slows down, the moving object does not see any crossing of the time barrier. From his perspective, he can move near infinitely fast at near infinite speeds. Thus, from his frame of reference, his mass is the same, his gravity is the same, and his speed is nearly infinite. When he calculates his kinetic energy, he multiplies his unchanged mass times his near infinite speed. But a stationary observer would measure his speed as just under the speed of light, but with a much higher mass. The higher mass times the slower speed will come to the same amount of kinetic energy. Thus the energy levels can agree and the laws of science are preserved in both frames of reference based on the idea that matter and gravity are also relative.

I therefore predict that a particle accelerated to nearly light speed will appear to increase in mass as Einstein predicts and will have an increased gravitational force proportional to the increase on mass as measured by a stationary observer as it passes. But, that a second particle traveling in parallel will not see an increase in gravitational pull, but that the gravity between the objects will remain constant. If someone out there has a particle accelerator that's isn't doing anything, check this out and get back to me on it.

The Relationship between Mass and Time

We just calculated the mass of an object in terms of relativity. We observed that different free moving observers will not agree on the mass of an object. From the point of view of a fast moving object, the mass and gravity stays the same. But from the perspective of a stationary object, mass and gravity increase. Since the moving object is moving through time faster and seeing the same mass, but the stationary object is moving through time slower and seeing more mass, it suggests that there is a relationship between mass on one's velocity through time. And since all matter is a form of energy, then there is an energy equivalence to time. In fact, time may be a form of energy. And since all forms of matter and energy are quantized, this further supports the concept of quantum time. If quantum time is a guess, this makes it a better guess

Earlier I talked about quantum time in terms of the thickness of quantum moments. I also suggested based on the idea that the expansion of the universe is limited to the speed of light that as the universe ages, that the quantum time slice become thinner and we move into the future slower. Thus we establish that the thickness of the time quanta is proportional to the speed an object is moving forward through time. The faster an object moves through time, the thicker it's time quanta. At speeds approaching the speed of light an object's moment becomes a "fat moment".

The way I picture it is that a fast moving object appears to itself as normal mass but is 10 times thicker in time. A stationary observer sees 10 times the mass. It causes a person to wonder is mass is a three dimensional footprint of a four dimensional object that has some thickness in time. Perhaps matter itself exists as a thickness distortion in the space time continuum? Thickness in time appears to us as mass.

When Einstein talks about the mass of an object increasing as to approaches light speed, where is the extra mass coming from? Suppose we cut out a paper doll and weigh it. It's very thin, but has a certain size. Now suppose we cut out 10 paper dolls and place them on top of each other. If we look straight down on then it looks like it's the same size as the single paper doll, but it weighs 10 times as much. Perhaps we are like paper dolls with respect to time, and that our mass represents a quantum thickness in time. As we approach light speed that thickness in time increases just like laying paper dolls on top of each other. But in three dimensions, we look the same. In four dimensions we are 10 times as thick and we are moving into the future at ten times the speed.

The Relationship between Gravity and Time

Gravity is said (by those who understand this better than I do) to be caused by a distortion or a warping of space. Gravity is not a force that keeps objects in orbit, but that space itself is bent by objects with mass and that an object orbits because it is really following a straight line through bent space. The greater the mass, the more space is bent.

But if space is bent, it has to be bent in at least a fourth dimension, which is likely to be that space is bent in time. If mass is really a thickness in quantum time, then the faster an object moves, and the more apparent mass it has because of that motion, the stronger the gravitational field. Thus if gravity is bent space, as Einstein suggests, and space is bent in time, then as one becomes thicker in time the bending would increase proportional to the thickness. 10 times the thickness becomes 10 times the bending and 10 times the gravity.

However, if another object were moving at the same speed in parallel then it's is moving forward through time at the same rate and has the same thickness in quantum time. Since both objects have the same quantum thickness, then they neither see any increase in either mass or gravity, but because of time dilation, the have near infinite speed. So from their point of reference, they see only an increase in kinetic energy. The amount of warping of space in time is less because the effect of the warping of space is perceived in terms of warping relative to the thickness of one's quantum moment.

If the thickness of one's own quantum moment becomes the yardstick for which one perceives the bending of space in time, the effects of mass and gravity are inversely proportional to one's quantum thickness. If this is so, then observers moving at different speeds will measure mass and gravity differently based on their quantum time thickness. And, if both mass and gravity are relative to quantum time, that would preserve the laws of physics at all speeds so that no one could calculate their own speed through absolute space by measuring their own change in mass and gravity. Their rate of motion through time cancels out their increase in mass and gravity due to the increase in quantum time thickness. What this means is that there is a time component to both mass and gravity.

Suppose two space ships were traveling together at a speed so fast that their aging process slowed by a factor of two. They would be moving forward in time twice as fast as a nonmoving observer. Now suppose one of the space ships turned on a 100 watt light bulb. To the other ship it would appear to radiate 100 watts. But if the bulb is aging half as fast, then it is putting out energy at half that rate to a nonmoving observer and appears as if it were a 50 watt bulb, do to time dilation. Remember that power is the rate that energy is dissipated over time, so if you double time, you cut power in half. Power has a time component. Similarly, at those high speeds it would appear to a nonmoving observer that both mass and gravity increase by a factor of two. But to the moving observer both mass and gravity stay constant. Like the light bulb, it would appear that gravity has a time component in that if you change the time reference, then you change gravitational attraction.

The Relationship between Energy and Time

Before relativity we assumed that we could go near infinitely fast if we had an infinite amount of kinetic energy. In a sense that is still true because the aging process slows down for the moving observer and it appears to them that they are traveling at near infinite speed, but are really moving into the future faster. For the moving observer, they are moving through flat Newtonian space. The more thrust you have, the faster you go.

But when seen by a non-moving observer it looks like they are moving only at near the speed of light. Their mass has increased and the increase in mass has absorbed their kinetic energy to limit their speed to light speed. The can't go faster than light because their mass would become infinite, and their aging process would slow to the point of nearly stopping.

An accelerating object seems to be going faster through space at first, but as the speed increases the object accelerates through time rather than space. As the moving object ages less, it's speed through time grows to near infinite speed. Thus at high speeds instead of more energy resulting in more motion through space, it causes more motion in time. One is limited to the speed of light in three dimensional space, but can go infinitely fast moving through time.

It's interesting to compare the frames of reference. In one frame of reference we see a moving objects as having near infinite velocity in time. Form another frame of reference we see a moving object as having near infinite mass. Infinite mass in one frame of reference and infinite velocity in time from another frame of reference describing the same thing. This supports my argument that mass is really just the way that velocity in time appears in a three dimensional world and that there is an equivalence between mass and motion through time. And since matter has an energy equivalence, then time has an energy equivalence. And the smart people tell us that all forms of energy are quantized, therefore there must be quantum time.

I picture in my mind a rocket accelerating through space and getting faster and faster. As it moves through space it is also getting older and moving through time. As it moves through space it is really not moving smoothly, but in little quantum jumps. It is also moving through time in little quantum jumps. As it moves faster and faster the increase in speed through space becomes less and it begins moving faster through time. As more and more energy is added the increase in speed through space becomes very small and the increase in speed through time become near infinite. If one were moving through time quanta at the same rate, but the time quanta became thicker, then one would be moving faster in time. Or, maybe time quanta are a constant thickness but one's moment spans more time quanta, who knows. I'm really just guessing here. But it would appear that when one accelerates, motion through space gradually turns into motion through time. How this happens is a mystery, for me anyhow.

It seems to me however that if motion through space turns into motion through time, and that if motion through time appears as an increase in mass, then is mass the same thing as motion through time. If mass is a distortion or warping of space in time, and mass is motion through time, then motion through time causes a warping of time, and that warping of time is perceived as gravity. It all seems to fit.

Relative Understanding

When you read this, it sure looks like I know what I'm talking about and that I understand it all. As I said in the beginning, I still don't get it. I'm still waiting for the "ah ha" moment where it feels like it all makes sense. But I have yet to experience that.

Most people feel like they have to have an understanding of the basic fundamentals before they can advance. And understanding the fundamentals is always better than not, but that doesn't make it a barrier. Humans were building ships long before they understood the concepts of how floatation really works, but they didn't wait because they had places to go and needed ships to get there.

I have taken some of the same liberties here. Many of the fundamentals I accept on "trust" that Einstein and Hawking figured this out and that the "smart people" who really do understand that seem to accept it as fact. Even though I don't understand a lot of this myself doesn't stop me from building on their foundation and discovering new things that they never thought of.

I am the type of person who thinks "out of the box" which comes from a fundamental distrust of reality. It is a way of thinking that separates inventors from technicians. Because of this I can take concept A, which I don't understand, and combine it with concept B, which I also don't understand, and come up with conclusion C which I also don't understand but is not only correct, but a new idea that the people who do understand it never thought of. Therefore, it is very possible that if some of the concepts you're reading here for the first time are new, that it's because it really is new. However, as I have said before, I may be dead wrong. Considering the limited knowledge of humanity, and my limited knowledge as a subset of that, what I've written here is highly suspect and can not be trusted as any authority on the subject.

Having said that, this article is very useful in creating the frame of mind and they type of thinking it takes to understand relativity. Even if there is mistakes here, the idea is that I got the "wheels turning" in your brain and created a mental environment that when better information comes along, that the information can fit into your brain easier because your brain is now more relativity friendly. This article is written to give you something to think about and in the process, make you a smarter person. As the world gets smarter, I have more people to talk to. And I think the world is better off with smarter people.