The Einstein Effect: How Einstein Got Relativity Wrong but Discovered Something Else Entirely (Part Two)

If you read my last blog, you will see a very simplified version of the Theory of Relativity. If you also read my other previous blogs, you will note how I questioned the existence of time as the way scientists treat it today and the creation of artificial gravity, two things the Theory of Relativity deals with. Time is a necessary component of relativity and the creation of artificial gravity is the result of a calculation made using the Theory of Relativity. However, as I am about to redefine the Theory of Relativity, you will see why I question the existence of “time” as we define it today and why calculations using the Theory of Relativity can be called into question.

First of all, I believe that the top speed of light could be infinity and not what it is currently, 299, 792, 458 metres per second. The reason I believe this is because of the inherent problems with keeping the speed of light to a top speed. For this to work, the universe would have to know how fast the observer of that particular ray of light was moving and then precisely slow down time in the path of the light in order to keep the light from going above the nearly 300, 000, 000 metres per second threshold. If you have multiple observers, from multiple angles moving at different speeds, how does the universe manage to slow down time just enough in the pathway of the light for all the observers not to see the speed go above the magical limit? How does the universe calculate this? Why does it calculate this and is there a god of light that is everywhere in the universe making sure no one observes light going faster than 299, 792, 458 metres per second? I don’t think so but this brings me to another question.

What about the Theory of Relativity itself and its calculations stating that the mass of an object moving at the speed of light will become infinitely massive? If that is true, then photons (the name scientists give to particles of light) should be infinitely massive! Scientists have gotten around this inconvenient fact by saying that photons have no mass. Well, how can you exist without mass? If the answer is that photons are made of energy and not mass, then what about E=mc²? If energy equals mass, then why doesn't that translate into photons becoming infinitely energetic?

Another question that comes up deals with the core of relativity itself. If everything is relative than I can say that from the point of view of the observer holding a flashlight, the photons coming out from the flashlight are moving at nearly the speed of 300, 000, 000 metres per second and the observer is not moving. But, since everything is relative, I can also say that the photons are sitting still and that the flashlight and the observer are moving away from the photons at nearly 300, 000, 000 metres per second and this statement is also true! If this statement can be said to be true, then why isn't the observer and his flashlight not becoming infinitely massive? Why doesn't this work?
Well, I’ll tell you why.

The Theory of Relativity is flawed.

You see, when Einstein first came up with his theory, he used a lot of thought experiments to help him think through how things move at the speed of light because he had no way to experiment at those speeds. One of these “experiments” he used was having an observer stand beside the tracks of a train that moved at a very high rate of speed. That observer had a specially made mirror in front of him that was folded in the middle at an angle so that the observer could look into the mirror and see one half of the train on one side of the mirror and the other half of the train on the other side of the mirror without needing to move his head as the train passed by. Another observer is on the train in an open train car at the middle of the train and also has a special mirror like the observer on the ground.

As the train zips by the observer on the ground at a high speed, two lightning bolts strike at the exact moment the two observers pass each other and the lightning strikes both the front of the train and the end of the train at the exact same time. At the exact moment of the lightning strikes, the two observers are lined up exactly in front of each other and the train is exactly at the halfway point to the observer on the ground. The observer on the train sees the lightning bolts from the front of the train and the end of the train at the same time in his mirror. However, the observer on the ground sees something different because he is watching a moving train. He sees the lightning strike the end of the train first and then hit the front of the train second because the front of the train in moving away from the observer on the ground and the end of the train is moving towards the observer.

Now this thought experiement is used by Einstein to prove that events that seem to happen simultaneously for one person might not be seen as simultaneous events for all observers of the same event. With the speed of light not able to speed up, time has to be malleable in order for the mathematical equation to work properly. This thought experiment also “proves” that an object’s size can be distorted by the speed of an object. The end of the train car will appear to be shorter to the observer on the ground as it moves toward the observer on the ground and the front of the train will appear to be longer as it moves away. This illusion of shortening and lengthening of an object will increase as the speed of the train increases. However to me, when I think of this experiment I think this actually proves that the speed of light can speed up and that the distortion of an object’s size is actually a distortion of light or an “effect”.

You see, in Einstein’s experiment above he doesn't change the speed of light when making calculations as he believes the speed of light to be constant and cannot increase, therefore it is time that slows down to accommodate the distortion the observer on the side of the tracks witnesses. If you allow for the speed of light to increase, leave time alone, it accounts for this distortion and becomes an optical illusion. The apparent shrinking of the train is only a trick of the light, so I have dubbed this the “Einstein Effect”.

If you don’t understand what I am saying, you can do another thought experiment.

Think of a large clock on Earth facing the sky. You are in a spaceship with its own clock and you have your special telescope trained on the large clock outside the spaceship as you are shot into space. As your spaceship goes faster and faster, you will notice how the clock on Earth slows down. When you get to the speed of light (remember, this is a thought experiment) the clock on Earth that you are looking at through the telescope has stopped but your clock in the spaceship is still going at its normal pace! Are you now a master of time? Have you slipped out of the “timestream”?

If you continue to go faster than the speed of light, you should notice the clock on Earth start to go backwards and time will seem to go in reverse!  How is that possible? Well, if we use the Theory of Relativity, the people in the spaceship are actually meddling with the flow of time and have traveled into the past. If you are interested, look up the so-called "Twin Paradox" for a good example of what happens if you left your twin on Earth while you travelled in a spaceship moving at nearly the speed of light when Relativity is involved.

If you use the Einstein Effect, what you are seeing is an optical illusion. You are catching up to and seeing light that has already been sent on its way into space. If you decided to then turn around the spaceship and go back towards Earth, you will notice the large clock on Earth moving at a normal speed at first. Then, as you increased speed, you would see the clock move forward faster and faster as the speed of the spaceship increased. Eventually, when you got back to Earth, the clock on Earth and the clock you have in your spaceship should be similar (please read my blog on time as to why I say the clocks “should be similar” instead of "exactly the same").

I do agree with Einstein’s view in the Theory of Relativity that speed is “relative” (that is it is based from your own perspective and not from an "absolute rest" that is the same in the entire universe) but I don’t agree that the top speed of light is only 299, 792, 458 metres per second. I believe that it can go much faster but we are unable to observe it. Just like infrared light was invisible to humanity for most of our existence, I believe that humanity will eventually be able to observe light going faster than its “speed limit” of 299, 792, 458 metres per second. I think that that top speed is only the speed that we are able to “see” light and one day I will be proven right.

Now you may say that there have been many experiments that show that light can’t go any faster than its current limit. For example, the CERN particle accelerator in Europe cannot move particles at the speed of light, no matter how much energy they put into the system. Well, since that system uses electromagnets to move the particles and electricity can only go as fast as light, you will never get them to go faster than light since the system will not be able to go that fast. Also, if they did get particles to fast enough, we don’t seem to have anything to detect it, as our current detectors are limited by our current knowledge.

Another example that you might try and use to show the top speed of light cannot go any faster is the studied super Novae (exploding stars) that scientists have observed. One in particular was observed recently before it exploded and the scientist gleefully proclaimed that he wasn't able to detect the explosion sooner than he saw it, so light cannot go faster than Einstein stated or else he should have been able to detect it before seeing it. Well, the problem with that is that the star was several dozen light years away. If light moved faster than its current limit, the light from that explosion would have reached Earth years ago, well before the scientist started studying that star in particular, plus, how would he have been able to detect it?

In conclusion, the Theory of Relativity has its flaws and the chief one being that the speed of light cannot be limited to roughly 300, 000, 000 metres a second or you end up throwing logic out the door so that you can come up with a theory that doesn't work at slower speeds. The only way you can account for both the equations to be correct and for the rest of science to be correct is to accept that these calculations explain an optical effect and not reality. Therefore we need to split the Theory of Relativity into two sections; relativity and the Einstein Effect.

People, Start Using Your Brains

I usually reserve this blog for my personal theories on scientific problems but today I wanted to address something that I find troubling in science and in society in general: government funding.

First I want to say that I am a Canadian civil servant and that these are my personal opinions and not that of the government.

Being a civil servant I understand that all levels of government have a finite amount of money to spread around to their various departments and agencies. They are also limited in what they can give to various institutions be they public or private. The government can only bring in so much money and it can only spend so much money. So there are times when the government can give more and there are times when the government has to cut back on what they can give out. It is simple math.

Today, in 2013, we live in a time where government revenues are shrinking. This means that the government cannot give as much as it did before. However, it seems that everyone who is hit by the cut in government spending takes it as a government attack on their institution, department or agency. You can read it in the news quite regularly, “Government Cuts Threaten Research…” or “Government Cuts Threaten Arts…” or “Government Cuts Threaten Education…” People hit by these budget crunches don’t see the big picture but instead choose to believe that the government is against what they do, so that is the reason behind the cuts. It is a sad fact of life, but the government cannot keep funding at the same levels when its revenue goes down!

The facts of life living in a recession don’t seem to penetrate into the thoughts of many but I thought at least someone with a bit more education, a more logical thinker like a scientist might be able to put these facts together and not complain. I apparently was wrong. Here is a blog where the scientist complains about an “astonishing” budget cut of 7.2%, calling it, “…one of the largest assaults on academia in Canadian history…” Apparently the writer seems to think that the government is making these cuts out of spite from knuckle draggers that are jealous of the smart scientists or perhaps a lack of knowledge about all the important work their university is doing. Not true. What hasn’t occurred to this scientist is that the government doesn’t have a magic bucket of unlimited money to throw around and they were just one of the many departments throughout Canada that has seen their budgets decrease. The budget in my department has decreased by 2% to 7% every year now for at least 3 years so I am shocked that it took this long for his/her department to see cuts only this recently.

I don’t have a PhD in math but even I could figure out that the government can only give out a finite amount of money. It would be nice if people got their head out of the sand and realized that government funding is not infinite and the government is not targeting you as punishment. These budget cuts are also not "attacks" on science or free speech or thought or whatever other crazy idea you might have, it is simply a decrease in funding. The last time I looked, you could still speak your mind, research what you wanted, write what you wanted and do what you wanted in public (legally of course) without the fear of retribution.

So please, people, start using your brains!