Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation: A selection of material from the essays submitted in the competition for the Eugene Higgins prize of $5,000Bird, J. Malcolm (James Malcolm)
Philosophy
Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation: A selection of material from the essays submitted in the competition for the Eugene Higgins prize of $5,000
Bird, J. Malcolm (James Malcolm)
Relativity (Physics)
Since light is subject to gravitation it follows that the constancy
of the velocity of light assumed in the earlier part of this
paper does not obtain in a gravitational field. There is really no
inconsistency. The velocity of light is constant in the absence of
gravitation, a condition which unaccelerated motion implies. The
special principle of relativity is therefore a limiting case of the
general principle.
VIII
THE NEW CONCEPTS OF TIME AND SPACE
The Essay in Behalf of Which the Greatest Number of Dissenting Opinions
Have Been Recorded
BY MONTGOMERY FRANCIS NEW YORK
We have all had experiences, on trains and boats, illustrating our
inability to tell, without looking off to some external body, whether
we are at rest or moving uniformly; and when we do so look, to tell,
without reference to the ground or some other point external to both
systems, whether ours or the other be the seat of motion. Uniform
motion must be relative, because we find nowhere in the universe a
body in the unique state of absolute rest from which alone absolute
motion might be measured.
True, the wave theory of light with its homogeneous space-filling
ether seemed to provide a reference standard for the concept of
absolute motion, and for its measurement by experiment with light
rays. But when Michelson and Morley looked for this absolute motion
they found no trace of it. To the physicist, observational student
of the external world, nothing exists save observationally; what he
can never observe is not there. So: I. By no means whatever may we
regard uniform straight-line motion as other than relative.
As a further direct consequence of the Michelson-Morley experiment
we have: II. Light in a vacuum presents the same velocity, $C =
186,330$ miles per second, to all observers whatever their velocity
of relative motion. In addition to being experimentally established,
this is necessary to support I, for if light will distinguish between
our velocities, its medium is necessarily a universal standard for
absolute motion. But it is contrary to common sense to suppose that
if I pass you at 100 miles per hour, the same light impulse can pass
us both at the same speed, $C$. We feel, instinctively, that space and
time are not so constituted as to make this possible. But the fact has
been repeatedly demonstrated. And when common sense and fundamental
concepts clash with facts, it is not the facts that must yield. We
have survived such crises, notably one where we had to change the
fundamental concept of up-and-down; if another one is here, says
Einstein, let us meet it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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