In 1915 Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity—a new insight and idea that changed our understanding of the universe in which we live. It was followed by other great breakthroughs in scientific thought, dazzlingly difficult to comprehend.
Science-Faction books and films have popularized many of these ideas, sometimes veering into fantasy or a kind of mysticism.
I’ve always had a fondness for the notion of “the force,” in the 1977 Star Wars film. In it wise old Obi-Wan Kenobi tells young Luke Skywalker that “It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”
The study of forces and energy is part of traditional physics, including, for example, gravitational, magnetic, electric, and intra-nuclear. The quest, the “impossible dream,” is to find the one theory that will embrace them all.
It’s hard to find simple words to explain the sophisticated theories of modern physics, but perhaps one of them helps: “attraction”—the idea that everything attracts everything else, one way or another.
Magnetism obviously involves attraction. The notion is so common that we even use the word “magnetic” to describe mutual relationships between persons.
Gravity can also be described as attraction. What “falls” to the ground is attracted by the earth. Less obviously, the earth is attracted to the thing that falls—but this attraction is negligible compared to the other.
Clearly the degree to which one thing is attracted to (responds to or moves towards) another has to do with their relative size, strength, and other qualities. In physics, the word “mass” is usually used.
In modern astronomy or astrophysics, a hard to imagine yet real fact is that even light can be “attracted” by an object with enough mass. So to speak, instead of traveling in a straight line light can be “bent” or deflected from its course.
This was a cause of misunderstanding in traditional astronomy. We presume that when light hits our eyes it has traveled in a straight line, and so we think we know exactly from which direction it has come. But, if its path is curved—think of a golf drive or arrow in flight—it’s much harder to know the direction of its source.
If everything “attracts” everything else, then everything is subject to a great variety of “attractions” or forces pulling it one way or another.
Even more bewildering, if everything “attracts” everything else, then everything is subject to an infinite (i.e. without limit) number of “attractions” or forces at any given moment.
And, to make things even more bewildering, the total amount of “everything” is constantly changing. Things are constantly appearing and disappearing, constantly “being born” and “dying.”
Fortunately,the “attraction” of many things is negligible even though they are real. But even this is relative. For example, the “death” of a star millions of light years away hardly affects us at all—but suppose it was our star, the Sun?
There’s a huge difference between viewing a snapshot and a video. Living things are constantly changing and developing. Modern scientific thinking realizes that everything is “in motion.”
Nothing is fixed. Everything is dynamically situated in a web of forces pulling it this way and that. In fact, everything and everybody can be described in terms of the forces, the “attractions,” affecting it. (And, don’t forget, among the most powerful forces is love.)
It’s a very attractive universe!
29 November 2015