The theory of relativity and its influence on scientific thought — Key Ideas to Explore

_THEORY OF RELATIVITY_

_Influence on Scientific Thought_

ARTHUR STANLEY EDDINGTON

_Plumian Professor of Astronomy, Cambridge_ _President of the Royal Astronomical Society_

DELIVERED IN THE SHELDONIAN THEATRE 24 MAY, 1922

OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1922

Has not a deeper meditation taught certain of every climate and age, that the where and the when so mysteriously inseparable from all our thoughts, are but superficial terrestrial adhesions to thought?

CARLYLE, _Sartor Resartus_.

Oxford University Press

THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY

In the days before Copernicus the earth was, so it seemed, an immovable foundation on which the whole structure of the heavens was reared. Man, favourably situated at the hub of the universe, might well expect that to him the scheme of nature would unfold itself in its simplest aspect. But the behaviour of the heavenly bodies was not at all simple; and the planets literally looped the loop in fantastic curves called epicycles. The cosmogonist had to fill the skies with spheres revolving upon spheres to bear the planets in their appointed orbits; and wheels were added to wheels until the music of the spheres seemed well-nigh drowned in a discord of whirling machinery. Then came one of the great revolutions of scientific thought, which swept aside the Ptolemaic system of spheres and epicycles, and revealed the simple plan of the solar system which has endured to this day.

The revolution consisted in changing the view-point from which the phenomena were regarded. As presented to the earth the track of a planet is an elaborate epicycle; but Copernicus bade us transfer ourselves to the sun and look again. Instead of a path with loops and nodes, the orbit is now seen to be one of the most elementary curves--an ellipse. We have to realize that the little planet on which we stand is of no great account in the general scheme of nature; to unravel that scheme we must first disembarrass nature of the distortions arising from the local point of view from which we observe it. The sun, not the earth, is the real centre of the scheme of things--at least of those things in which astronomers at that time had interested themselves--and by transferring our view-point to the sun the simplicity of the planetary system becomes apparent. The need for a cumbrous machinery of spheres and wheels has disappeared.

Every one now admits that the Ptolemaic system, which regarded the earth as the centre of all things, belongs to the dark ages. But to our dismay we have discovered that the same _geocentric_ outlook still permeates modern physics through and through, unsuspected until recently. It has been left to Einstein to carry forward the revolution begun by Copernicus--to free our conception of nature from the terrestrial bias imported into it by the limitations of our earthbound experience. To achieve a more neutral point of view we have to imagine a visit to some other heavenly body. That is a theme which has attracted the popular novelist, and we often smile at his mistakes when sooner or later he forgets where he is supposed to be and endows his voyagers with some purely terrestrial appanage impossible on the star they are visiting. But scientific men, who have not the novelist's licence, have made the same blunder. When, following Copernicus, they station themselves on the sun, they do not realize that they must leave behind a certain purely terrestrial appanage, namely, _the frame of space and time_ in which men on this earth are accustomed to locate the events that happen. It is true that the observer on the sun will still locate his experiences in a frame of space and time, if he uses the same faculties of perception and the same methods of scientific measurement as on the earth; but the solar frame of space and time is not precisely the same as the terrestrial frame, as we shall presently see.

I think you will readily understand what is meant by a _frame_ of space and time. It is the system of location to which we appeal when we state, for example, that one event is 100 miles distant from and 10 hours later than another. The terms space and time have not only a vague descriptive reference to a boundless void and an ever-rolling stream, but denote an exact quantitative system of reckoning distances and time-intervals. Einstein's first great discovery was that there are many such systems of reckoning--many possible frames of space and time--exactly on all fours with one another. No one of these can be distinguished as more fundamental than the rest; no one frame rather than another can be identified as the scaffolding used in the construction of the world. And yet one of them does present itself to us as being the actual space and time of our experience; and we recoil from the other equivalent frames which seem to us artificial systems in which distance and duration are mixed up in an extraordinary way. What is the cause of this invidious selection? It is not determined by anything distinctive in the frame; it is determined by something distinctive in us--by the fact that our existence is bound to a particular planet and our motion is the motion of that planet. _Nature_ offers an infinite choice of frames; we select the one in which we and our petty terrestrial concerns take the most distinguished position. Our mischievous geocentric outlook has cropped out again unsuspected, persuading us to insist on this terrestrial space-time frame which in the general scheme of nature is in no way superior to other frames.

The more closely we examine the processes by which events are assigned to their positions in space and time, the more clearly do we see that our local circumstances play a considerable part in it. We have no more right to expect that the space-time frame on the sun will be identical with our frame on the earth than to expect that the force of gravity will be the same there as here. If there were no experimental evidence in support of Einstein's theory, it would nevertheless have made a notable advance by exposing a fallacy underlying the older mode of thought--the fallacy of attributing unquestioningly a more than local significance to our terrestrial reckoning of space and time. But there is abundant experimental evidence for detecting and determining the difference between the frames of differently circumstanced observers. Much of the evidence is too technical to be discussed here, and I can only refer to the Michelson-Morley experiment. I fear that some of you must be getting rather tired of the Michelson-Morley experiment; but those who go to a performance of Hamlet have to put up with the Prince of Denmark.

This famous experiment is a simple test whether light travels at the same speed in two different directions. For this purpose an apparatus is constructed with two equal arms at right angles, providing two equal tracks for the light. A beam of light is divided into two parts so that one part travels along one arm and back, and the other along the other arm and back. The two rays then re-unite, and by delicate interference tests it is possible to tell if one has been delayed more than the other; a delay of less than a thousand-billionth of a second could be detected. The experiment is simply a race between two light-rays with equal tracks, but pointing in different directions; the result turns out to be a dead-heat. At first sight this is just what would be expected; and one almost wonders why it should have been thought worth while to try the experiment. But Michelson, like a good Copernican, had stationed himself on the sun to watch the race; accordingly he realized that the apparatus was being borne along by the earth's orbital motion with a speed of 20 miles a second. Consequently the light does not travel exactly the double length of the arm; starting at one end it has to go to the turning-mark at the other end which has moved on a little in the meantime; then it returns to the place which the starting-mark has travelled to whilst the race is in progress. That does not add up to exactly the double-length of the arm. Making the calculations we easily find that, although the two arms are equal, the two light-journeys are unequal; the competitor whose track lies in the line of the earth's motion has the longer journey, and is at a disadvantage. And yet according to the experiment he does not suffer the expected delay. From our standpoint on the sun, the experiment seems to have gone wrong; Copernicus has met with a rebuff, and Ptolemy is triumphant.

But that is because we have not admitted the full consequences of transferring our standpoint to the sun. We have all the while been keeping one foot on earth. Of course, the whole experiment turns on the two arms having been first adjusted to perfect equality. This could only be ascertained by experiment; and the test applied was to rotate the apparatus through a right angle, so that if, for example, the journey in the line of the earth's motion had had the advantage of the shorter arm on one occasion, the transverse journey would have had it on the repetition. That is a perfectly satisfactory test for a terrestrial observer; to turn a rod from one direction to another is the simple and direct way of marking out equal lengths. But the test is not satisfactory to an observer on the sun; he would not think of attempting to partition equal lengths of space by means of rods travelling at 20 miles a second. His frame of space--the space not only of refined measurement, but also of the cruder measurements made with the sense-organs of his body which determine his perception of space--is partitioned by appliances at rest relatively to him, e.g. his own eyes and limbs. Lengths of objects carried on the earth must be judged by him according to the room they occupy in his own frame. In the space of the terrestrial observer the two arms of the apparatus were adjusted to equal length; but in the re-partitioned space of the solar observer they may quite well occupy unequal lengths, and when we take the view-point of an observer on the sun we must not overlook this inequality. This inequality is not so much an hypothesis proposed to account for Michelson's result as a direct deduction from it. The two light-journeys were found to occupy equal times; this clearly shows that the arm in the less favoured direction is shorter than the other so as to counterbalance the handicap to which I have referred.[1]

When the apparatus is turned through a right angle, the experiment still gives the same result. It does not matter which of the two arms we place in the line of the earth's motion; that arm must be shorter than the other. In other words each arm must automatically contract when it is turned from the transverse to the longitudinal position with respect to its line of motion. This is the famous FitzGerald contraction of a moving rod. It is of the same amount whatever the material of the rod, and depends only on the speed of its motion. For the earth's orbital motion the contraction amounts to one part in 200 million; in fact the earth's diameter in the direction of its motion is always shortened by 2½ inches, the transverse diameter being unaffected.

This contraction of a moving material object was first revealed to us by the Michelson-Morley experiment; but it is not at all disagreeable to theoretical anticipations. We have to remember that a rod consists of a large number of molecules kept in position by their mutual forces. The chief force is the force of cohesion, and there is little doubt that this is of electrical nature. But when the rod is set in motion, the electrical forces inside it must change. For example, each electric charge when put in motion becomes an _electric current_; and the currents will exert magnetic attractions on each other which did not occur in the system at rest. Under the new system of forces the molecules will have to find new positions of equilibrium; they become differently spaced; and it is therefore not surprising that the form of the rod changes. Without going beyond the classical laws of Maxwell we can anticipate theoretically what will be the new equilibrium state of the rod, and it turns out to be contracted to the exact amount required by the Michelson-Morley result.

The contraction of the moving rod ought not to surprise us; it would be much more surprising if the rod were to maintain the same form in spite of the alteration of the electrical forces which determine the spacing of the molecules. But the remarkable thing is that the contraction is only apparent according to the outlook of the solar observer; and we on the earth, who travel with the rod, cannot appreciate it. The fact that the contraction happens to be very small is irrelevant. For convenience suppose that the earth's velocity is 8,000 times faster, so that the contraction amounts to something like a half the original, length. We should still fail to notice it in everyday life. Let us say that the direction of the earth's motion is vertically upwards.

I turn my arm from horizontal to vertical and it contracts to half its length. No, you cannot convince me I am wrong; I am not afraid of a yard-measure. Bring one and measure my arm; first horizontally, the result is 30 inches; now vertically, the result is 30--half-inches! Because you must remember that you have turned the scale into the line of the earth's motion so that each inch-division contracts to half an inch. 'But we can see that your arm does not contract. Are we not to trust our eyes?' Certainly not, unless you first correct your visual impressions for the contraction of the retina in the vertical direction, and for the effect of our rapid motion on the apparent direction of propagation of the waves of light. You will find, when you calculate these corrections, that they just conceal the contraction. 'But if the contraction takes place, ought one not to feel it happening to the arm?' Not necessarily; I am an observer on the earth, and my feelings like other sense-impressions belong to the geocentric outlook on nature, which Copernicus has persuaded us to abandon.

Take a pair of compasses and twiddle them on a sheet of paper. Is the resulting curve a circle or an ellipse? Copernicus from his standpoint on the sun declares that owing to the FitzGerald contraction the two points drew nearer together when turned in the direction of the earth's orbital motion; hence the curve is flattened into an ellipse. But here I think Ptolemy has a right to be heard; he points out that from the beginning of geometry circles have always been drawn with compasses in this way, and that when the word 'circle' is mentioned every intelligent person understands that this is the curve meant. The same pencil line is in fact a circle in the space of the terrestrial observer and an ellipse in the space of a solar observer. It is at the same time a moving ellipse and a stationary circle. I think that illustrates as well as possible what we mean by _the relativity of space_.

It is sometimes complained that Einstein's conclusion that the frame of space and time is different for observers with different motions tends to make a mystery of a phenomenon which is not after all intrinsically strange. We have seen that it depends on a contraction of moving objects which turns out to be quite in accordance with Maxwell's classical theory. But even if we have succeeded in explaining it to ourselves intelligibly, that does not make the statement any the less true! A new result may often be expressed in various ways; one mode of statement may sound less mysterious; but another mode may show more clearly what will be the consequences in amending and extending our knowledge. It is for the latter reason that we emphasize the relativity of space--that lengths and distances differ according to the observer implied. Distance and duration are the most fundamental terms in physics; velocity, acceleration, force, energy, and so on, all depend on them; and we can scarcely make any statement in physics without direct or indirect reference to them. Surely then we can best indicate the revolutionary consequences of what we have learnt by the statement that distance and duration, and all the physical quantities derived from them, do not as hitherto supposed refer to anything absolute in the external world, but are relative quantities which alter when we pass from one observer to another with different motion. The consequence in physics of the discovery that a yard is not an absolute chunk of space, and that what is a yard for one observer may be eighteen inches for another observer, may be compared with the consequences in economics of the discovery that a pound sterling is not an absolute quantity of wealth, and in certain circumstances may 'really' be seven and sixpence. The theorist may complain that this last statement tends to make a mystery of phenomena of currency which have really an intelligible explanation; but it is a statement which commends itself to the man who has an eye to the practical applications of currency.

Ptolemy on the earth and Copernicus on the sun are both contemplating the same external universe. But their experiences are different, and it is in the process of experiencing events that they become fitted into the frame of space and time--the frame being different according to the local circumstances of the observer who is experiencing them. That, I take it, is Kant's doctrine, 'Space and time are forms of experience.' The frame then is not in the world; it is supplied by the observer and depends on him. And those relations of simplicity, which we seek when we try to obtain a comprehension of how the universe functions, must lie in the events themselves before they have been arbitrarily fitted into the frame. The most we can hope for from any frame is that it will not have distorted the simplicity which was originally present; whilst an ill-chosen frame may play havoc with the natural simplicity of things. We have seen that the simplicity of planetary motions was obscured in Ptolemy's frame, and became apparent in Copernicus's frame. But for ordinary terrestrial phenomena the position is reversed and Ptolemy's frame allows their natural simplicity to become apparent. In Copernicus's frame the most simple phenomena are brought about by highly complicated processes which mutually cancel one another. Ordinary objects contract and expand as they are moved about, and the changes are concealed by an elaborate conspiracy in which all the quantities of nature--electrical, optical, mechanical, gravitational--have joined. In Copernicus's frame we have a great complication of description which has no counterpart in anything occurring in the external world; because the terms of our description refer to the irrelevant process of fitting into the selected frame of space and time. This elaborate Copernican scheme rather reminds one of the schemes of the White Knight--

But I was thinking of a plan To dye one's whiskers green, And always use so large a fan That they could not be seen.

We do not deny the subtlety and the remarkable efficiency of the plan; but we may be allowed to question whether it is the simplest interpretation of the drab monotony of the face of nature presented to us. The simple fact is that a terrestrial or Ptolemaic frame fits naturally the terrestrial phenomena, and a solar or Copernican frame fits the phenomena of the solar system; but we cannot make one frame serve for both without introducing irrelevant, complications.

We go beyond Copernicus nowadays, and are not content with a visit to the sun. Why choose the sun rather than some other star in order to obtain an undistorted view of things? The astronomer now places himself so as to travel with the centre of gravity of the stellar universe, and is not even then quite satisfied. The physicist dreams of a land of Weissnichtwo, which shall be truly at rest in the ether. We realize the distortion imported into the world of nature by the parochial standpoint from which we observe it, and we try to place ourselves so as to eliminate this distortion--so as to observe that which actually is. But it is a vain pursuit. Wherever we pitch our camera, the photograph is necessarily a two-dimensional picture distorted according to the laws of perspective; it is never a true semblance of the building itself.