special relativity

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Albert Einstein

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is internally inconsistent because, in order to do away with the privileged system of a universal time the theory of relativity first calls precisely for such universal time and gives it a greater intelligibility.

For Bergson, relativist' claims that time dilates under special relativity are a kind of scientifically sanctioned solipsism: the relativist 'is free to rule whatever he pleases... his system will be motionless, by very definition, if he makes it his 'system of reference' and there installs his observatory'33... 'he has the absolute right (ill assured in the old physics) to adhere to his personal point of view and to refer everything to his own system of reference.'34 Bergson argues that time as we know it is a product of human perceptions but that these perceptions represent a universal time frame of the sort rejected by relativity. Bergson sees the relativist belief in variable times as internally inconsistent, since 'the doing away with the privileged system is the very core of the theory of relativity. Hence, this theory, far from ruling out the hypothesis of a single time, calls for it and gives it a greater intelligibility.'35

is based on the paradoxical insight that judged from the standpoint of an observer chasing a beam of light, everything would have to happen according to the same laws as for an observer who, relative to the earth, was at rest.

. . . a paradox upon which I had already hit at the age of sixteen: If I pursue a beam of light with the velocity c (velocity of light in a vacuum), I should observe such a beam of light as an electromagnetic field at rest though spatially oscillating. There seems to be no such thing, however, neither on the basis of experience nor according to Maxwell's equations. From the very beginning it appeared to me intuitively clear that, judged from the standpoint of such an observer, everything would have to happen according to the same laws as for an observer who, relative to the earth, was at rest. For how should the first observer know or be able to determine, that he is in a state of fast uniform motion' One sees in this paradox the germ of the special relativity theory is already contained.'

is a theory that accounts for the fact that when you're going faster, length is foreshorten and time is dilated

is concerned with the idea that the speed of light is constant, so even if you're going at 99% the speed of light in the opposite direction and you shine a flashlight, the light comes out at the speed of light.

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special relativity