"John Dobson. Einstein's Physics Of Illusion (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

geometry is in two dimensions and in three, but he didn't have any idea
about introducing the fourth dimension. His geometry - is a theoretical
geometry about a theoretical space which does not, in fact, exist. Newton
based his understanding of physics also on that understanding of geometry,
and Newton's physics is a theoretical physics about a theoretical universe
which does not, in fact, exist. We know now, you see, that Euclid was wrong
in his understanding of geometry, and that Newton was likewise wrong in his
understanding of physics. And we had to correct our physics in terms of
Einstein's re-understanding of geometry. It was when Einstein went through
our physics with his new understanding of geometry that he saw that what we
had been calling matter or mass or inertia is really just energy. It is just
potential energy. It had been suggested a few years earlier by Swami
Vivekananda that what we call matter could be reduced to potential energy.
In about 1895 he writes in a letter that he is to go the following week to
see Mr. Nikola Tesla who thinks he can demonstrate it mathematically.
Without Einstein's understanding of geometry, however, Tesla apparently
failed.
It was from the geometry that Einstein saw that what we call rest mass,
that which is responsible for the heaviness of things and for their
resistance to being shaken, is really just energy. Einstein's famous
equation is E = mc2. Probably most of you have seen that equation. It says
that for a particle at rest, its mass is equal to its energy. Those of you
who read Einstein know that there is no "c" in that equation. The c2 is just
in case your units of space and time don't match. If you've chosen to
measure space in an arbitrary unit and time in another arbitrary unit, and
if you have not taken the trouble to connect the two units, then, for your
system you have to put in the c2. If you're going to measure space in
centimeters, then time must not be measured in seconds. It must be measured
in jiffies. A jiffy is the length of time it Einstein's Physics Of Illusion


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takes light to go one centimeter. Astronomers are rather broad
minded people, and they have noticed that the universe is quite a bit too
big to be measured conveniently in centimeters, and quite a bit too old to
be measured conveniently in seconds; so they measure the time in years and
the distance in light-years, and the units correspond. That "c" in the
equation is the speed of light in your system of units, and if you've chosen
years and light-years then the speed of light in your system is one. And if
you square it, it's still one, and the equation doesn't change. The equation
simply says that energy and mass are the same thing. Our problem now is that
if we're going to trace this matter back, and find out what it is, we have
first of all to find out what kind of energy makes it massive. Now we have
only a few kinds of energy to choose from. Fortunately there are only a few:
gravitational energy, kinetic energy, radiation, electricity, magnetism and
nuclear energy. But I must allay your suspicion that nuclear energy might be
very important. It is not. The nuclear energy available in this universe is
very small. If all the matter in the universe began as hydrogen gas and
ended as iron, then the nuclear energy released in that change (and that is
the maximum nuclear energy available) is only one per cent of what you can