Gerald James Whitrow Quotes

Minkowski made a remarkable discovery concerning the Lorentz formulae. He showed that, although each observer has his own private space and private time, a public concept which is the same for all observers can be formed by combining space and time as a kind of 'distance' by multiplying it by the velocity of light, c; in other words, with any time interval we can associate a definite spatial interval, namely the distance which light can travel in empty space in that period. If, according to a particular observer, the difference in time between any two events is T, this associated spatial interval is cT. Then, if R is the space-distance between these two events, Minkowski showed that the difference of the squares of cT and R has the same value for all observers in uniform relative motion. The square root of this quantity is called the space-time interval between two events. Hence, although time and three-dimensional space depend on the observer, this new concept of space-time is the same for all observers.

Language itself inevitably introduced an element of permanence into the world. For, although speech itself is transitory, the conventionalized sound symbols of language transcended time.

The development of rational thought actually seems to have impeded man's appreciation for the significance of time. ...Belief that the ultimate reality is timeless is deeply rooted in human thinking, and the origin of rational investigation of the world was the search for permanent factors that lie behind the ever-changing pattern of events.

Although the Special Theory of Relativity does not account for electromagnetic phenomena, it explains many of their properties. General Relativity, however, tells us nothing about electromagnetism. In Einstein's space-time continuum gravitational forces are absorbed in the geometry, but the electromagnetic forces are quite unaffected. Various attempts have been made to generate the geometry of space-time so as to produce a unified field theory incorporating both gravitational and electromagnetic forces.

Although the classic theoretical foundation of distance measurement in physics is the 'rigid rod', nearly all distances in surveying, whether terrestrial or celestial, are made to depend on the properties of light. The two simplest properties so employed are the principle of propogation in straight lines and the principle that the intensity of light diminishes inversely as the square of the distance.

[Time is not] a mysterious illusion of the intellect. ..It is an essential feature of the universe.

Whether the stars were all at the same distance, or whether they were scattered throughout infinite space, or whether they formed a finite system of vast but limited depth, were questions that could not be answered until towards the end of the eighteenth century. Until then, stellar astronomy was a field left to the unaided imagination.

Not until the pioneer work of Rutherford and his colleagues was the possibility of nuclear reactions and transformations as sources of stellar energy envisaged.

The models of Einstein and de Sitter are static solutions of Einstein's modified gravitational equations for a world-wide homogeneous system. They both involve a positive cosmological constant λ, determining the curvature of space. If this constant is zero, we obtain a third model in classical infinite Euclidean space. This model is empty, the space-time being that of Special Relativity.
It has been shown that these are the only possible static world models based on Einstein's theory. In 1922, Friedmann... broke new ground by investigating non-static solutions to Einstein's field equations, in which the radius of curvature of space varies with time. This Possibility had already been envisaged, in a general sense, by Clifford in the eighties.

Space-time is curved in the neighborhood of material masses, but it is not clear whether the presence of matter causes the curvature of space-time or whether this curvature is itself responsible for the existence of matter.

The famous palaeolithic paintings found in caves such as that at Lascaux in the Dordogne have been interpreted as evidence that, at least implicitly people were operating 20,000 or more years ago with teleological intent in terms of past, present, and future. It may well be that those responsible for the so-called 'Dancing Sorcerer' ...may have felt that the actual performance of the dance was insufficient, since they were concerned with the magical efficacy of the dance after it ended.

In developing his theory of gravitation, Newton assigned to every material body another property which is called its gravitational mass. Gravitational mass determines the force exerted by the body on other bodies, and so its function appears to be quite distinct from that of inertial mass. Nevertheless, the two are found to be identical in magnitude. Newton made experiments to verify this remarkable equality by swinging a pendulum with a bob which could be made with different materials. The period of the swing depended on the ratio of the inertial and gravitational masses of the pendulum, but in all cases it was found to be the same... In 1890 Eötvös made a much more refined test with the aid of a... torsion balance. Repeated experiments showed that inertial mass and gravitational mass were equal to within one part in 100 million. Einstein suggested that this was because inertia and gravitation are identical.

Man must have been conscious of memories and purposes long before he made any explicit distinction between past, present, and future.

The solution... was found only after the rise of nuclear physics, and, strange to relate, was not known to Eddington when he developed his celebrated theory of stellar structure between 1916 and 1924. Indeed, it is one of the most intriguing facts in the history of science that the two most influential theories concerning the stars—Newton's theory of gravitation and Eddington's theory of stellar construction—were each developed so successfully although Newton was ignorant of the origin of gravitation and Eddington of the origin of stellar energy.

To obtain a greater degree of permanence the time symbols of oral speech had to be converted into the space symbols of written speech. ...The crucial stage in the evolution of writing occurred when ideographs became phonograms...