What a time to be alive: What the 2020s will mean for our understanding of space and time GlobeDebate
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Everyday experience affirms that if you and I measure the lengths of objects or the durations of events, our results will agree. But in June, 1905, Albert Einstein realized that everyday experience is deeply misleading. During the course of five intense weeks that he described as having a storm break out in his mind, Einstein established that if you and I are moving relative to one another, our watches will tick off time at different rates and our tape measures will have different lengths.
Even so, Einstein’s relativity is silent on what space and time actually are. When we speak of the spacetime fabric, is that metaphor? Or are space and time material things? And if so, can we identify the threads stitching the spacetime fabric? Current research suggests that the answers may not be far off, and moreover may come from an entirely distinct set of insights that, remarkably, also reach back to Einstein.
Einstein considered this implication of quantum theory to be ludicrous, famously deriding it with the characterization “spooky.” He envisioned that his colleagues would have to agree that quantum mechanics was, at best, a provisional description of the world.Einstein misjudged his colleagues. They did nothing of the sort. They doubled down on quantum mechanics, a position history has since justified. Decades after Einstein died, experiments established that spooky connections are real.
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