![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Why relativity?
Jan. 21st, 2006 10:35 amTayefeth and Jason asked for an explanation of relativity. Here's a first attempt.
At some level, like every observation of the physical world, eventually you reach the point where we have to say "as far as we know, that is because it just is. We're still working on deeper 'why' questions, but that one we don't know yet." So eventually you still have to answer "because it happens that the universe is made that way." Why does Newtonian physics (more or less) work? Because the universe is made that way. We don't normally ask because Newtonian physics is readily demonstrable and we have an intuitive sense of it.
But we can learn a bit of the "why" of relativity. It derives from two fundamental observations.( Read more... )
At some level, like every observation of the physical world, eventually you reach the point where we have to say "as far as we know, that is because it just is. We're still working on deeper 'why' questions, but that one we don't know yet." So eventually you still have to answer "because it happens that the universe is made that way." Why does Newtonian physics (more or less) work? Because the universe is made that way. We don't normally ask because Newtonian physics is readily demonstrable and we have an intuitive sense of it.
But we can learn a bit of the "why" of relativity. It derives from two fundamental observations.( Read more... )
