3 ms·
PBS Space Time (on YouTube) makes a reasonable attempt at teaching non-physicists how GR actually works. I'm probably smarter than the average human, and I can
by p1mrx 5y ago
PBS Space Time (on YouTube) makes a reasonable attempt at teaching non-physicists how GR actually works. I'm probably smarter than the average human, and I can't follow half of it.
Writing an accurate "popular" article about GR might be impossible, because the topic is so far beyond human experience that only a fraction of the population could ever hope to hold it in their heads.
You can teach people that the concept of "now" is observer-dependent, but as long as we're stuck on Earth, that information is pretty useless. Software engineers working on stuff like global databases and video game synchronization might benefit somewhat from that way of thinking, but they're about as uncommon as physicists.
- jacquesm 5y agoTo quote Monty Python: "you're only making it worse!". This GR thingy holds for every observation, even those here on Earth, but there the time-delay is small enough that we can ignore it. But if you think of it as the first stretch on a very long gradient all the way out to the stars where that difference becomes more manifest then what these researchers have just done is shown you is to prove that the gradient exists on every level of scale, likely all the way down to the interaction of two atoms in a gravity field, but for now we have it down to a mm or so. This is a super impressive result and it makes this concept a lot more accessible than the 'Earth time is special' vs 'interstellar distances are in the past'. They're all in the past from the point of an observer, even if that observer is a few mm away from the event.
- xavieralexandre 5y agoThis reminds me of one of my favorite physics lessons in undergrad: classical mechanics are a limiting case of general relativity where v << c so that all terms with v/c can be neglected.