The Elegant Universe (9 page)

The force of gravity pervades everyday life. It keeps us and all of the objects around us fixed to the earth’s surface; it keeps the air we breathe from escaping to outer space; it keeps the moon in orbit around the earth and it keeps the earth bound in orbit around the sun. Gravity dictates the rhythm of the cosmic dance that is tirelessly and meticulously executed by billions upon billions of cosmic inhabitants, from asteroids to planets to stars to galaxies. More than three centuries of Newton’s influence causes us to take for granted that a single force—gravity—is responsible for this wealth of terrestrial and extraterrestrial happenings. But before Newton there was no understanding that an apple falling to earth from a tree bore witness to the same physical principle that keeps the planets revolving around the sun. With an audacious step in the service of scientific hegemony, Newton united the physics governing both heaven and earth and declared the force of gravity to be the invisible hand at work in each realm.

Newton’s view of gravity might be called the great equalizer. He declared that absolutely everything exerts an attractive gravitational force on absolutely everything else. Regardless of physical composition, everything exerts as well as feels the force of gravity. Based on a close study of Johannes Kepler’s analysis of planetary motion, Newton deduced that the strength of the gravitational attraction between two bodies depends on precisely two things: the amount of stuff composing each of the bodies and the distance between them. “Stuff” means matter—this comprises the total number of protons, neutrons, and electrons, which in turn determines the mass of the object. Newton’s universal theory of gravity asserts that the strength of attraction between two objects is larger for larger-mass objects and smaller for smaller-mass objects; it also asserts that the strength of attraction is larger for smaller separations between the objects and smaller for larger separations.

Newton went much further than this qualitative description and wrote down equations that quantitatively describe the strength of the gravitational force between two objects. In words, these equations state that the gravitational force between two bodies is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This “law of gravity” can be used to predict the motion of planets and comets around the sun, the moon about the earth, and rockets heading off for planetary explorations, as well as more earthbound applications such as baseballs flying through the air and divers spiraling poolward from springboards. The agreement between the predictions and the actual observed motion of such objects is spectacular. This success gave Newton’s theory unequivocal support until the early part of the twentieth century. Einstein’s discovery of special relativity, however, raised what proved to be an insurmountable obstacle for Newton’s theory.

The Incompatibility of Newtonian Gravity and Special Relativity

A central feature of special relativity is the absolute speed barrier set by light. It is important to realize that this limit applies not only to material objects but also to signals and influences of any kind. There is simply no way to communicate information or a disturbance from one place to another at faster than light speed. Of course, the world is full of ways for transmitting disturbances at slower than the speed of light. Your speech and all other sounds, for example, are carried by vibrations that travel at about 700 miles per hour through air, a feeble rate compared with light’s 670 million miles per hour. This speed difference becomes obvious when you watch a baseball game, for instance, from seats that are far from home plate. When a batter hits the ball, the sound reaches you moments after you see the ball being hit. A similar thing happens in a thunderstorm. Although lightning and thunder are produced simultaneously, you see the lightning before hearing the thunder. Again, this reflects the substantial speed difference between light and sound. The success of special relativity informs us that the reverse situation, in which some signal reaches us before the light it emits, is just not possible. Nothing outruns photons.

Here’s the rub. In Newton’s theory of gravity, one body exerts a gravitational pull on another with a strength determined solely by the mass of the objects involved and the magnitude of their separation. The strength has nothing to do with how long the objects have been in each other’s presence. This means that if their mass or their separation should change, the objects will, according to Newton, immediately feel a change in their mutual gravitational attraction. For instance, Newton’s theory of gravity claims that if the sun were suddenly to explode, the earth-some 93 million miles away—would instantaneously suffer a departure from its usual elliptical orbit. Even though it would take light from the explosion eight minutes to travel from the sun to the earth, in Newton’s theory knowledge that the sun had exploded would be instantaneously transmitted to the earth through the sudden change in the gravitational force governing its motion.

This conclusion is in direct conflict with special relativity, since the latter ensures that no information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light—instantaneous transmission violates this precept maximally.

In the early part of the twentieth century, therefore, Einstein realized that the tremendously successful Newtonian theory of gravity was in conflict with his special theory of relativity. Confident in the veracity of special relativity and notwithstanding the mountain of experimental support for Newton’s theory, Einstein sought a new theory of gravity compatible with special relativity. This ultimately led him to the discovery of general relativity, in which the character of space and time again went through a remarkable transformation.

Einstein’s Happiest Thought

Even before the discovery of special relativity, Newton’s theory of gravity was lacking in one important respect. Although it can be used to make highly accurate predictions about how objects will move under the influence of gravity, it offers no insight into what gravity is. That is, how is it that two bodies that are physically separate from another, possibly hundreds of millions of miles apart if not more, nonetheless influence each other’s motion? By what means does gravity execute its mission? This is a problem of which Newton himself was well aware. In his own words,

It is inconceivable, that inanimate brute matter, should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact. That Gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter so that one body may act upon another at a distance thro’ a vacuum without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed, from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no Man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the consideration of my readers.1

That is, Newton accepted the existence of gravity and went on to develop equations that accurately describe its effects, but he never offered any insight into how it actually works. He gave the world an “owner’s manual” for gravity which delineated how to “use” it—instructions that physicists, astronomers, and engineers have exploited successfully to plot the course of rockets to the moon, Mars, and other planets in the solar system; to predict solar and lunar eclipses; to predict the motion of comets, and so on. But he left the inner workings—the contents of the “black box” of gravity—a complete mystery. When you use your CD player or your personal computer, you may find yourself in a similar state of ignorance regarding how it works internally. So long as you know how to operate the equipment neither you nor anyone else needs to know how it accomplishes the tasks you set for it. But if your CD player or personal computer breaks, its repair relies crucially on knowledge of its internal workings. Similarly, Einstein realized that hundreds of years of experimental confirmation notwithstanding, special relativity implied that in some subtle way Newton’s theory was “broken” and that its repair required coming to grips with the question of the true and full nature of gravity.

In 1907, while pondering these issues at his desk in the patent office in Bern, Switzerland, Einstein had the central insight that, through fits and starts, would eventually lead him to a radically new theory of gravity—an approach that would not merely fill in the gap in Newton’s theory, but, rather, would completely reformulate thinking about gravity and, of utmost importance, would do so in a manner fully consistent with special relativity.

The insight Einstein had is relevant for a question that may have troubled you in Chapter 2. There we emphasized that we were interested in understanding how the world appears to individuals undergoing constant-velocity relative motion. By carefully comparing the observations of such individuals, we found some dramatic implications for the nature of space and time. But what about individuals who are experiencing accelerated motion? The observations of such individuals will be more complicated to analyze than those of constant-velocity observers, whose motion is more serene, but nevertheless we can ask whether there is some way of taming this complexity and bringing accelerated motion squarely into our newfound understanding of space and time.

Einstein’s “happiest thought” showed how to do so. To understand his insight, imagine the year is 2050, you are the FBI’s chief explosives expert, and you have just received a frantic call to investigate what appears to be a sophisticated bomb planted in the heart of Washington, D.C. After rushing to the scene and examining the device, your worst nightmare is confirmed: The bomb is nuclear and of such powerful design that even if it were buried deeply in the earth’s crust or submerged in an ocean’s depth, the damage from its blast would be devastating. After gingerly studying the bomb’s detonation mechanism you realize that there is no hope to disarm it and, furthermore, you see that it has a novel booby-trap feature. The bomb is mounted on a scale. Should the reading on the scale deviate from its present value by more than 50 percent, the bomb will detonate. According to the timing mechanism, you see that you have but one week and counting. The fate of millions of people rests on your shoulders—what do you do?

Well, having determined that there is no safe place anywhere on or in the earth to detonate the device, you appear to have only one option: You must launch the device into the depths of outer space where its explosion will cause no damage. You present this idea to a meeting of your team at the FBI and almost immediately your plan is dashed by a young assistant. “There is a serious problem with your plan,” your assistant Isaac begins. “As the device gets farther from the earth, its weight will decrease, since its gravitational attraction with the earth will diminish. This means that the reading on the scale inside the device will decrease, causing detonation well before reaching the safety of deep space.” Before you have time to fully contemplate this criticism, another young assistant pipes up: “In fact, come to think of it, there is even another problem,” your assistant Albert says. “This problem is as important as Isaac’s objection but somewhat more subtle, so bear with me as I explain it.” Wanting a moment to think through Isaac’s objection, you try to hush Albert, but as usual, once he begins there is no stopping him.

“In order to launch the device into outer space we will have to mount it on a rocket. As the rocket accelerates upward in order to penetrate outer space, the reading on the scale will increase, again causing the device to detonate prematurely. You see, the base of the bomb—which rests on the scale—will push harder on the scale than when the device is at rest in the same way that your body is squeezed back into the seat of an accelerating car. The bomb will ’squeeze’ the scale just as your back squeezes the cushion in the car seat. When a scale is squeezed, of course, its reading increases—and this will cause the bomb to detonate if the resulting increase is more than 50 percent.”

You thank Albert for his comment but, having tuned out his explanation to mentally confirm Isaac’s remark, you dejectedly proclaim that it takes only one fatal blow to kill an idea, and Isaac’s obviously correct observation has definitively done that. Feeling somewhat hopeless you ask for new suggestions. At that moment, Albert has a stunning revelation: “On second thought,” he continues, “I do not think that your idea is dead at all. Isaac’s observation that gravity diminishes as the device is lifted into space means that the reading on the scale will go down. My observation that the upward acceleration of the rocket will cause the device to push harder against the scale means that the reading will go up. Taken together, this means that if we carefully adjust the precise moment-to-moment acceleration of the rocket as it moves upward, these two effects can cancel each other out! Specifically, in the early stages of liftoff, when the rocket still feels the full force of the earth’s gravity, it can accelerate, just not too severely, so that we stay within the 50 percent window. As the rocket gets farther and farther from the earth—and therefore feels the earth’s gravity less and less—we need to increase its upward acceleration to compensate. The increase in the reading from upward acceleration can exactly equal the decrease in the reading from the diminishing gravitational attraction, so, in fact, we can keep the actual reading on the scale from changing at all!”

Albert’s suggestion slowly begins to make sense. “In other words,” you respond, “an upward acceleration can provide a stand-in or a substitute for gravity. We can imitate the effect of gravity through suitably accelerated motion.”

“Exactly,” responds Albert.

“So,” you continue, “we can launch the bomb into space and by judiciously adjusting the acceleration of the rocket we can ensure that the reading on the scale does not change, thus avoiding detonation until it is a safe distance from earth.” And so by playing off gravity and accelerated motion—using the precision of twenty-first-century rocket science—you are able to stave off disaster.