IT'S ALL RELATIVE

Einstein in 1905

The 30^th June appears to be a science day. 106 years ago today, in 1905, Albert Einstein presented his article “Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper" ("On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies").  It was the third paper he presented in 1905 and it apparently ‘reconciles Maxwell’s equations for electricity and magnetism with the laws of mechanics, by introducing major changes to mechanics close to the speed of light’. This later became known as Einstein’s special theory of relativity.

The paper is part of the Annus Mirabilis Papers, which are the papers of Albert Einstein published in the Annelen der Physik scientific journal in 1905. The four articles contributed substantially to the foundation of modern physics and changed views on space, time and matter. 1905 is referred to as the ‘Miracle Year’ in English and ‘Wunderjahr’ in German.

The paper mentions the names of only five other scientists, Issac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Heinrich Hertz, Christian Doppler, and Hendrick Lorentz. It does not have any references to any other publications.

Maxwell

Newton

Hertz

Doppler

Lorentz

It was also on the 30^th June 1972, that the first leap second was added to the UTC time system. 

A leap second is a positive or negative one-second adjustment to the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) time scale that keeps it close to mean solar time. UTC, which is used as the basis for official time-of-day radio broadcasts for civil time, is maintained using extremely precise atomic clocks. To keep the UTC time scale close to mean solar time, UTC is occasionally corrected by an intercalary adjustment,  or "leap", of one second. Over long time periods, leap seconds must be added at an ever increasing rate. (see ∆T). The timing of leap seconds is now determined by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS). Leap seconds were determined by the Bureau International de l’Heure (BIH) prior to January 1, 1988, when the IERS assumed that responsibility.

I am not sure what any of this means, but it is important in terms of understanding the universe and how real objects, moving through space and time, relate to each other. That is the theory of relativity. 

I knew a man in New York whose grandmother came from a little village in Poland. As he was growing up, his grandmother told him stories about her village. She seemed nostalgic about the past and quite wistful.  She painted a lovely rosy picture of her childhood and adolescence. One day, much later, he found a collection of photographs of his grandmother's village in an old bookshop. He bought them and, with great glee, he presented them to his now much older grandmother. She glanced through the pictures and showed no sign of emotion at all. He was quite taken aback and asked his grandmother why she didn't seem to care anymore about the village she'd gone on about at such length. She looked at him and said "People move".

Just part of the theory of relativity.