Understanding Today's Science with Help from Special Relativity and General Relativity

UThis article began to take shape in my mind when I read an item in Astronomy magazine. That item mentioned how timing by GPS (the Global Positioning System) requires input from both Special Relativity - where time slows down fractionally for the fast-moving satellites in orbit – and General Relativity, where the satellites' distance from Earth's gravity causes their time to speed up fractionally. This led to the conclusions that 1) the gravitational waves making up the gravity field are, as Einstein suggested in a paper written four years after publication of the general theory, involved in production of mass, 2) these waves participate with the other long-range force, electromagnetism, to also produce the two nuclear forces associated with the mass (making nuclear forces non-fundamental and the Higgs force another name for gravitational-electromagnetic coupling), 3) black holes are composed of gravitational and electromagnetic waves focused on them from deep space, and this accounts for their extreme gravity as well as extreme mass, 4) there's a link between the macroscopic black holes of astronomy and the subatomic gluons of particle physics, and 5) Einstein's contributions don't end with the two Relativities, or even the paper written 4 years after the general theory, but can be extended to his Unified Field Theory. His Unified Field might not be generally accepted today because it was incomplete, just as he described quantum mechanics as incomplete. In 1957, Charles Misner and John Wheeler, in the “Annals of Physics”, claimed Albert Einstein’s latest equations demonstrated the unified field theory. However, the necessary completion of the unified field may not exclusively lie with the mathematics Einstein seemed to increasingly rely on as he aged but with concepts in computer science as well as intuitions in the mathematical branch called topology. Einstein was a Superman at exploring new ideas in his youth. Had electronic computers been invented 30 or 40 years earlier, it appears likely we’d be living with the fruits of the unified field now. PS This article also mentions superconductivity, imaginary time, complex number plane, quark-gluon plasma, antigraviton, shape of space, dark energy, dark matter and antimatter.本文的构思雏形始于我在《天文学》杂志上读到的一篇报道。该报道提及，GPS（全球定位系统，Global Positioning System）的计时功能需要同时结合狭义相对论（Special Relativity）与广义相对论（General Relativity）的相关原理：一方面，轨道运行的高速卫星会因运动效应令时间产生微小变慢；另一方面，卫星与地球引力场的距离差异会使其时间产生微小变快。 由此引申出如下结论： 1. 构成引力场的引力波，正如爱因斯坦在广义相对论发表四年后撰写的论文中所提出的那样，参与了质量的产生过程； 2. 这些引力波与另一种长程力——电磁力（electromagnetism）协同作用，同样催生了与质量相关的两种核力，这使得核力并非基本力，而希格斯力（Higgs force）实则为引力-电磁耦合的另一称谓； 3. 黑洞由从深空聚焦而至的引力波与电磁波构成，这一机制既可解释其极强的引力效应，也可阐释其超大质量的来源； 4. 天文学领域的宏观黑洞与粒子物理学中的亚原子胶子（subatomic gluons）之间存在内在关联； 5. 爱因斯坦的学术贡献绝非仅止步于两大相对论，亦不限于广义相对论发表四年后所撰写的那篇论文，其理论可延伸至他晚年提出的统一场论（Unified Field Theory）。 如今统一场论尚未获得广泛认可，究其原因在于其并不完备，正如爱因斯坦本人也曾指出量子力学（quantum mechanics）存在不完备性一般。1957年，查尔斯·米斯纳（Charles Misner）与约翰·惠勒（John Wheeler）在《物理学年鉴》（Annals of Physics）中撰文指出，爱因斯坦晚年提出的最新方程可佐证统一场论的正确性。然而，统一场论所需的完备性或许并非仅依赖于爱因斯坦晚年愈发倚重的数学工具，亦可借助计算机科学（computer science）的相关概念，以及数学分支拓扑学（topology）中的直觉性认知。 爱因斯坦年轻时在开拓新思想方面堪称天才。倘若电子计算机（electronic computers）能够提早三四十年问世，那么如今我们或许早已享受到统一场论所带来的各项成果。 附：本文还提及了超导电性（superconductivity）、虚时间（imaginary time）、复平面（complex number plane）、夸克-胶子等离子体（quark-gluon plasma）、反引力子（antigraviton）、空间形态、暗能量（dark energy）、暗物质（dark matter）以及反物质（antimatter）。