Size Matters

Size Matters

By Vern A. Westfall

The complex interaction of all movements and changing conditions in the universe is well beyond measurement or prediction. There is just too much going on. To compensate we restrict our comparisons to things and comparative positions that fit within our observational capabilities, (our scope of awareness). We focus on small parts of the universe and have invented numerical relationships and formulae to compare one point in a group of changing positions to another as a way to isolate past relationships and predict future relationships. Two of these comparatives are distance and size.

A fixed distance is the space between objects moving at the same rate on parallel paths. (If there is a true fixed point somewhere in the universe, we haven’t found it.)  Everything is in motion. Even New York is in motion as it rotates with the earth at about 600 mph, goes around the sun at about 6,000 mph and rotates with the galaxy at about 60,000 mph.

A varying distance between objects occurs when objects are moving at dissimilar rates and/or are on dissimilar paths. We measure both fixed and changing distances using artificial comparatives, standards we have created so we can make comparisons, and we have a lot of them; a foot, a meter, a furlong, a link, a chain, a mile, a kilometer, a parsec, etc. We divide our standard comparatives into smaller pieces in arbitrary units like twelve inches to every foot and 5,280 feet to every mile, and for reasons we have long forgotten, we, in the US and England, have trapped ourselves into using these historical remnants. We have also trapped ourselves into using the convoluted mathematics that goes with these remnants. In most of the rest of the world more rational units, that reflect the girth of the earth and are multiples of ten, are the norm. All the systems we use as a standard comparison, however, are arbitrary, (even the metric system), there is no standard universal macro separation comparatives in nature. If any universal standards exist, they exist at atomic or light speed scales and to be useful for our everyday applications become numbers with such very large or very small exponents they have little practical value.

Fixed distances, like the size of a room, (expressed in feet or meters), or the distance between cities, (expressed in miles or kilometers), are extremely useful comparisons. We are able to visualize these distances and we use them so frequently we forget they are arbitrary constructs. When we attempt to extend our common comparatives to very large distances, (like the distance to Mars or the nearest star), or to the very small, (like the size of a hydrogen atom), we find our comparative conventions inadequate. Our concepts of distance, like our concepts regarding time, are very useful, but if we want to understand more of the reality around us we need to remember that they are arbitrary constructs, and avoid assigning them a reality they don’t possess, especially in mathematical formulations where we often misuse them as universal constants.

Distance has meaning only as a comparative that is relevant to the human scale of awareness, or to the scale of a human inquiry. Time has meaning only as a comparative relevant to motions being observed within the human pace of awareness, or to a pace relevant to a human inquiry.

Are there any natural static distances or rates of motions in nature? Einstein gave up the idea of a universal constant calling it his biggest mistake, but what of the speed of light?

We use the pace of light through space at 670 million miles per hour as a standard in our cosmological examinations and consider it a constant. But is it? Has light always traveled at the rate we measure today or, when examine light that began its journey billions of years ago, are we using comparative variable distances and movements as constants when, in fact, they have changed as the universe expanded? If so we may be drawing false conclusions as to the actual age of the universe and as to its rate of expansion. Dark energy may be a false conclusion based on the false assumption that time has always been a constant.