The Theory of RELATIVITY

[arian]

[center]Relativity - 101 Grade school - High school version I've been told, and that this has been known and taught for over a hundred years![/center]

Relativity
Physics - the dependence of various physical phenomena on relative motion of the observer and the observed objects, esp. regarding the nature and behavior of light, space, time, and gravity.

OK, .. so there seems to be a various physical phenomena on relative motion of the observer and the observed object, even I have noticed this phenomena, it is somewhat a different perspective going 150mph on a motorcycle vs standing still and watching someone pass me by doing 150 mph on a motorcycle.

This states that all motion is relative and that the velocity of light in a vacuum has a constant value that nothing can exceed.
E=MC^2 - where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the speed of light. Thus, Einstein stated that the universal proportionality factor between equivalent amounts of energy and mass is equal to the speed of light squared. The formula is dimensionally consistent and holds true irrespective of which system of measurement units is used.

All motion is relative, got it, but why ‘state’ that “the velocity of light in a vacuum has a constant value that nothing can exceed� .. and then go and square the speed of light in the equation E=MC^2?
OK, so this equation states that ‘C’ is Speed of Light which has a constant value of 186,282 miles / s.
Now squaring a speed that which nothing can exceed gives us a somewhat faster than ‘C’ speed of light, ... about 186,282 times faster because C squared is 34,700,983,524 miles / second.

Fine, let’s use that value of 34,700,983,524 miles / second to figure out the effects, or the relativity to T (time) on M (mass) when it is in motion at given V (velocity)?

- Among its consequences are the following: the mass of a body increases, and its length (in the direction of motion) shortens, as its speed increases;

OK, so the Mass of a body increases with speed, another word something with let’s say a mass of 50lb. becomes heavier and heavier as it goes faster and faster. So any mass reaching the assumed speed of light squared (34,700,983,524 miles / s) would become infinitely heavy, .. is this correct?

.. and ALSO, it’s length in the direction of the motion shortens, which I understand that at the speed of C^2 (34,700,983,524 miles / s) the Mass (any mass) would become the size of this universe (since they don’t consider anything outside the universe), meaning infinitely heavy and infinitely big .. is that correct?

- Holding true more generally, any body having mass has an equivalent amount of energy, and all forms of energy resist acceleration by a force and have gravitational attraction; the term matter has no universally-agreed definition under this modern view.

Continuing with the Energy=Mass C^2, what I’m understanding is (since ‘infinite’ is not imaginable for them in this universe, we’ll just stick with the size of the universe (whatever that may be?) .. so Mass at the speed of light squared, would become as ‘heavy’ as the entire universe, and as big as the universe since as stated; “the mass of a body increases, and its length (in the direction of motion) shortens as its speed increases� meaning that the leading end of the mass going at 34,700,983,524 miles / s would get shorter and shorter until it reached its trailing end, and since mass and energy is equal, it would all be one huge mass of energy (only this would happen at just past the speed of light, the effects of mass moving 186,282 times the speed of light would be much different effect) ... do I have this right?

But that is not all, they say that at the speed of light (especially at speeds C squared), Time would also slow down to a stop. Now if all the IFF’s are true, that would make sense since Mass and Weight would reach infinite, it would engulf the entire universe including time & space, thus everything would become an enormous gravitational Mass void of space, time or light ... am I close?

Is this what they call a ‘Gravitational Singularity’?

Question; to get to this point, don’t we need space and time where mass, any mass could have room to accelerate to reach the speed of light squared?

Let’s move on with relativity to how things 'might' appear by different observers at speed of light at 186,282 miles per second, or squared at 34,700,983,524 miles / second;

- the time interval between two events occurring in a moving body appears greater to a stationary observer; and mass and energy are equivalent and interconvertible.

As I understand and some of it based on - Among its consequences are the following: the mass of a body increases, and its length (in the direction of motion) shortens as its speed increases that if somebody was traveling near the speed of light for millions of years would have experienced only days, or just minutes vs the man standing would have been long gone and vanished millions of years ago,
also if a man traveling at the speed of light was able to look over at the watch of a man standing still, it would be flying by years not minutes, while his at the speed of light would be standing still, or stopped.

How close am I to understanding the Theory of Relativity as described by Einstein's equation of E=MC^2? And what parts am I misunderstanding?

Here are some doubts about Einstein's (that is if it's truly Einstein's idea?) Theory of Relativity, so the question for the Original Post is: 'Am I wrong, and if so, where am I wrong?'

1. 'C'^2 is 186,282 times faster than the assumed speed of light in a vacuum. How can Mass move so fast, and where is it moving IN? (not the universe we know, because there is a 'speed-limit' in our universe as defined by Einstein, which is mutually agreed upon, .. right?)

2. it is claimed that; nothing is faster than the speed of light, yet they assume that on the outer-skirts of our expanding fabric-of-space lies entire galaxies that are expanding ten times the speed of light, AND still emitting light at the speed of light both in the direction of the expansion, and leaving a trail behind?

3. Why is it that at these speeds distance would be shorter, not the time it takes to get to these distances? Matter of fact, they claim 'time would stop' at 186,282 miles per second. This can only mean one thing; that once these expanding galaxies passed the speed of light, they are actually coming behind us, or as we see ourselves in the mirror, we behold our face from the back. That what we see out there is US passing through us?

But that can happen only UP-TO twice the speed of light, because three times the speed of light would pass through the 'twice the speed of light', and if Einstein is right about squaring 'C', we are actually seeing 186,282 TIMES the outskirts of our universe passing through us! That would be like taking a mirror and looking back INTO a mirror, ... our universe creating infinite universes... or am I missing something?

I could use any help on this,

Thanks.

[A Troubled Man]

I am sorry, but I just can't understand how you can call a universal reference frame/perspective hypothetical?

So, no matter how often we ask, you still refuse to look up the meaning of reference frame.

*sigh*

Look, .. years ago I bought my boy a huge Star Wars Lego set, but to put it together the engineers broke the assembly instructions in the assembly book (universal, or actually total perspective) down into individual sections (individual reference frames), correct?

Wrong.

But both the engineers that designed the ship and my son following those instructions kept a 'universal frame of reference', .. another word my boy time to time looked at the box cover picture of the total ship to keep a universal reference, as to where each individual reference frame fit in. Otherwise he would be left with individual sections sort of just floating in space, .. isn't that right?

Not even remotely right.

I'm sorry but I can no longer limit my perspective of the universe, or my life to such (I don't know how to describe it) such narrow and limited point of view. Wouldn't that be tunnel vision?

No, that is willful ignorance.

Why do you guys insist on limiting your perspective to what you can calculate with mathematics or through some equation? I mean I understand the practical need for that when planing to build something, but to limit the universe to what we know in mathematics is like spending your whole life in a cube.

That certainly would be opinion of one who wished to remain willfully ignorant.

[JohnPaul]

Thus, as the velocity approaches the speed of light, the time dilation ratio approaches zero, but not linearly. My question is, is this a coincidence, or does this have some deeper meaning about the ultimate four-dimensional structure of the universe?

It does indeed, it shows that the "barrier" of how fast anything can travel is based on the permittivity and permeability of that four-dimensional structure and that the speed of light traveling through it will not be affected by the speed of objects contained within it.

Thanks. Permittivity and permeability are easy enough to understand in a material medium, but I have never been satisfied with any explanation of them in a vacuum, where they seem to be nothing more than arbitrary constants of nature with no theoretical basis to explain what they really are.

I was hoping for something a little more geometrical, perhaps based on a version of the Einsteinian model of the universe as an expanding four-dimensional hypersphere, in which the 3-dimensional "surface" of the hypersphere represents our 3-dimensional universe, while the interior, in the direction of the 4th dimension of time, is the past and outside is the future. In this model, the flow or passage of time would be represented by the expanding "surface" passing over the "world lines" of objects radiating out from the center, while motion would be represented by a "tipped" world line of an object, tipped at an angle to the expanding surface, rather than perpindicular to it.

[pjnlsn]

As a follow up, there is in a hypothetical sense a 'universal' reference-frame, or in other words the 'perspective' of the universe, but apart from this hypothetical, a universal reference frame doesn't exist. Certainly on a mathematical level one considers problems in Relativity from an abstract perspective where each reference frame is denoted by symbols and in the manipulation of those symbols we are operating from that universal perspective.

I am sorry, but I just can't understand how you can call a universal reference frame/perspective hypothetical?

Look, .. years ago I bought my boy a huge Star Wars Lego set, but to put it together the engineers broke the assembly instructions in the assembly book (universal, or actually total perspective) down into individual sections (individual reference frames), correct?
Now I know you may say; 'But they're not moving' .. but today they can make a video assembly instructions where they could show a 360 deg rotation in every direction, or individual inertial frames.

But both the engineers that designed the ship and my son following those instructions kept a 'universal frame of reference', .. another word my boy time to time looked at the box cover picture of the total ship to keep a universal reference, as to where each individual reference frame fit in. Otherwise he would be left with individual sections sort of just floating in space, .. isn't that right?

But as mere observers it seems as though we are bound to never reach this higher plane, so to speak, but rather are subject to the distorting effects of the reference frame we occupy.

I'm sorry but I can no longer limit my perspective of the universe, or my life to such (I don't know how to describe it) such narrow and limited point of view. Wouldn't that be tunnel vision?

Why do you guys insist on limiting your perspective to what you can calculate with mathematics or through some equation? I mean I understand the practical need for that when planing to build something, but to limit the universe to what we know in mathematics is like spending your whole life in a cube.

Our mind is INFINITE, .. it is what we received from God our Creator, .. what makes man a 'living soul', a living, active, reasoning, rationalizing being (again, .. this is not meant as a religious comment)

As before, "most of this information has already been given in the thread, and the rest has been referenced. Given that the answers to all your questions are already contained or referenced in the thread, and yet you're asking them in posts woven through with a particular attitude and demeanor is a sign," even as this you make this attitude less prevalent in your later posts.

"There's a difference between a debate and provoking an argument, or being purposefully obtuse. (that's to say, ignoring available information, even on these forums and even in this thread, in an apparently purposeful manner and while displaying a particular attitude). It's also a different thing from wanting people to cater to one's emotionally driven preconceptions.

Indeed I would think such is directly against the intent of this site."

[Bust Nak]

...but no one has really answered my question regarding the two objects; one ship and the other a shuttle traveling side by side, head to head yet one is traveling at 0.4 C and the other at 0.8 C where one ages less?

A ship cannot travel side by side to another ship going half its speed in the same frame of reference.

In the 'Old Way', as they say, this is NOT a problem, because even me with a juvenile amount of schooling could figure that out, and I did to JohnPaul. My (as I believe JohnPaul's) remaining and unanswered question was not that one ship is going 0.4 C relative to the space station neck to neck with a shuttle traveling at 0.8 C relative to the ship it launched off of heading the other direction, but a claim in these Relativistic Effects specifically 'Time Dilation'; that if a ship travels at 0.8 C in a shared frame of reference with a ship traveling at 0.4 C, the 0.8 C ship would have aged less.

In your scenario, both ships are stationary in the frame of reference they share. They are going side by side, head to head, remember?

Is this a fair brief 'definition' of reference frames in the ToR?

Wikipedia on ToR - This theory has a wide range of consequences...

No. It is a summary of relativity, it's not a definition of reference frames at all.

I am still waiting for a reasonable explanation of 'time dilation' for the 'shuttle' and the 'ship' traveling neck to neck, one at 0.8 C and the other at 0.4 C as to how and why one ages less than the other?

One wouldn't age less than the other. They are stationary relative to each other. Their clock would tict at the same rate.

But let's not forget that no one has given me a reasonable explanation how 'atomic clocks' keeping time on GPS Satellites has anything to do with trigging out my position on earth? In your own words please?

This is why you should stick to the basic stuff first. Forget relativity for now. If all you know is that you are 100 m from a certain landmark, you can be anywhere on a circle with 100m radius drawn around that landmark, right? Now add to that a new bit of information, you are 100 m from another landmark, that narrows down your position to two points, where the two circles cross each other. Now add a third bit of information, the distance to a third landmark, you can pin point your position.

With GPS satellites acting as landmarks, so all you need to know your position, is how far away you are from any 3 of them, right? GPS satellites do that by broadcasting a signal with a time stamp on it (and where the satellite was when it send the signal.) That signal travels at the speed of light to you, you can work out exactly how far you are from the source by looking at that time stamp. For example if the current time is 10:30:00 and the time stamp says 10:29:59, you know that it took the message one minute to get to you, which means you are 1 light second away from that satellites (186,282 miles.) That is where the atomic clocks comes in, the more accurate the clocks, the higher accuracy in working out the distance, the more accurate in pin pointing your position.

So far we've not mentioned relativity, this is as far as classical physics can take us, and this is where time dilation comes in:

The satellites are in orbit, travelling around the Earth at speed, which means its clock will tick slower than your clock on Earth, the atomic clock on board each satellites needs to be artificially speeded up for the whole system to work. If a clock is out by one thousandth of a second, the distance calculated would be out by 186 miles, next to useless for finding ones position.

As an aside, gravity also have an relative effect on time, but lets not over complicate things for now.

[A Troubled Man]

Thanks. Permittivity and permeability are easy enough to understand in a material medium, but I have never been satisfied with any explanation of them in a vacuum, where they seem to be nothing more than arbitrary constants of nature with no theoretical basis to explain what they really are.

I think it does have a theoretical basis, it shows us how an electrical field (permittivity) reacts to charges in a medium or in free space, hence it is not a constant because it varies depending on the medium, but does show as a constant in Coulombs law where the electrical capacitance varies. This is similar to the permeability of magnetic fields and magnetic dipoles.

[arian]

...but no one has really answered my question regarding the two objects; one ship and the other a shuttle traveling side by side, head to head yet one is traveling at 0.4 C and the other at 0.8 C where one ages less?

A ship cannot travel side by side to another ship going half its speed in the same frame of reference.

In the 'Old Way', as they say, this is NOT a problem, because even me with a juvenile amount of schooling could figure that out, and I did to JohnPaul. My (as I believe JohnPaul's) remaining and unanswered question was not that one ship is going 0.4 C relative to the space station neck to neck with a shuttle traveling at 0.8 C relative to the ship it launched off of heading the other direction, but a claim in these Relativistic Effects specifically 'Time Dilation'; that if a ship travels at 0.8 C in a shared frame of reference with a ship traveling at 0.4 C, the 0.8 C ship would have aged less.

In your scenario, both ships are stationary in the frame of reference they share. They are going side by side, head to head, remember?

Is this a fair brief 'definition' of reference frames in the ToR?

Wikipedia on ToR - This theory has a wide range of consequences...

No. It is a summary of relativity, it's not a definition of reference frames at all.

I am still waiting for a reasonable explanation of 'time dilation' for the 'shuttle' and the 'ship' traveling neck to neck, one at 0.8 C and the other at 0.4 C as to how and why one ages less than the other?

One wouldn't age less than the other. They are stationary relative to each other. Their clock would tict at the same rate.

But let's not forget that no one has given me a reasonable explanation how 'atomic clocks' keeping time on GPS Satellites has anything to do with trigging out my position on earth? In your own words please?

This is why you should stick to the basic stuff first. Forget relativity for now. If all you know is that you are 100 m from a certain landmark, you can be anywhere on a circle with 100m radius drawn around that landmark, right? Now add to that a new bit of information, you are 100 m from another landmark, that narrows down your position to two points, where the two circles cross each other. Now add a third bit of information, the distance to a third landmark, you can pin point your position.

With GPS satellites acting as landmarks, so all you need to know your position, is how far away you are from any 3 of them, right? GPS satellites do that by broadcasting a signal with a time stamp on it (and where the satellite was when it send the signal.) That signal travels at the speed of light to you, you can work out exactly how far you are from the source by looking at that time stamp. For example if the current time is 10:30:00 and the time stamp says 10:29:59, you know that it took the message one minute to get to you, which means you are 1 light second away from that satellites (186,282 miles.) That is where the atomic clocks comes in, the more accurate the clocks, the higher accuracy in working out the distance, the more accurate in pin pointing your position.

So far we've not mentioned relativity, this is as far as classical physics can take us, and this is where time dilation comes in:

The satellites are in orbit, travelling around the Earth at speed, which means its clock will tick slower than your clock on Earth, the atomic clock on board each satellites needs to be artificially speeded up for the whole system to work. If a clock is out by one thousandth of a second, the distance calculated would be out by 186 miles, next to useless for finding ones position.

As an aside, gravity also have an relative effect on time, but lets not over complicate things for now.

First, I can't thank you guys enough for your determination in not giving up on me.

As I said over and again that until this uneducated mind of mine understands all the wonderful references you guys sent me to check out, I am left with what I understand.

You guys have a huge advantage, you have schooling and know how to use basic Geometry and Algebra so a quick formulae will reassure you, only I don't have that luxury, ... yet, so I depend on what I can imagine, from the pieces of what you guys tell me, and from those references you point me to. So I visualized ToE through the simple experiment of a water gun, and finally with all of you guyses help, I thinks Iz got it!!?

LENGTH OF TIME - this is what finally made sense of ToRelativity for me, now I can actually see time dilation, mass shrinking with speed, that light really does have a set speed, and everything else you guys been trying to get across to me.

Here is how I understand it, (please, by all means correct me if I'm wrong)

Before, I visualized time only by a clock, and then I remembered my water squirting experiment where I imagined a one-minute length of water. This is what changed everything.

So if mass 'traveling' can be measured in time, .. and the faster we travel the shorter the time, .. it all clicked. Everything you guys been saying started to make sense, .. not only that, but I believe I can in a simple logical way explain away all those seeming paradoxes just by measuring mass in motion at a certain velocity, by time, within the PROPER perspective REFERENCE POINTS.

I understand now that the shuttle CAN BE traveling neck to neck at 0.8 C with a ship traveling at 0.4 C (I know, .. I know; we Bust Nak, Jax Agnesson, ATroubledMan, Pjnlsn, JohnPaul and the rest, .. told you so!) because the shuttle is actually traveling (in the given shared frame of reference) both at 0.4 C and 0.8 C respectively, and the shuttle on its return to the space station would NOT have aged less than the other ships, because from the Space stations perspective, the shuttle only traveled at 0.4 C like the other three ships.

Also, when the ship traveling at 0.4 C that the shuttle launched off of at 0.8 C both return to the space-station, neither would have aged less.

IF the shuttle that is traveling off the other spaceship at 0.8 C still going LEFT carrying a steel Meter stick attached to the bottom .. past a stationary observation platform on the way (stationary like the Space Station), it would pass it at exactly 0.4 C

I also understand now, that if that Obsrvation Platform was moving, and traveling RIGHT at 0.4 C towards the Space station, and had a 1/2 meter slit in it, the Shuttle would be passing it at 0.8 C and could actually drop that metal Meter stick into that 1/2 a Meter slit. (sorry, I have to approximate since I cannot do the math)

I am also working on to understand, why do distant telephone poles (even when I am standing still and they too are stationary) shrink? Now this is puzzling to me since I just learned that things shrink with speed, .. so can someone (someone left that is not too pissed-off at me) explain this to me s-l-o-w-l-y?

The way I see it NOW (Thanks to you all here), is that there really isn't any 'time paradox', .. only a lack of understanding in the Inertial Frames of References, ... which as you guys pointed out many times, I was guilty of.

If my understanding is wrong, please, please show me where it is still wrong and why, so I can work on it?

Again, I thank you all.

Next, if I got the above Relativity/Frame of references correct, and the stationary telephone-poles shrunk in the distance, On To understanding why light has this set speed C? But of course, first things first.

PS

Yes it is true that you do have to understand the math in Trigonometry to figure out complex problems, but only the basic laws in finding out a side of a triangle, .. which is that I need at least one side and two angles, or one angle and two sides. But to figure out the sequence like the sine and cosine, tangent/cotangent to get the side I want, I need the booklet, and of course a scientific calculator. The rest I do in my head, .. does that make more sense? So I am still an uneducated idiot who can figure out complex trigonometry problems. .. Well I used to anyways, I would have to brush up on it again.

[arian]

[Replying to post 234 by Bust Nak]

Thank you Bust Nak, and of course you are correct in all cases, .. the only difference between then and now is with me, .. that I am beginning to understand... I hope. (please see my previous post)

Again I thank you!!!

[Jax Agnesson]

[Replying to post 237 by arian]
Well done, Arian!
I wish you much joy in your further explorations of theoretical physics!

[arian]

[Replying to post 237 by arian]
Well done, Arian!
I wish you much joy in your further explorations of theoretical physics!

Thank you so much my friend.

Hey, .. why did everyone all of a sudden stop? I mean you all agree in what I said in my last post?

Even this?

1. IF the shuttle that is traveling off the other spaceship at 0.8 C still going LEFT carrying a steel Meter stick attached to the bottom .. past a stationary observation platform on the way (stationary like the Space Station), it would pass it at exactly 0.4 C

2. I also understand now, that if that Obsrvation Platform was moving, and traveling RIGHT at 0.4 C towards the Space station, and had a 1/2 meter slit in it, the Shuttle would be passing it at 0.8 C and could actually drop that metal Meter stick into that 1/2 a Meter slit.

Not the first part, that makes sense, but what about the second part?

Here is the problem I need help on:

If the shuttle traveling at the velocity of 0.8 C carrying a metal Meter Stick could drop it into the 1/2 Meter slot in a stationary Platform it was passing by, isn't there something wrong with that picture?

1. Me in the shuttle at the velocity of 0.8 C would see the slit even shorter than what it is, maybe even 1/4 the Meter, not the 1/2 Meter that it actually is, right?

2. The guy on the platform would see my Meter Stick much, much longer than a Meter, am I correct? So what? Do we just label this as "what it seems like vs what it is"?
I mean from the platform frame of reference the guy sees my shuttle carrying a 2 Meter stick (1 Meter actual) which I'm attempting to drop in a 1/2 Meter slot which I actually see as only 1/4 Meter, where is my reasoning wrong here?

If in the laws of ToE there are things that seem-like because of different frames of reference, then how is it that you agree I could drop that Meter Stick going at 0.8 C into a 1/2 Meter slot on the stationary platform as I explained in my previous post?
Another word, 'what is real, and what is an optical illusion when figuring out Frames of Reference in Relativity'?


Thanks again.

[arian]

While I'm waiting for an answer on my last post, here is another thing that puzzles me on Inertial Frames of Reference.

Looking at the ping-pong ball example where the 'ping' goes up and hits the board and a half a second later hits the bottom board 'pong' where we get a ping-pong every second (OK that just came out funny, but I'm serious about this), if we see the entire 'ping-pong', all is fine, right?

Now if we move the ping-pongs with the boards to the right in front of us, the ball seems to travel not only the up and down motion, but the added from left to right distance also, .. right?

So lets say I mark a ten foot distance in X Right, and 2-feet between the boards I can figure out the total up and down distance, AND the left to Right X distance by trigging out the balls perpendicular up then down distance.

Lets say I make the 10 foot left on X movement at exactly 1-second, the same time as ONE up and down bounces of the ball. I am observing this at a perspective distance where I can see the ball from X 0.0 to X + 10 feet where it stops.
I trig it all out and I have the total distance that ping-pong ball traveled in ONE second, which would be the two perpendicular lines created by the ball bouncing between the boards and going the ten foot X+ distance, oh let's just say about a total of 14 feet.

But there is another factor, my car in the distance factor. Where a car a hundred miles away will seem to move a little slower than the car at the same speed right in front of me, as you guys said, am I correct? This as you guys explained to me, is because of the speed of light.

OK then. So here I am let's say 10 feet away watching the up and down ping pong pass in front of me to the right between two boards a foot apart, so the TIME that I see this happening will be a little longer than one second because I have to calculate the time the light gets to me. So to get an accurate time/distance measurement, knowing how fast light travels that small 10 foot distance from me to the ping-pong table, minus that from my observation and I should have the actual real-time duration the ball traveled.

But wait, things also move slower for me at a distance, so the one second X+ travel will be a little longer too, but no problem, I'll just calculate that out, minus it and make the proper time adjustment.

But wait, mass with speed will seem shorter, so my entire 10 foot travel will be less than ten feet, but I can calculate and remove length contraction and make the proper adjustments so I can finally get the travel distance and the time to what it really is vs what it seems like at my distance, .. is this correct?

I hope you can see where my nagging problem in length contraction and time dilation lies, because in the above example, I was able to calculate, or remove time dilation/length contraction, or what it seems like - from what it actually is or reality!

What I mean is that if we say that a shuttle traveling at 0.8 C carrying a metal Meter Stick on its bottom could actually drop it into a half meter slot on a stationary steel platform it was passing over, we have changed the 'what it seems like' into what it actually IS, or into our reality, in which case I see some serious problems in our future interpretations of science and mathematics.

From reality where all perspectives, or inertial frames of references must be calculated out, added or subtracted from each other to give us the reality we are looking for, .. to accepting what other reference frames think, or believe they are seeing.

I mean I can picture the universe from the outside, I can understand the true nature of 'nothing', but I just can't seem to swallow these few things like Time Dilation and Mass Contraction with higher speeds. This is besides that for the time being I accept light having a speed of 186,282 m/p/s.

Any further help on this would be greatly appreciated.