This article is not about the theory of relativity. But its about the basic fact of life : everything is relative to each other. If I am a good guitarist then its relative to somebody who plays bad guitar or if I am a bad painter its relative to someone better. Even places are also relative to each other such as Delhi is 1500 kilometers away from Calcutta and so on.
This relativity shows a common fact of life : Nothing is fundamental. Let us say, Napolean was born at Corsica, Greece. If we go to find the exact place where Napolean was born we would never be able to find it. Because if we go to the exact location where he bawled out on this earth, then relative to the solar system our earth would not be at the same position at the orbit; so if we go to Corsica exactly at the same time and that too on Napolean's birthday, still with respect to the centre of the galaxy Milky Way we would have drifted away from the center, for earth as well as the galaxies are continuously drifting away from each other. If we have got to go to exactly the same location where Napolean was born, then we have no other option other rewinding our time(That would require Harry Baweja to make another Love Story 1800, but please somebody tell him we don't want!). Still our dearest H.G.Wells' concept of time-machine has not come into being. This leaves us only one thing to satisfy our curious minds with and that is - Nothing is fundamental.
After coming to such a conclusion, we observe that God has played dice with this universe. He has provided us such a strangest thing that we can't help ourselves, because that is fundamental for all its observers, that does not change with time and is the most mysterious thing known to the mankind. Yes guys and girls, we are talking about the speed of light. Scientists were puzzled from the very beginning that how could there be only one thing so big that is beyond the comprehension of the entire humankind, that is constant relative to everything that obsereves it. So they decided that light moved through a special medium called 'aether'. But scientists have this common characteristic, they search for opportunities to prove any theory/hypothesis wrong. As most of them are not able to discover anything till their face hangs in its own wrinkles, so instead they focus on proving something already accepted, as wrong. Our physicist duo Michelson-Morley were even awarded the Nobel prize for proving this hypothesis of aether wrong! So scientists began to think what this speed of light is constant to? It might be constant to such a thing that is very fundamental to the whole universe.
Some clever scientists eventually applied his mind to serious thinking (instead of disproving old theories) and suggested that the fixed point must be the point which is constant through all the space and time and the speed of light is relative to that thing. They came to the conclusion that the singularity that existed at the time of Big Bang must indeed be that fundamental point. But despite all the efforts for about three years our able scientists(including that dishevelled haired freak called Einstein) were not able to locate that point of the BIG BANG. So scientists developed an idea(which was really cool); as they could not find themselves what they went to search, they blocked the way for the forth-coming generations by providing a strange yet very sound hypothesis(which has not been disproved till now) i.e. the singularity can never be comprehended by us because it happens to exist in the fourth dimension. Now people get frightened after seeing this word "fourth dimension" : No need to be frightened(you haven't got frightened reading this article till now assures you that you won't be scared by this word too). I will explain this fourth dimension vividly in full detail.
I will use two dimension for explaining this fourth dimension. Suppose there is a two dimensional surface. On the surface there are many villages which inhabitates two dimensional beings in their two dimensional houses(Don't worry about them, they manage to live, just suppose!). They have two dimensional torches and the torch light follows the surface instead of spreading in all the 3 dimension. To the two dimensional beings this world seems flat. One day, what they observe is that the faraway villages are running away from theirs as the light takes more time to reach their village than before. That made them think that initially all the villages were clustered into a singularity and from that all of this emerged. If the people on that two dimensional surface try to comprehend that singularity, they will never be able to do so because they are actually on a very giant and highly elastic balloon with air continuously being blown into. They can't comprehend whether this balloon has a beginning or an end. They can't comprehend this balloon even as the singularity represents the time when this balloon was inflated completely and that singularity is out of their dimension. Strange yet amazing explanation, isn't it?
This balloon is a simile for our universe(with its galaxies running away from each other) and the singularity represents the point of the Big Bang which happens to be incomprehensible.
So scientists believe (and even I do!) that this speed of light is the only fundamental thing of this universe that will never change with time, because this speed of light is relative to something that is in itself fundamental yet incomprehensible.
The Universe is the biggest mystery for us, and with this biggest I really mean to say "The Biggest". If in our lifetime, we are not even once fascinated by it, then we have certainly missed something. The end of the film Men in Black puts this idea in a very beautiful way, that our whole universe is within a marble and there are several such marbles in thousands of lockers. And several octopuses are playing football with it.
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