Page:Eddington A. Space Time and Gravitation. 1920.djvu/28

12 Phys. Then if you have fixed your standard motion of the measuring-rod, there will be no ambiguity if you take the readings of both particles at the same moment.

Rel. What is the same moment at different places? The conception of simultaneity in different places is a difficult one. Is there a particular instant in the progress of time on another world, Arcturus, which is the same as the present instant on the Earth?

Phys. I think so, if there is any connecting link. We can observe an event, say a change of brightness, on Arcturus, and, allowing for the time taken by light to travel the distance, determine the corresponding instant on the earth.

Rel. But then you must know the speed of the earth through the aether. It may have shortened the light-time by going some way to meet the light coming from Arcturus.

Phys. Is not that a small matter?

Rel. At a very modest reckoning the motion of the earth in the interval might alter the light-time by several days. Actually, however, any speed of the earth through the aether up to the velocity of light is admissible, without affecting anything observable. At least, nothing has been discovered which contradicts this. So the error may be months or years.

Phys. What you have shown is that we have not sufficient knowledge to determine in practice which are simultaneous events on the Earth and Arcturus. It does not follow that there is no definite simultaneity.

Rel. That is true, but it is at least possible that the reason why we are unable to determine simultaneity in practice (or, what comes to pretty much the same thing, our motion through the aether) in spite of many brilliant attempts, is that there is no such thing as absolute simultaneity of distant events. It is better therefore not to base our physics on this notion of absolute simultaneity, which may turn out not to exist, and is in any case out of reach at present.

But what all this comes to is that time as well as space is implied in all our measures. The fundamental measurement is not the interval between two points of space, but between two points of space associated with instants of time.

Our natural geometry is incomplete at present. We must