Page:The theory of relativity and its influence on scientific thought.djvu/25

Rh The point is that every electron, at rest or in motion, is a perfectly constant structure; but we distort it by fitting it into the space-time frame appropriate to our own motion with which the electron has no concern. The greater our motion with respect to the electron, the greater will be the distortion. The distortion is not produced by any physical agency at work in the electron; it is a purely subjective distortion depending on our transformation of the reference frame of space and time. This distortion involves a change in our physical description of the electron in terms of mass, shape, size; and in particular the change of mass agrees precisely with that found experimentally.

You see that it is not altogether idle discussing the natural space-time frames for observers moving with huge velocities. We know of no animate observers with these speeds; but we do know of inanimate material objects. Their common resemblance is obscured when we refer them indiscriminately to our irrelevant geocentric frame; we think they have altered their properties, varied in mass, and so on; but the resemblance is restored when we refer each individual to the frame appropriate to it, and so describe them all in comparable terms.

Our measurements of distance in space are found to be subject to certain laws—the laws of geometry. But it has now become impossible to regard the subject of space-geometry as complete in itself. Consider a triangle formed by three points (or events) in the four-dimensional world; if we happen to have drawn our instantaneous strata so that the three points lie in one stratum, then the triangle is a space-triangle and its properties fall within the scope of our classical geometry. But another observer will draw his strata in a different direction, and for him the triangle would be partly in