The Grand Design

The Grand Design explains the history of mankind from a scientific perspective, including how we came into existence and started to use science to explain the world and ourselves with laws like Newton’s and Einstein’s and more recent theories like quantum physics.

In 2004, the city of Monza, Italy, made an interesting law. It says that people could no longer keep goldfish in a curved bowl. Why? They decided that the way curved glass distorts a goldfish’s vision of the world is cruel.

How do we know we are living in the true, undistorted version of reality? Truth be told, all of us see things in our own unique reality based on the information our senses send to our brain. This means no two realities are the same.

For example, if you see a building, this is your retina catching the way light is scattered by a building-like form, and your brain gives you the mental image of a building. You believe the things you see are reality is only that people used those same senses you have and created scientific laws that are accepted as correct. Since your sight abides by these laws, you believe your reality is the correct one.

So by this definition of reality, who’s to say the goldfish isn’t living in reality as accurate and correct as ours? In short, the reality you experience and believe to be accurate isn’t any more valid than any other organism. Though they will all see and experience the world differently, they all have the potential to make scientific laws that accurately explain their experiences.

At the age of just 26, Albert Einstein single-handedly revolutionized physics as we know it. His Theory of Special Relativity proved that the way each one of us experiences time is relative. How is this possible? Picture out you are in an airplane flying nearly the speed of light. As you fly, a beam of light pulsing continually from the plane’s tail to the nose. From what you can see, this light is always going at a normal speed. But for a person on the ground watching you fly by, the light will instead be moving at a forward angle each time it bounces. But the thing is, the speed of light should be the same for everyone, regardless of how fast you might be traveling. So when you think about the fact that speed=distance/time and the speed of light is the same for both you in the plane and the person on the ground, it doesn’t make sense you see the light differently. This means your perception of time is different. In short, the faster you’re moving, the slower time gets for you.…