Einsteiarchus' Theory

[NapoleonXIV]

Einstein, it is said, thought up most of general and special relativity one summer when he was 16, mainly from speculations on how one would see the world if he/she were traveling at the beginning of a beam of light.

Now this doesn't seem to require much more than a knowledge of how fast light travels and Einstein's brain. The speed of light can be approximated from the phases of Venus and I THINK the ancients knew of these (tho I may be wrong there but they were awfully good naked eye astronomers) so they might have been able to figure that out like Galileo did.

And if they did, what is to stop some especially clever Greek from speculating like Einstein? And what would happen if the Theory of Relativity was first suggested in 306 BCE instead of 1906 CE?

 

[Foxfire]

Einstein, it is said, thought up most of general and special relativity one summer when he was 16, mainly from speculations on how one would see the world if he/she were traveling at the beginning of a beam of light.

Now this doesn't seem to require much more than a knowledge of how fast light travels and Einstein's brain. The speed of light can be approximated from the phases of Venus and I THINK the ancients knew of these (tho I may be wrong there but they were awfully good naked eye astronomers) so they might have been able to figure that out like Galileo did.

I don't know about the phases of Venus, but I do know that the speed of light can be estimated from observing the orbits of Jupiter's moons. Unfortunately, they're not naked-eye visible.
But figuring out relativity doesn't actually require you to know what the speed of light is, just that it does in fact have a finite speed.

And if they did, what is to stop some especially clever Greek from speculating like Einstein? And what would happen if the Theory of Relativity was first suggested in 306 BCE instead of 1906 CE?

Unfortunately, relativity does require one other much more radical idea, though- the fact that the speed of light is constant in all frames. And the mathematical and scientific background that leads to that conclusion just didn't exist. No especially clever Greek is going to come up with that idea spontaneously, because it's just too far out of intuitive experience (so far out, in fact, that Einstein didn't have to work out the coordinate transforms for relativity because Lorentz had already done it and discarded the results as ludicrously unphysical).

But say that some genius does come up with the idea, and invents all of the mathematics required to work out the consequences- there's absolutely no way in the classical world that the idea could be tested. Result: mathematics necessarily is much more advanced than in OTL (but the POD for that has to be further back, so it's somewhat irrelevant), a few people comment on what an interesting intellectual exercise that was, a few more mock it mercilessly, and it's promptly forgotten.

Now, speculating on what would happen in the ancient Greeks developed the *algebra* necessary for working out relativity, that could be interesting....

 

[Philip]

Unfortunately, relativity does require one other much more radical idea, though- the fact that the speed of light is constant in all frames. And the mathematical and scientific background that leads to that conclusion just didn't exist. No especially clever Greek is going to come up with that idea spontaneously, because it's just too far out of intuitive experience (so far out, in fact, that Einstein didn't have to work out the coordinate transforms for relativity because Lorentz had already done it and discarded the results as ludicrously unphysical).

I don't think the Greeks had a concept of an inertial frame. They would need such before speculating on the behavior of light across frames.

Now, speculating on what would happen in the ancient Greeks developed the *algebra* necessary for working out relativity, that could be interesting....

They would also need to develop the analytic geometry to go with the algebra.

 

[Max Sinister]

It took until the modern age to find out how fast light travels. It's simply too fast to be measured easily.