You know, I just had some questions about the universe. Some curiosities about “the marvelous structure of reality.” So I did what almost 80,000 other people have done and I took a free class on Coursera.
With a little Google search of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, I was off on a hunt to understand something that didn’t quite make sense from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series. It was mostly around The Twin Paradox. And how if you were to travel on a light beam across the galaxy and back you could return younger and less time would have passed for you than the people on earth. It just didn’t seem to make sense or qualify as what I thought would be possible. How could that be? How could the amount of elapsed time be different?
But thanks to Larry, my struggle to understand has been a wonderful experience. I came to understand why “Time is suspect.” To my delight and wonder, many other cosmic curiosities were also answered:
Like, why can’t you travel faster than the speed of light? What does it even mean to say, travel through spacetime? Space and time? Huh? If you travel at the speed of light, or close to it, would time really slow down? Are lengths and distances different for objects that travel at the speed of light? If you could travel faster than the speed of light, could you theoretically reverse cause and effect? How the hell do scientists do experiments to actually prove these things and why are they even understood in the first place? Was Einstein an idiot?
He definitely wasn’t an idiot. At just 26 this guy came up with ideas that were simply remarkable. And to make him even more wonderful, Larry shapes his personality to be that of a humble man, jaded by the idea of genius and a passion to inspire others to realize their potential. Everyone’s potential genius is just a struggle away. Albert E. just thought of himself as an ordinary human, just like the rest of us. To some extent he believed everyone has the sheerly amazing ability to comprehend the reality of our universe.
In general, Understanding Einstein also re-enforced some great universal principles about learning. Notedly, the idea that you need to build a foundation of solid understanding, then layer by layer add ideas to help culminate to a greater understanding. Like Larry puts it, it’s like constructing a building, — you have to start at the foundation first.
This class answered many questions while inspiring many more to keep learning. Plus, I just like Larry too. I like the way Larry talks. I like the way Larry explains ideas. I like his name. I like his shirts. I’m a big Larry fan. And that Einstein fella seems like a pretty swell guy too.