As far as Einstein goes, I think people need to remember that his claim to fame is called the THEORY of Relativity, not the LAW of Relativity. That his little bit of theorizing has been around for decades and still hasn’t been proven makes me think Albert’s parents were being sarcastic when they put “Einstein” on his birth certificate.

The Theory of Relativity, for those of you who always seem to find yourselves out of the loop, is Einstein’s impossibly simple solution to a complex problem. Imagine that you and a friend are in a jumbo jet. You’re in the back, your friend is in the front. What would happen if you lit a firecracker while the plane was still waiting for takeoff? The sound would travel towards our friend at 340.29 meters per second. (the speed of sound)

Do this while the plane is in flight however, and the sound will take longer to reach him than the before. This is because your friend is now traveling away from the sound. If you were in the front of the plane and your friend were in the back, it would take less time for the sound to reach him, as he would be moving towards it.

This is not the case with light. Experiment after experiment has shown that light always appears to be moving at the same speed (three million miles per second) to everyone everywhere, no matter how the observer is moving in relation to the light’s source.

Most scientists would assume one of two things: 1) Perhaps light waves move in such a way that their speed seems constant, almost an opposite of the effect of a film recording of a spinning wheel. Vary the frame rate and the wheel seems to speed up, slow down, even spin in the opposite direction-yet the wheel is actually spinning at a constant speed. Is it not possible that photons move in such a frequency, speed, or pattern that they always seem to be moving at a constant rate?

2) Light waves are fun-loving energy particles (although not too smart) and thusly think they’re playing a game of tag. Photons don’t want to show you up so badly that you won’t play anymore, but they also don’t want to lose, so they always go 300 miles per second faster than you.

Einstein, however, decided to make up something ridiculous. He decided that the faster an object is traveling, the larger it gets. This theory has since convinced many adult novelty stores into dumping millions of dollars into finding a way to make a man’s penis travel millions of miles per second faster than the rest of his body. (Someone needs to tell them about the Fitzgerald Contraction)

The Theory of Relativity explains light’s constant speed like this: As we move, our representation of an inch or a mile changes along with us as we slowly grow. (as does everything else moving at our speed) That makes it seem like light is traveling constantly (relative to us). Yeah, and I’m a seven-year-old girl. (PS–I’m not)

If, due to the huge intellectual beating I’ve just given it, Einsteineans find they can no longer discuss the Theory of Relativity in their circles, they can always fall back on discussing his Unifying Theory. Oh, that’s right. He never quite finished that. Oops. Bad on you, mates.