This month marks the 100th Anniversary of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, and that means PARTY TIME! But before you begin your celestial celebration, keep in mind that aspects of the theory of general relativity (or rather, where the theory is weak (that’s a joke in itself)) could mean that eating too much party food and drink could cause you to expand … FOREVER … and as health conscious individuals (because that’s what we are … right?) this would be a bad thing.
So how does general relativity relate to wellness and fitness? Stick with me here and I’ll explain.
Okay, quick history lesson. Back in the late 1600s an English dude named Newton came up with the law of universal gravitation. I’m not going to get into a scientific lecture here but essentially it describes the attraction between two objects with mass, and that everything with mass attracts every other thing with mass, and that you can measure this attraction by knowing the mass of each object and the distance between them … or something like that.
Now, Newt’s law, (his professor buddies called him Newt) was pretty good, and it still carries a lot of weight (gravity joke), but it couldn’t explain a lot of physics stuff, such as the deflection of light rays by gravity, or how pizza and I have a much greater attraction than each of our masses would suggest.
This is where general relativity comes in. General relativity fills in some of the holes in Newt’s law of universal gravitation in that it posits that gravity is actually the bending of space and time by mass and energy. From that nugget of wisdom arose the Big Bang Theory (no, not the TV show) which suggests that the universe is expanding and will continue to do so until the force of gravity will stop it from expanding wherein the universe will eventually start being pulled back into its point of origin and collapse into itself.
We can look at this more self-centeredly (yes, it’s a word, and it’s pretty much how the world saw itself until a dude named Copernicus said “Geocentrism is bogus, man!” – only he said it in Polish ) and say that if we keep eating junk food and don’t work out we, like the universe (since we are all connected), will keep expanding … until we reach a point where we will begin to contract and collapse into ourselves.
So, with that in mind there’s no need for us to eat healthy and work out. Right? Because pretty soon we’re all going to start contracting. Right?
Well, not really. Because Einstein was only partially correct. See, that whole idea that the universe is expanding and will slow down and contract makes sense what with general relativity and all, but it turns out the universe is not slowing down and, in fact, contrary to what the theory says, is expanding at an ever increasing rate. Which means that something (maybe pizza) is canceling out the effects of gravity and pushing everything apart. This gave rise to the idea of dark matter (which could be BURNT pizza … because it’s dark).
So, if we accept that we are a part of the universe, and that our bodies follow the laws of physics, then we need to realize that we will not automatically begin to contract if our bodies start pushing maximum density but will instead continue to expand forever.
And that would be really, really fat.
However, we can overcome the effects of dark matter as far as our bodies are concerned thanks to Newton’s Third Law of Motion which states “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Therefore, eating healthy and working out (which is movement, hence using a law of motion) results in the action of burning fat. (And you thought those science classes were worthless! HA! Who’d have thought that Newton, Einstein, and dark matter were related to staying fit?!?!?!)
So trust me on this and know that you can avoid becoming your own mini-model of an ever expanding universe. Just eat clean and work out.
