INTRODUCTION
Our reality is a mental picture that our brain creates,
starting from our sensory inputs [1]. Although this cog-
nitive map is often mistaken to be a faithful image of the
physical causes behind the sensing process, the causes them-
selves are entirely different from the perceptual experience
of sensing. The difference between the cognitive represen-
tation and their physical causes is not immediately obvious
when we consider our primary sense of sight. But we can
appreciate the difference by looking at the olfactory and au-
ditory senses because we can use our cognitive model based
on sight in order to understand the workings of the “lesser”
senses. Odors, which may appear to be a property of the
air we breathe, are in fact our brain’s representation of the
chemical signatures that our nose senses. Similarly, sound
is not an intrinsic property of a vibrating body, but our
brain’s mechanism to represent the pressure waves in the
air. Table I shows the chain from the physical cause of the
sensory input to the final reality as the brain creates it. Al-
though the physical causes can be identified for the olfactory
and auditory chains, they are not easily discerned for visual
process. Since sight is the most powerful sense we possess,
we are obliged to accept our brain’s representation of visual
inputs as the fundamental reality.
While our visual reality provides an excellent framework
for physical sciences, it is important to realize that the real-
ity itself is a model with potential physical or physiological
limitations and distortions. The tight integration between
the physiology of perception and its representation in the
brain was proven recently [2] in a clever experiment using
the tactile funneling illusion. This illusion results in a single
tactile sensation at the focal point at the center of a stimulus
pattern even though no stimulation is applied at that site.
In the experiment, the brain activation region corresponded
to the focal point where the sensation was perceived rather
than the points where the stimuli were applied, proving that
brain registered perceptions, not the physical causes of the
perceived reality. In other words, for the brain, there is
no difference between applying the pattern of the stimuli
and applying only one stimulus at the center of the pattern.
Brain maps the sensory inputs to regions that correspond
to their perception, rather than the regions that physiolog-
ically correspond to the sensory stimuli.
The neurological localization of different aspects of reality
has been established by lesion studies in neuroscience. The
perception of motion (and the consequent basis of our sense
of time), for instance, is so localized that a tiny lesion can
erase it completely. Cases of patients with such specific loss
of a part of reality [1] illustrate the fact that our experience
of reality, every aspect of it, is indeed a creation of the brain.
Space and time are aspects of the cognitive representation
in our brain.
Space is a perceptual experience much like sound. Com-
parisons between the auditory and visual modes of sensing
can be useful in understanding the limitations of their repre-
sentations in the brain. One limitation is the input ranges of
the sensory organs. Ears are sensitive in the frequency range
20Hz–20kHz, and eyes are limited to the visible spectrum.
Another limitation, which may exist in specific individuals,
is an inadequate representation of the inputs. Such a lim-
itation can lead to tone-deafness and color-blindness, for
instance. The speed of the sense modality also introduces
an effect, such as the time lag between seeing an event and
hearing the corresponding sound. For visual perception, the
consequence of the finite speed of light is called the light
travel time (LTT) effect, which offers a convincing explana-
tion to the observed superluminal motion in certain celestial
objects [3, 4]. When an object approaches the observer at
a shallow angle, it may appear to move much faster than
reality [5] due to LTT.
Other consequences of the light travel time (LTT) effects
in our perception are remarkably similar to the coordinate
transformation of the special theory of relativity (SRT).
These consequences include an apparent contraction of a
receding object along its direction of motion and a time di-
lation effect. Furthermore, a receding object can never ap-
pear to be going faster than the speed of light, even if its real
speed is superluminal. While SRT does not explicitly forbid
it, superluminality is understood to lead to time travel and
the consequent violations of causality. An apparent viola-
tion of causality is one of the consequences of LTT, when the
superluminal object is approaching the observer. All these
LTT effects are remarkably similar to effects predicted by
SRT, and are currently taken as ’confirmation’ that space-
time obeys SRT. But instead, space-time may have a deeper
structure that, when filtered through LTT effects, results in
our perception that space-time obeys SRT.
Once we accept the neuroscience view of reality as a rep-
resentation of our sensory inputs, we can understand why
the speed of light figures so prominently in our physical
theories. The theories of physics are a description of real-
ity. Reality is created out of the readings from our senses,
especially our eyes. They work at the speed of light. Thus
the sanctity accorded to the speed of light is a feature only
of our reality, not the absolute, ultimate reality that our
senses are striving to perceive. When it comes to physics
that describes phenomena well beyond our sensory ranges,
we really have to take into account the role that our per-
ception and cognition play in seeing them. The universe
as we see it is only a cognitive model created out of the
photons falling on our retina or on the photo-sensors of the
Hubble telescope. Because of the finite speed of the infor-
mation carrier (namely photons), our perception is distorted
in such a way as to give us the impression that space and
time obey special relativity. They do, but space and time
are not the absolute reality. “Space and time are modes by
which we think and not conditions in which we live,” as Ein-
stein himself put it. Treating our perceived reality as our
brain’s representation of our visual inputs (filtered through
the LTT effect), we will see that all the strange effects of
the coordinate transformation in special relativity can be
understood as the manifestations of the finite speed of our
senses in our space and time.
Furthermore, we will show that this line of thinking leads
to natural explanations for two classes of astrophysical phe-
nomena:
Gamma Ray Bursts, which are very brief, but intense
flashes of γ rays, currently believed to emanate from
cataclysmic stellar collapses, and
Radio Sources, which are typically symmetric and seem
associated with galactic cores, currently considered
manifestations of space-time singularities or neutron
stars.
These two astrophysical phenomena appear distinct and un-
related, but they can be unified and explained using LTT
effects.
This article presents such a unified quantitative
model. It will also show that the cognitive limitations to re-
ality due to LTT effects can provide qualitative explanations
for such cosmological features as the apparent expansion of
the universe and the Cosmic Microwave Background Radia-
tion (CMBR). Both these phenomena can be understood as
related to our perception of superluminal objects. It is the
unification of these seemingly distinct phenomena at vastly
different length and time scales, along with its conceptual
simplicity, that we hold as the indicators of validity of this
framework.
