albert einstein special theory of relativity

Relativity: The Special and the General Theory That’s not only faster than light, it’s infinite.

That is, Newton’s formula implies that gravity exerts its influence from one location to another instantaneously. According to Newton’s law, if you shake the Sun like a cosmic maraca, gravity will cause the Earth to immediately shake too.

In 1905 Einstein discovered the special theory of relativity, establishing the famous dictum that nothing-no object or signal-can travel faster than the speed of light. And Einstein was the first to become certain of this. School kids the world over have learned the mathematical version of Newton’s law, which has made such spectacularly accurate predictions for the motion of everything from hurled rocks to orbiting planets that it seemed Newton had written the final word on gravity. During the plague that ravaged Europe from 1665 to 1666, Isaac Newton retreated from his post at the University of Cambridge, took up refuge at his family’s home in Lincolnshire, and in his idle hours realized that every object, whether on Earth or in the heavens, pulls on every other with a force that depends solely on how big the objects are-their mass-and how far apart they are in space-their distance. The quest to grasp gravity began long before Einstein. General relativity, once an exotic description of gravity, is now a powerful research tool. But in the century since, Einstein’s brainchild has become the nexus for a wide range of foundational issues, including the origin of the universe, the structure of black holes and the unification of nature’s forces, and the theory has also been harnessed for more applied tasks such as searching for extrasolar planets, determining the mass of distant galaxies and even guiding the trajectories of wayward car drivers and ballistic missiles. It culminated with Einstein’s radically new vision of the interplay of space, time, matter, energy and gravity, a feat widely revered as one of humankind’s greatest intellectual achievements.Īt the time, general relativity’s buzz was only heard by a coterie of thinkers on the outskirts of esoteric physics. The month leading up to the historic announcement had been the most intellectually intense and anxiety-ridden span of his life. The general theory of relativity, Einstein asserted, was now complete. Days earlier, on November 25, 1915, he had taken to the stage at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin and declared that he had at last completed his agonizing, decade-long expedition to a new and deeper understanding of gravity. It was a hundred years ago this November, and Albert Einstein was enjoying a rare moment of contentment.

Albert einstein special theory of relativity