General relativity
See also: History of general relativity As Albert Einstein later said, the reason for the development of general relativity was that the preference of inertial motions within special relativity was unsatisfactory, while a theory which from the outset prefers no state of motion should appear more satisfactory. So in 1908 he published an article on acceleration under special relativityIn 1912, Einstein returned to Switzerland to accept a professorship at his alma mater, the ETH. Once back in Zurich, he immediately visited his old ETH classmate Marcel Grossmann Marcel Grossmann was a mathematician of Jewish ancestry, and a friend and classmate of Albert Einstein. He became a Professor of Mathematics at the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, today the ETH Zurich, specializing in descriptive geometry, now a professor of mathematics, who introduced him to Riemannian geometry and, more generally, to differential geometry Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that uses the methods of differential and integral calculus, as well as linear and multilinear algebra, to study problems in geometry. The theory of plane and space curves and of surfaces in the three-dimensional Euclidean space formed the basis for its initial development in the eighteenth and. On the recommendation of Italian mathematician Tullio Levi-Civita Tullio Levi-Civita (pronounced /'levi ˈʧivita/) was an Italian mathematician, most famous for his work on absolute differential calculus (tensor calculus) and its applications to the theory of relativity but who also made significant contributions in other areas. He was a pupil of Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro, the inventor of tensor calculus. His, Einstein began exploring the usefulness of general covariance In theoretical physics, general covariance is the invariance of the form of physical laws under arbitrary differentiable coordinate transformations. The essential idea is that coordinates do not exist a priori in nature, but are only artifices used in describing nature, and hence should play no role in the formulation of fundamental physical laws (essentially the use of tensors A tensor is an object which includes and extends the notion of scalar, vector, and matrix. The term is slightly ambiguous, and this often leads to misunderstandings; roughly speaking, there are different default meanings in mathematics and physics. In the mathematical fields of multilinear algebra and differential geometry, a tensor is first of) for his gravitational theory. For a while Einstein thought that there were problems with the approach, but he later returned to it and, by late 1915, had published his general theory of relativity General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. It unifies special relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation, and describes gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or spacetime in the form in which it is used today.[44] This theory explains gravitation as distortion of the structure of spacetime In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space being three-dimensional and time playing the role of a fourth dimension that is of a different sort than the spatial dimensions. According to certain Euclidean space perceptions, the universe has three by matter, affecting the inertial Inertia is the resistance of mass, i.e. any physical object, to a change in its state of motion. The principle of inertia is one of the fundamental principles of classical physics which are used to describe the motion of matter and how it is affected by applied forces. Inertia comes from the Latin word, "iners", meaning idle, or lazy motion of other matter. During World War I, the work of Central Powers The Central Powers was one of the two sides that participated in World War I, the other being the Entente (Allied) Powers scientists was available only to Central Powers academics, for national security reasons. Some of Einstein's work did reach the United Kingdom and the United States through the efforts of the Austrian Paul Ehrenfest Paul Ehrenfest was an Austrian physicist and mathematician, who obtained Dutch citizenship on March 24, 1922. He made major contributions to the field of statistical mechanics and its relations with quantum mechanics, including the theory of phase transition and the Ehrenfest theorem. On December 21, 1904 he married Russian mathematician Tatyana and physicists in the Netherlands, especially 1902 Nobel Prize-winner Hendrik Lorentz Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He also derived the transformation equations subsequently used by Albert Einstein to describe space and time and Willem de Sitter Willem de Sitter was a Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer of Leiden University Leiden University , located in the city of Leiden, is the oldest university in the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1575 by Prince William of Orange, leader of the Dutch Revolt in the Eighty Years' War. The royal Dutch House of Orange-Nassau and Leiden University still have a close relationship. The Queens Juliana and Beatrix and crown-. After the war ended, Einstein maintained his relationship with Leiden University, accepting a contract as an Extraordinary Professor The meaning of the word professor varies. In some English-speaking countries, it refers to a senior academic who holds a departmental chair, especially as head of the department, or a personal chair awarded specifically to that individual. For example, in the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, The Netherlands, United; for ten years, from 1920 to 1930, he travelled to Holland regularly to lecture.[45]
In 1917, several astronomers accepted Einstein 's 1911 challenge from Prague. The Mount Wilson Observatory The Mount Wilson Observatory is an astronomical observatory in Los Angeles County, California. The MWO is located on Mount Wilson, a 5,715 foot (1,742 m) peak in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, northeast of Los Angeles in California, U.S., published a solar spectroscopic Spectroscopy was originally the study of the interaction between radiation and matter as a function of wavelength . In fact, historically, spectroscopy referred to the use of visible light dispersed according to its wavelength, e.g. by a prism. Later the concept was expanded greatly to comprise any measurement of a quantity as function of either analysis that showed no gravitational redshift.[46] In 1918, the Lick Observatory The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory, owned and operated by the University of California. It is situated on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, USA. The observatory is managed from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where its scientific staff moved in the mid-1960s, also in California, announced that it too had disproved Einstein's prediction, although its findings were not published.[47]
Eddington Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, OM, FRS was a British astrophysicist of the early 20th century. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object, is named in his honour's photograph of a solar eclipse A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Sun and the Earth so that the Sun is fully or partially covered. This can only happen during a new moon, when the Sun and Moon are in conjunction as seen from the Earth. At least two and up to five solar eclipses can occur each year on Earth, with between zero and two of them being total, which confirmed Einstein's theory that light "bends". On 7 November 1919, the leading British newspaper The Times The Times is a daily national newspaper published in the United Kingdom since 1785 when it was known as The Daily Universal Register printed a banner headline that read: "Revolution in Science – New Theory of the Universe – Newtonian Ideas Overthrown".[48]However, in May 1919, a team led by the British astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, OM, FRS was a British astrophysicist of the early 20th century. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object, is named in his honour claimed to have confirmed Einstein's prediction of gravitational deflection of starlight A gravitational lens is formed when the light from a very distant, bright source is "bent" around a massive object (such as a cluster of galaxies) between the source object and the observer. The process is known as gravitational lensing, and is one of the predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity by the Sun while photographing a solar eclipse with dual expeditions in Sobral Sobral is the second largest municipality of Ceará, after Fortaleza. Its economy is based on agriculture, services and some manufacturing industries. The city has two public universities and the Universidade Estadual do Vale do Acaraú, and also counts with two other private colleges, Faculdade Luciano Feijão and Inta - a theological institute, northern Brazil Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil) listen (help·info), is a country in South America. It is the fifth largest country by geographical area, occupying nearly half of South America, the fifth most populous country, and the fourth most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the, and Príncipe Príncipe is the smaller of the two major islands of São Tomé and Príncipe lying off the west coast of Africa. It has an area of 136 km² and a population of around 5,000 people. It rises in the south to 948 metres at Pico de Príncipe, in a thickly forested area forming part of the Obo National Park. The north and centre of the island were, a west African island.[43] Nobel laureate Max Born Max Born was a German born physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 30s. Born won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics praised general relativity as the "greatest feat of human thinking about nature";[49] fellow laureate Paul Dirac Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, OM, FRS (8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was a British theoretical physicist. Dirac made fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He held the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and spent the last fourteen years of his life at was quoted saying it was "probably the greatest scientific discovery ever made".[50] The international media guaranteed Einstein's global renown. There have been later claims that scrutiny of the specific photographs taken on the Eddington expedition showed the experimental uncertainty to be comparable to the same magnitude as the effect Eddington claimed to have demonstrated, and that a 1962 British expedition concluded that the method was inherently unreliable.[48] The deflection of light during a solar eclipse was confirmed by later, more accurate observations.[51] Some resented the newcomer's fame, notably among some German physicists, who later started the Deutsche Physik Deutsche Physik or Aryan Physics was a nationalist movement in the German physics community in the early 1930s against the work of Albert Einstein, labeled "Jewish Physics" (German: Jüdische Physik). The term was taken from the title of a 4-volume physics textbook by Philipp Lenard in the 1930s (German Physics) movement.[52][53]
<<Table of Contents Albert Einstein (pronounced /ˈælbərt ˈaɪnstaɪn/; German: [ˈalbɐt ˈaɪ̯nʃtaɪ̯n] ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a theoretical physicist. He is best known for his theories of special relativity and general relativity. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially | Next>> | Show All>>
