For precisely 100 years, as of today, Albert Einstein has been a proven genius. His incredible general theory of relativity has since been fundamental to our understanding of the nature of reality, specifically of how the cosmos works.
There is no need to get into equations to understand the basics of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. It says that ‘gravity’ as a natural force does not exist. It’s simply a symptom of the warping of space and time by the presence of massive objects. Light moves through space-time in a straight line, but if space-time is curved by celestial bodies, then the light will appear to be in a different place. “Space-time gets curved by the presence of matter, and light follows a straight line on the surface of space-time because it has no mass,” explains Los Angeles-based astrophysicist and aerospace engineer Dr. Erin Macdonald, who specializes in general relativity, having previously worked iin the LIGO Scientific Collaboration searching for gravitational waves. “Therefore if light encounters curved space-time due to the presence of mass it’s going to curve around as well, so could appear to be coming from a direction that it wasn’t originally.”
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For precisely 100 years, as of today, Albert Einstein has been a proven genius. His incredible general theory of relativity has since been fundamental to our understanding of the nature of reality, specifically of how the cosmos works.
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Einstein’s general theory of relativity
There is no need to get into equations to understand the basics of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. It says that ‘gravity’ as a natural force does not exist. It’s simply a symptom of the warping of space and time by the presence of massive objects. Light moves through space-time in a straight line, but if space-time is curved by celestial bodies, then the light will appear to be in a different place. “Space-time gets curved by the presence of matter, and light follows a straight line on the surface of space-time because it has no mass,” explains Los Angeles-based astrophysicist and aerospace engineer Dr. Erin Macdonald, who specializes in general relativity, having previously worked iin the LIGO Scientific Collaboration searching for gravitational waves. “Therefore if light encounters curved space-time due to the presence of mass it’s going to curve around as well, so could appear to be coming from a direction that it wasn’t originally.”