When was theory of relativity invented

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You are here : Home. Share this article Facebook Twitter LinkedIn. All articles. He published the first part of his theory — special relativity — in the German physics journal Annalen der Physik in and completed his theory of general relativity only after another decade of difficult work. He presented the latter theory in a series of lectures in Berlin in late and published in the Annalen in Starting from these two postulates, Einstein showed that space and time are intertwined in ways that scientists had never previously realized.

Through a series of thought experiments, Einstein demonstrated that the consequences of special relativity are often counterintuitive — even startling. If your rocket speeds up, your mass and that of the rocket will increase.

The faster you go, the heavier things become and the more your rocket will resist your efforts to make it go faster. Einstein showed that nothing that has a mass can ever reach the speed of light. Because the speed of light is such a big number, even a tiny amount of mass is equivalent to — and can be converted into — a very large amount of energy. The basic idea is that instead of being an invisible force that attracts objects to one another, gravity is a curving or warping of space.

The more massive an object, the more it warps the space around it. For example, the sun is massive enough to warp space across our solar system — a bit like the way a heavy ball resting on a rubber sheet warps the sheet. That was the idea. But there were many practical obstacles to surmount, both in the technicalities of making the observations, and in the expeditionary logistics. The Armistice in November left just enough time to put the plan into action.

Dyson, in overall charge of the expeditions, remained in England. The details of the dual expeditions are well served by No Shadow of a Doubt. Eddington, Kennefick reveals, had terrible luck. Crommelin had much better conditions in Brazil. Despite technical issues with equipment that left many plates badly blurred, his measurements were decisive, and were noticeably closer to the Einstein prediction than to the Newtonian.

The results were announced collectively in November that year, at a special joint meeting of the Royal Society and Royal Astronomical Society in London. It made front-page news around the globe.

That initial conclusion by Dyson, Eddington, Crommelin and their teams was subsequently confirmed by many further eclipse experiments. Yet Eddington has been accused by some of mishandling the eclipse measurements.

Kennefick discusses the criticisms in some detail. I can add a couple of brief points. All the eclipse measurements are tabulated in F. Dyson et al. A , —; It is straightforward, and also quite instructive, to analyse them using modern statistical techniques. The eclipse expeditions of did much more, cementing his reputation among physicists and transforming him into an international superstar. Moreover, it was a British experiment testing the ideas of a German theorist.

Detailed and readable, the book complements No Shadow of a Doubt as an account of the eclipse expeditions and their political backdrop. His result was precisely the same as the Newtonian value.