And once again Einstein was right
ILYA HEL
Now, scientists have discovered gravitational waves — ripples of space-time. Albert Einstein hypothesized their existence 100 years ago, and direct observations provided evidence of the last masterpiece of the great scientist: the General theory of relativity. Scientists from Caltech and MIT have found a gravitational wave, generated by two colliding black holes.
Einstein was not always considered a genius. When he first made his dubious thoughts about relativity, some scientists have organized protests. Others simply mocked the Einstein in the press, decrying it as dangerous ideas, and Jewish origin.
But the work of a scientist turned physics since its inception. Einstein’s universe quickly and naturally plays with the concepts of position and speed — except for the light that flashes by in a vacuum at a speed of 300 million meters per second. Space and time are mixed in a four-dimensional molasses called space-time, which can stretch and distort the substance, matter, mass. And moving matter is in curved space-time — hidden geometry, which we perceive as gravity.
Sounds like utter nonsense.
But over the last 100 years of experiments have shown again and again: Einstein is right. His theory has been proven too many times to list all these times here, but even the most striking cases are impressive.
Light is both a wave and a particle
The name Einstein is most often associated with relativity, but the Nobel prize he received for work on light. Classical physics postulated that light is a wave, but this theory could not explain how and why metals emit electrons when illuminated this phenomenon is called photoelectric effect.
Einstein explained this strange behavior by assuming that light actually consists of discrete wave packets (photons) with energy related to their frequency. This discovery has led to the emergence of quantum physics in which all the atoms behave in a strange wave, and Einstein helped this to happen.
Space-time can be bent
The first major victory of Einstein in the field of General relativity came when he explained the mysterious oscillation of the orbit of mercury. In 1859, the brilliant French astronomer Urbain the Verrier attributed this effect had not yet seen a planet called Vulcan supposedly it attracts mercury. But years of searching has not led to anything, no Volcano, no one has.
To the greatest joy Einstein his new theory of relativity brought the Vulcan to his feet, showing that the mass of the Sun curves space-time like a bowling ball would distort firm, but soft surface. Because mercury is so close to the Sun, oscillating his orbit is the closest path through space-time, curved by the mass of the Sun. And there was not any more one planet: it’s all in the geometry of the Universe, which is not suspected by Newton.
Space-time can be a “lens”
Einstein right again, in may 1919 during a total solar Eclipse. According to the theory of relativity, space-time, curved by the sun’s mass will bend the incoming light from the stars, like a lens.
British astronomer Arthur Eddington did a lot of pictures of the Eclipse and found that the Sun stretched star cluster the Hyades, escriviu light of certain stars by about one two thousandth the proportion of degree — in accordance with the prediction of Einstein, who doubled the curvature predicted by Newtonian physics.
Even Einstein did not expect how helpful this phenomenon will be of use to astronomers: using choose galaxies as a giant lens, astronomers can look into the past, in the earliest years of the Universe. And when the astronomers see that the lensing is caused by some invisible mass, this allows them to map vast areas of dark matter.
Rotating mass bends the space-time
Moreover, that matter warps space-time, the same as a bowling ball, so rotating mass like Earth easily pull the space around them, like a spoon in molasses. It affects the orbits of satellites nearest — whimsical effect of the dragging of the inertial reference systems, the effect of the lense – Thirring.
Predicted in 1918 General theory of relativity, the effect is the lense – Thirring received confirmation in 2004, when scientists found that the Earth’s rotation easily shifted the orbits of the two satellites. In 2011, NASA’s Gravity Probe B confirmed the find and said the numbers.
Gravity slows down time
The Einstein equations also give matter the ability to speed up or slow down time and change the color of the light.
We can observe the truth of this strange prediction even from the Earth: the light of distant stars takes a high frequency — or looks more blue than would have seen the observer in deep space. And the further you get away from the gravity well of the Earth, the lower and lower frequency receives the light radiated from the Earth, obeying the gravitational red shift.
In the end, ignore the theory of relativity cannot even your smartphone: without relativistic corrections, the clocks on GPS satellites tick at least 38 microseconds faster each day than on the Earth’s surface, destroying the accuracy of the system two minutes later and adding 10 miles of bugs on a daily basis.
