What is the flaw in Einstein's theory of relativity??

Question

And what is the likely impact going to be????

short answers please??? I'm not a scientist... Thanks.

Answer 1

I never knew there was a flaw - i always thought the guy was a genius.

Answer 2

Nobody has found a flaw yet but many people have looked, finding a flaw is a certain Nobel prize.
The theory intrinsically contradicts quantum mechanics so there is a known problem where the 2 theories meet. This is not a flaw, it is just a domain where the theory does not apply.
Just as a side line does anyone know why it is still called a theory? By any definition it should be known as a Law by now.

Answer 3

According to recent experiments, relativity has no known flaws. The cosmological constant would be the only questionable aspect, though this may prove to be an actual phenomonon.
E=mc^2 is correct to around one part in 50 million, but it does not apply to atomic or subatomic particles. These have have a dedicated energy measure known as the electron volt, this can be expressed in Joules using conversion.

Answer 4

In his General Theory of relativity, aka 'the Theory of Gravtation', Einstein considered adding a 'cosmologocal constant' to account for a supposed hidden 'anti-gravity' force (small but real).
He called his cosmological constant "the biggest blunder of my life", and removed it from his Theory. He should have left it in! He had Not blundered at all. What he called his "biggest blunder" turns out to be right on! Today's theories of gravitation lean heavily towards a cosmological constant after all, in which a small anti-gravity force is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.

Answer 5

You cannot expect to learn anything very illuminating about relativity in a very short answer.
I have kept it down to a page which is 'relatively' short.
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Einstein produced two (related) theories.

1 The Special Theory of Relativity
Deals mainly with constant relative velocities.
Starting with a) The speed of light does not depend on speed of the source, and
b) No experiment can detect an absolute velocity through space,
Einstein showed that amazing consequences follow.

For example mass increases, length shortens and time slows down when an observed body travels at near to the speed of light relative to an observer.

Also if one twin stays on earth while his brother rockets off to a distant planet and back, the rocket twin will really be younger than the earth twin when he gets back.

That mass and energy are equivalent, so that high levels of concentrated energy can be converted into matter and antimatter, (e.g. electron-positron pairs), or that a small amounts of certain specially prepared matter can be converted into vast amounts of energy,(atomic bombs).
The famous formula E = mc^2 gives the conversion rate because it means
Energy released = mass x (square of the speed of light)


2 The General Theory of Relativity
Deals with accelerations and gravity.
Newton was always unhappy with the "force at a distance" aspect of his theory of gravitation; and although he showed how gravity effects could be calculated, (if one assumes an inverse square central force), he left it for successive generations to explain its cause.

Observing that a man falling off a roof feels no gravitational force, Einstein concluded that his physical acceleration relative to an observer locally balances the earths gravitational field.
[Only strictly true if the gravitational field is perfectly homogeneous, since otherwise "tidal" effects must be considered]. Similarly an astronaut in his rocket finds that a gravitational pull or a reaction to his rocket accelerating produce a similar sensation of backward thrust.
This was the idea of equivalence, (gravitational = inertial).

His insight was to conclude that our conventional 3-dimensional view of things was wrong; and that we need to treat a quantity ict, (square root of minus 1 x square of speed of light x time),
as a fourth dimension, (something like another space dimension) and that to get the right answers we need to measure the "interval" between two events by taking the square root of the sum of the squares of these four dimensions. This was to be called spacetime.

Einstein produced a set of non-linear gravitational field equations that were at first thought to be insoluble; but one of the ideas behind them was that a large mass like a star, or our sun, actually curved spacetime itself. Then if a second small mass (planet) was in the region of significantly curved spacetime, its path would be a geodesic, i.e. a free motion along a straight "world-line", but along a curved spacetime geometry. This is often illustrated by the analogy of the curved path of a marble on a rubber sheet weighed down by a bowling ball in the middle.
So mass curves the geometry of spacetime, and the geometry of spacetime in turn tells governs how masses move.

At the time of the development of the General Theory astronomers thought that the universe was static, whereas Einstein's original formulation suggested that the universe should either contract or expand. He introduced a factor, (the cosmological constant lambda referred to in another posting), that supposed a long-range repulsive force, as an attempt to describe the static situation he assumed existed. Thus he missed a chance to predict the expansion detected by Hubble and later he thought that this was his greatest blunder. As that same post remarks, some form of the cosmological constant lambda is now regarded as a necessary inclusion in Lemaitre models, (as opposed to Friedmann models), of the universe and dark matter and/or dark energy, (of which little is yet clearly established), may be involved.

I am not sure if this is the "flaw you refer to.

More likely you have heard that current versions of Quantum theory and General Gravitational theory clash. Gravity theories are based on smooth continuous functions; but at the first Planck time, a tiny 10^-43 of a second into the early universe, or at spacings less than the Planck length, 10^-33 of a centimetre, quantum uncertainties are too large for any purely gravitational theory to be applicable. Much work is currently being done to resolve the clash and produce a new consistent Quantum-Gravity theory.
[Try "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity", Lee Smolin for an introduction to problems/approaches]

Answer 6

It has been proved, that Einstein was completely right with his theory of relativity. So there is no flaw.

Answer 7

Einstein could not agree with randomness, and therefor he could not reach a unified field theorem. It took a little longer before a mathematical solution was reached which allowed for the apparently random behavior of subatomic particles. Now we use a formula which places positive pi next to negative pi in order to cancel out the presence of patterns.

Answer 8

No flaw per se.
But the theory cannot be applied at sub-atomic level. For that there is law's of Quantum Physics.

Answer 9

it's hard to understand for people who don't study math and physics

other than that, not much flaw at all

as Archimedes is reported to have said "there is no royal road to mathmetics" ... you have to do the work before you can know what you;'re talking about

Answer 10

I guess the only flaw is that it is not very easy to prove.