You seem to be asking specifically about general relativity, not special theory, that everyone here seems to be talking about.
The main point of the GR is that gravity is not really a force, but has the same nature as inertia. When you are on a bus, and it suddenly starts moving, you feel a "force" pulling you towards the back. This is the same kind of force that pulls you towards Earth, according to GR.
In some sense, we are all moving along the axis of time with the speed of light (that movement we interpret as time passing by). In the absense of gravity, the space-time is flat, and this axis is a straight line. But a presence mass, according to GR, curves the space-time a little, so that it is no longer flat, and the time axis, along which we are moving is no longer straight. Now, when you move along a curved path, like on a carusel, you feel a "centrifugal force" pushing you away from the center - the same thing happens in GR, only in 4-d - the mass close by curves your path in space-time, and makes you feel the "centrifugal force" that we call gravitiy.
2006-10-14 08:58:21
·
answer #1
·
answered by n0body 4
·
1⤊
0⤋
General relativity is the physics of the very large.
The earth is small, and our sun is far away, so anything an average person does can be described by the much simpler Newtonian physics. When you start dealing with things that are very large, like stars and galaxies, things start to move and interact differently. The science of how this works is called general relativity.
General relativity is a theory of space and time created by Albert Einstein and published in 1915. The central idea of general relativity is that space and time are two aspects of something called spacetime, which is curved in the presence of matter, energy, and momentum, in a way that Einstein wrote down in the Einstein Field Equations.
2006-10-14 14:10:31
·
answer #2
·
answered by smellyfoot ™ 7
·
1⤊
0⤋
Suppose you are on an Elivator or a Lift. You mark two points A and below that B. When the lift is stationary you drop a Feather from A. It takes x seconds to reach B. Now suppose the lift is made to move up and you drop again the Feather from A. This time it will take (x-a) seconds to reach B. This is a simple way to explain general relativity, since the motion of the Lift actually shortens the time taken to reach B by the Feather from A. The stand still Lift is said to be the non-inertial frame and the moving Lift is the inertial frame. In the inertial frame space seems to get shortened.
2006-10-14 14:15:55
·
answer #3
·
answered by Mathew C 5
·
0⤊
1⤋
Interesting answers.
When you go faster, time slows down for you and you get heavier. The closer you get to lightspeed, the more the effect. You'd reach zero time and infinite mass at the speed of light, so that's why you can't actually go that fast.
Einstein came up with that theory to explain why light shone from a moving object doesn't go faster than light shone from a still object. That's actually more Special relativity, but they come from the same problems.
2006-10-14 16:39:43
·
answer #4
·
answered by Nomadd 7
·
0⤊
1⤋
according to the great Einstein himself:
if you are sitting next to a beautiful girl, an hour would seem like a second but if u ever sat on a hot stove for a second, it would seem like hours.
this, my friend is relativity.
2006-10-14 14:24:18
·
answer #5
·
answered by shyam s 1
·
1⤊
0⤋
if you have a little time and broad band
try
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/relativity/
archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/
NumRel/GenRelativity.html
and
math.ucr.edu/home/baez/gr/
2006-10-14 14:14:10
·
answer #6
·
answered by WhoKnows?1995 4
·
0⤊
0⤋
1) ______________
2) ______________________
3) ______________________________
Please look at line No: 2 - and tell whether it is smaller or bigger.
When you compare it with Line No: 1 it is bigger and when compared with Line No: 3 it is smaller. Relativity is as simple as this fact. OK!
2006-10-14 14:10:34
·
answer #7
·
answered by Alrahcam 4
·
1⤊
2⤋
look on the internet
2006-10-14 14:06:59
·
answer #8
·
answered by Jojo 3
·
0⤊
1⤋