Einsteins Theory of Relativity: in simple?

Question

Hi,
I do Physics (GSE level only) and am interested in knowing what Einsteins Theory of Relativity is in simple terms.

I just want to know what he has said, how it helps us, and what does this mean about time stopping ... .

Thanks, remember in Physics terms, but relatively simple as I am not doing higher physics yet.

Thumbs up... for all you answers, and thanks!

Answer 1

the theories of special and and general relativity is highly complex, but is backed up fully by modern research, so let me explain from a professional, accurate perspective:

light, believed to be a combination of light and particles (matter), can be measured accurately regardless of at what speed you are traveling. furthermore, time and length can unexpectantly varry under certain cercumstances. matter and light actually are dirrectly influenced by distorted speeds and magnitudes in time and space, much the same way as mileage or fuel economy can be warped by environmental conditions.


WHAT THIS MEANS SO FAR: As the speed of an object increases, its mass does as well, while its length decreases and time slows down. Once that bundle of matter reaches 1X light speed, it is instantly converted from matter to infinate energy, with omnipotent levels of mass, likely resulting in catastrophic anomalies.

therefore, the reverse indicates what some have termed "inteligent design", which makes sense when considering that the opposite of a catastrophic anomaly is the creation of indiviual energies and particles. when matter was originally formed, an infinate energy created matter, or perhaps was transformed into it, time was created (as opposed to stopped).

In a way, if man could travel the speed of light, he would be able to become God!

einstein imagined that if a ray of light bounced between two mirrors spaced apart from one another, 'for an observer static with the mirrors this takes a given time. For an observer moving with respect to them this takes longer (the speed of light is the same and the space is more). From here he calculated the equation for transforming time.'

various scientists took the discoveries of each other and perfected them, ultimately resulting in Einstein creating the final hypothosis. the philosophy relates to the concept of four-dimentional space. the time-space interval can be found using the formula s^2 = x^2 + y^2 + z^2 - (ct)^2.

as you may have noticed, this is based on the two dimentional pythagorian theorum.

A fellow scientist, Hermann Minkowski, proved to Einstein, a selt-sceptic against his own theory, that the system proposed circularly complimented itself, which meant that it was entirely impossible for any condradictions to ever be found.

in simplest terms, this all means that the theory of the evolutionary design, and the presumption of infinite age for all existing matter is improbable, if not impossible.

all matter had its origins based in a transformation from an ultimate scientific energy or force to a state of matter (existing energy is either left over from this force, or turned from matter back into energy afterward).

Answer 2

Einstein showed that mass and energy are interchangable by the formula E=mc^2. Then he showed that as an object approaches the speed of light it's mass increaces and it's length decreases. At the speed of light it's mass would be infinite and its length would be zero and time (relative to the object) would stop.

Imagine a clock made of two mirors with a beam of light bouncing back and forth between them. Now as this clock approaches the speed of light the distance that the light travels increases since the diagonal distance the light needs to travel is longer than the perpendicular distance between the mirrors. So the clock slows down. At the speed of light the beam of light could no longer bounce back and force because all of it's velocity would be used to keep up with the clock so time stops.

Answer 3

All reference frames (points of view) get the same laws of physics.

That is really the key.

The hard part starts when you try to find the laws that will be the same in all frames.

Special Relativity is for "non-accelerating" frames. That is points of view that may be moving relative to one another, but not accelerating (no spinning for example). This is the easy one!

General Relativity allows acceleration between the points of view, for example me on the merry-go-round, you on the ground watching. This took many years to work through.

From there we move to "simultaneous events", when do two observers in different frames see an event occur? This leads very quickly to the conclusion (if you believe in "relativity") that not all clocks run at the same speed - the laws of physics may not change from one point of view to the next, but the rate at which time passes can!!!

Hope that helps!

Answer 4

I think there are several aspects to his relativity ideas. Basically, he said that as a mass speeds up it's time slows down. There is a shift in the time space framework that a mass occupies such that the closer the mass gets to the speed of light, the slower time it experiences, or, it ages more slowly. The speed of light, he said, was the universal speed limit for any mass.

With his E-mc^2, he related mass to energy. He intuitively saw a relation bewteen energy and mass, but after much thinking he saw that the link was the speed of light squared. Mass can be converted to an enormous amount of energy because c^2 is an enormous number.

He also talked about gravity and how gravity distorts space, thus affecting the time it takes for things to pass through a gravitational field, including light. Gravity affects space and time.

Lastly, he said that one's motion is relative, that is, it depends on the reference point you view and measure the motion. When something travels very fast, like near the speed of light, it's motion relative to an observer is different depending on the motion of the observer. And the speeding object also sees the environment that it's passing through different because of its motion. You see, he said that motion and the measurement of time and space is all relative because motion distorts the time space axis- it all depends on your frame of reference. And objects traveling at different speeds experience different time frames.

You only notice all this at very very very fast speeds.

Answer 5

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Answer 6

The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, refers specifically to two theories: Albert Einstein's special relativity and general relativity.

Special relativity
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For a non-technical introduction to the topic, please see Introduction to special relativity.
The special theory of relativity was proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein in his article "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". Some three centuries earlier, Galileo's principle of relativity had stated that all uniform motion was relative, and that there was no absolute and well-defined state of rest; a person on the deck of a ship may be at rest in his opinion, but someone observing from the shore would say that he was moving. Einstein's theory combines Galilean relativity with the postulate that all observers will always measure the speed of light to be the same no matter what their state of uniform linear motion is.[1]

This theory has a variety of surprising consequences that seem to violate common sense, but that have been verified experimentally. Special relativity overthrows Newtonian notions of absolute space and time by stating that distance and time depend on the observer, and that time and space are perceived differently, depending on the observer. It yields the equivalence of matter and energy, as expressed in the famous equation E=mc2, where c is the speed of light. Special relativity agrees with Newtonian mechanics in their common realm of applicability, in experiments in which all velocities are small compared to the speed of light.

The theory was called "special" because it applies the principle of relativity only to inertial frames. Einstein developed general relativity to apply the principle generally, that is, to any frame, and that theory includes the effects of gravity. Special relativity doesn't account for gravity, but it can deal with accelerations.

Although special relativity makes relative some quantities, such as time, that we would have imagined to be absolute based on everyday experience, it also makes absolute some others that we would have thought were relative. In particular, it states that the speed of light is the same for all observers, even if they are in motion relative to one another. Special relativity reveals that c is not just the velocity of a certain phenomenon - light - but rather a fundamental feature of the way space and time are tied together. In particular, special relativity states that it is impossible for any material object to travel as fast as light.
General relativity
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For a non-technical introduction to the topic, please see Introduction to general relativity.
General relativity (GR) is the geometrical theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915/16.[1][2] It unifies special relativity and Sir Isaac Newton's law of universal gravitation with the insight that gravitation is not due to a force but rather is a manifestation of curved space and time, with this curvature being produced by the mass-energy and momentum content of the spacetime. General relativity is distinguished from other metric theories of gravitation by its use of the Einstein field equations to relate spacetime content and spacetime curvature.

General relativity is currently the most successful gravitational theory, being almost universally accepted and well confirmed by observations. The first success of general relativity was in explaining the anomalous perihelion precession of Mercury. Then in 1919, Sir Arthur Eddington announced that observations of stars near the eclipsed Sun confirmed general relativity's prediction that massive objects bend light. Since then, many other observations and experiments have confirmed many of the predictions of general relativity, including gravitational time dilation, the gravitational redshift of light, signal delay, and gravitational radiation. In addition, numerous observations are interpreted as confirming the weirdest prediction of general relativity, the existence of black holes.

In the mathematics of general relativity, the Einstein field equations become a set of simultaneous differential equations which are solved to produce metric tensors of spacetime. These metric tensors describe the shape of the spacetime, and are used to obtain the predictions of general relativity. The connections of the metric tensors specify the geodesic paths that objects follow when traveling inertially. Important solutions of the Einstein field equations include the Schwarzschild solution (for the spacetime surrounding a spherically symmetric uncharged and non-rotating massive object), the Reissner-Nordström solution (for a charged spherically symmetric massive object), and the Kerr metric (for a rotating massive object).

In spite of its overwhelming success, there is discomfort with general relativity in the scientific community due to its being incompatible with quantum mechanics and the reachable singularities of black holes (at which the math of general relativity breaks down). Because of this, numerous other theories have been proposed as alternatives to general relativity. The most successful of these was Brans-Dicke theory, which appeared to have observational support in the 1960s. However, those observations have since been refuted and modern measurements indicate that any Brans-Dicke type of deviation from general relativity must be very small if it exists at all.