WHAT IS TH THEORY OF RELATIVITy?

Answer 1

It states that, when at rest, we are travelling at the speed of light through time, thus treating time as one of four vectors or axes in the space-time continuum.

Think of it as a car doing runs on a salt lake (like those that you see to break spped records). The car can go at a speed of 300mph. Lets suppose Bob does 4 runs at different times, and each run his time from when he passes the start flag to when he reaches the end flag is longer. When Bob looks at the results, he realizes that his first run was a straight line, but his 2nd run was slightly akewed so that it wasn't a straight line but sloped to the left. The 3rd run was further sloped to the left and the 4th was even more so. Why were the times of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th runs longer?
Because in the 1st run, the car was using all its speed to travel on a straignt, lets say east-west, line. By the 2nd run, part of the cars speed was being used to travel on a north-south axis instead of on the east-west axis, so it took the car longer to travel the same distance in the east-west axis. So, as you see, since the car can only do 300mph max. the speed in one axis is relative to the speed in another axis (is afected by the speed in another axis).

Going back to my first postulate, that we travel through time at the speed of light. Space-time has 4 axis (east-west, north-south, up- down and time). At rest, we travel through time at the speed of light, but as soon as we start moving in any of the other axes, we start "bleeding" our time speed. This explains Einsteins paradox of an astronaut returning from a space mission to find his twin brother is older than him (he "bled" more speed from the time axis, while his brother was "stationary" and thus travelling at the speed of light through time). It also explains why nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

Answer 2

E=Mc^2
E -Energy
M-mass
c - speed of light (300000km/s)
Energy is proportional with mass.
No object can travel faster than the speed of light. If it did it would mean that it's mass is of infinite value. Mass increases with speed, fact only valid for speeds closer to that of light). Only wave lengths can travel with the speed of light because they have close to no mass.

Answer 3

Use the source Luke!

Theory of relativity
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Two-dimensional analogy of space-time distortion described in General Relativity.The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, refers specifically to two theories: Albert Einstein's special relativity and general relativity.

The term "relativity" was coined by Max Planck in 1908 to emphasize how special relativity (and later, general relativity) uses the principle of relativity.




Contents [hide]
1 Special relativity
2 General relativity
3 References and links
4 External links



[edit] Special relativity
Main article: Special relativity
Special relativity is a theory of the structure of spacetime. The reason we have three space dimensions and one time dimension, or better, space-time, could lie in the way gravity works. One of the foundations of Poincaré’s Theory is the fact that gravity can affect time. It was introduced in Albert Einstein's 1905 paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". Special relativity is based on two postulates which are contradictory in classical mechanics:

That observers, when in uniform motion relative to one another, have no way of determining whether one of them is "stationary" (Galileo's principle of relativity),
That the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of their motion or of the motion of the source of the light.
The resultant theory has many surprising consequences. Some of these are:

Time dilation: Moving clocks tick slower than an observer's "stationary" clock.
Length contraction: Objects are shorter along the direction in which they are moving.
Relativity of simultaneity: two events that appear simultaneous to an observer A will not be simultaneous to an observer B if B is moving with respect to A.
E=mc²: energy and mass are equivalent and interchangeable.
The defining feature of special relativity is the replacement of the Galilean transformations of classical mechanics by the Lorentz transformations. (See Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism and introduction to special relativity).





[edit] General relativity
Main article: General relativity
General relativity is a theory of gravitation developed by Einstein in the years 1907 - 1915.

The development of general relativity began with the equivalence principle, under which the states of accelerated motion and being at rest in a gravitational field (for example when standing of the surface of the Earth) are physically identical. The upshot of this is that free fall is inertial motion: In other words an object in free fall is falling because that is how objects move in the lack of any force being exerted on them, insead of this being due to the force of gravity as is the case in classical mechanics. This is incompatible with classical mechanics and special relativity because in those theories intertially moving objects cannot accelerate with respect to each other, but objects in free fall do so. To resolve this difficulty Einstein first proposed the spacetime is curved. In 1915 devised the Einstein field equations which relate the curvature of spacetime with the mass, energy, and momentum within it.

Some of the consequences of general relativity are:

Time goes slower at lower gravitational potentials. This is called gravitational time dilation.
Orbits precess in a way unexpected in Newton's theory of gravity. (This has been observed in the orbit of Mercury and in binary pulsars).
Even rays of light (which are weightless) bend in the presence of a gravitational field.
The Universe is expanding, and the far parts of it are moving away from us faster than the speed of light.
Frame-dragging, in which a rotating mass "drags along" the space time around it.
Technically, general relativity is a metric theory of gravitation whose defining feature is its use of the Einstein field equations. The solutions of the field equations are metric tensors which define the topology of the spacetime and how objects move intertially.

Answer 4

well i am pretty sure that nobody can explain it perfectly except einstein
my advice learn it from a good book (resnick and halliday reccomended) or from your teacher so that you won't get confused.
if you are not able to undrstand the book or if ur teacher does'nt explain it send me a message and i will try my best to explain it

Answer 5

It claims that everything in this world is RELATIVE!

Answer 6

Did"nt u read Einstin"s definition?.but i myself dont know the answer.sorry.

Answer 7

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Answer 8

What goes up must come down.