[Презентация] Relativity

Einstein used his new equations to finally explain the mysterious mismatch in Mercury’s orbit. But that would never be enough to convince the scientific world. So he proposed two further tests. One involved a confusing phenomenon called gravitational redshift that was only proved in the 1960s. The other was about how light from a star is bent when it travels past another star. Einstein predicted the bending would be twice as strong as it would be if Newton was correct. He only had to wait four years for someone to find out who was right.

The test asks a simple question: do gravitational waves exist? Gravitational waves are caused by catastrophic cosmic events like colliding black holes. The sheer power of these events triggers ripples in the fabric of spacetime that fan out at the speed of light through the universe. What this means is that as the gravitational wave washes past, any object – be it a person or a planet – is distorted, stretching and squeezing in the wave’s direction. Einstein’s equations predicted gravitational waves would exist. But Einstein himself didn’t believe it. And it wasn’t until after his death in 1955 that other theoretical physicists showed that on this occasion he was wrong. But even then, another 60 years of scientific progress were needed before a gravitational wave was finally directly detected.

1) Newton’s theory of gravity perfectly explained Mercury’s orbit.