Outsmarting Einstein

摘要

Albert Einstein single-handedly changed the universe 100 years ago. For centuries, Isaac Newton's straightforward equations ruled the cosmos - or at least how physicists thought about it. Any object with mass exerted an attractive force on any other object with mass; the bigger the masses, and the closer the two objects, the stronger the attraction. Simple. But in 1915, Einstein suggested that things were a bit trickier. Even Einstein had to labor for almost a decade to formulate the complex mathematical relationships behind his magnum opus, his own version of gravity: the general theory of relativity. Gravitational attraction, it turned out, was due to nothing less than the warping of the cosmos. A massive object literally bends the three-dimensional fabric of the universe around it, taking any smaller objects in the vicinity along for the ride. This results in familiar phenomena like orbiting moons, planets and stars, as well as some stranger effects like cosmic ripples and black holes.