Einstein’s most revolutionary idea is that gravity is geometry. The theorems of geometry are not eternal truths, but can be changed by mass and energy. This is my first longer explanation of ideas that are well established in science, but not well understood by the public. To keep this from becoming too long and overwhelming, I have split the six parts of this explanation into three blog posts. The two parts for today are about black holes and the experimental evidence of general relativity.
Einstein’s most revolutionary idea is that gravity is geometry. The theorems of geometry are not eternal truths, but can be changed by mass and energy. This is my first longer explanation of ideas that are well established in science, but not well understood by the public. To keep this from becoming too long and overwhelming, I have split the six parts of this explanation into three blog posts. The two parts for today are about how the write the Pythagorean Theorem for spacetime and how to modify it to include gravity.
Einstein’s most revolutionary idea is that gravity is geometry. The theorems of geometry are not eternal truths, but can be changed by mass and energy. This is my first longer explanation of ideas that are well established in science, but not well understood by the public. To keep this from becoming too long and overwhelming, I have split the six parts of this explanation into three blog posts. The two parts for today are the introduction and an explanation of how different geometries have different versions of the Pythagorean Theorem.
In the mid 1800s, two of the planets were discovered to move slightly differently from what was expected from Newtonian mechanics: Uranus and Mercury. Although the discrepancy in the data looked similar, the underlying cause was very different. In one case, it meant that there is an additional planet. In the other, it meant that Newtonian mechanics was wrong.
