Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity

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Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity originally came to him in 1907 while he was sitting in a chair in the patent office in Bern. Lost in thought, he began wondering what it would be like to drop a ball while falling off the side of a building (James Overdunn, Stanford Edu) Granting all this, he realized that the person who was falling would not be able to detect the effect of gravity on the ball whereas an observer could. Hence, he figured out the principle of Equivalence, that gravity pulling in one direction is completely equivalent to the acceleration in the opposite direction. Nevertheless, his work was only seen 8 years later when he published his theory in 1915.
Another key factor in Einstein’s theory of general relativity is that there is a “space-time”. Space-time is made up of four dimensions, three of the dimensions are made up of space and the 4th dimension is made up of time. He found that space-time is the same for everyone, but that at the higher altitudes time would actually go faster and at a lower altitude time goes slower. Another thing that he realized concerning space-time is that it is curved by matter that we see as gravity and that the denser an object is in space the more it distorts the space-time around it. Meaning that our sun will distort the space around it more than our planet or the moon does. This distortion is like a curvature, much like what happens around your feet when you stand on a trampoline. Now near a black hole, per Einstein’s theory, we have found that space-time is so curved that after an object passes through what we call “The Event Horizon” also known as the point of no return that the escape velocity will become so high that nothing can leave it.
In 2004, Gravity Probe B was ...

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...y used not once but twice and spent much of his later years speaking against the use of the atomic bomb. In today’s world we use nucular energy in many different ways ranging from our huge nuclear power plants, to our medical fields, and as small as our nanotechnologies. (Burgess, Discovery)

Conclusion
Einstein’s theories of Special and General relativity have helped shaped the world that we live in today. By helping us not only know more about space but about the world around us. It helped us understand the laws of nature are the same for everybody and that the speed of light is the same for everybody also. It helped us understand more about space with his theories on space-time and the curvature of space-time. His theories have led to many discoveries that help us in our everyday life such as nuclear technology that we use for our power and medical field.

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