What is the General theory of relativity?
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General relativity is a geometric theory of gravitation, developing his special theory of relativity
General relativity is a fundamental building block of modern physics. She explains gravity based on the ability of space «bend», or, more specifically, connects the force of gravity with the changing geometry of space-time. founded «Common» theory of relativity (GTR) in 1915, ten years after the creation of «special» theory, applying a universal speed of light, and assuming that the laws of physics remain constant in any given reference frame. But so does General relativity complicated as it may seem at first glance?
How to understand General relativity?
The General theory of relativity can be summed up in just 12 words:«space-time tells matter how to move; matter tells space-time how to bend». But this brief description made by the physicist John Wheeler, hides a more complex and deep truth. In addition to the quantum theory, is one of the two pillars of modern physics – our working theory of gravity and a very large theory of the planets, galaxies and the Universe as a whole. It is a continuation of the special theory of relativity – but it is so massive that it took him 10 years, from 1905 to 1915, to go from one to the other.
As the New Scientist, according to the special theory of relativity (str) motion warps space and time. Einstein's General relativity combined it with the principle, observed by Galileo more than three centuries ago: falling objects accelerate with the same speed regardless of their mass.
After Galileo Isaac Newton showed that this can be true only if there is a strange coincidence: the inertial mass, which quantifies the body's resistance to acceleration, must always be equal to the gravitational mass, which quantifies the body's response to gravity. There is no obvious reason why this should be so, but no single experiment is never shared these two values.
Just as he used the constant velocity of light to build the special theory of relativity, Einstein declared it a principle of nature: the principle of equivalence. Armed with this new concept of space and time as intertwined «space-time» you can build a picture in which gravity is just a form of acceleration.
Massive objects bending space-time around itself, causing objects to accelerate toward them.
Although gravity dominates the large space scales and near very large masses such as planets or stars, she really is the weakest of the four known forces of nature – and the only thing not explained by quantum theory. Quantum theory and General relativity apply at different scales. This makes it difficult to understand what happened in the earliest moments of the Big Bang, for example, when the universe was very small, and the strength of gravity is huge. In another situation, when these forces collide at the event horizon of a black hole, there are unsolvable paradoxes.
Some physicists are pinning their hopes that one day some «theory of everything» will be able to combine quantum theory and General relativity, although these attempts, such as string theory and the theory of loop quantum gravity still has not produced any results. Meanwhile, Einstein's General relativity predicted that very dense concentrations of mass can distort space-time so much that even light cannot escape from it. We now call these objects «black holes» could photograph that surrounds these space monsters, and almost convinced that at the center of every massive galaxy is rotating supermassive black hole.
Mathematical equations of the General theory of relativity, proven again and again, are currently the most accurate method of prediction of gravitational interactions, replacing was developed by Isaac Newton a few centuries before.
But perhaps the biggest triumph of the General theory of relativity came in 2015, when they were discovered gravitational waves – ripples in space-time caused by the movement of very massive objects. The signal that the two black holes merged and merged, was a triumph of painstaking, patient work, done by an international team of researchers laboratories LIGO VIRGO. Read more about how the experts are looking for gravitational waves today, read Ilya Hel. Anyway, the development of a quantum-physical «version» the General theory of relativity remains a permanent goal of modern physics.
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