How many theories did einstein have

In this experiment, if Einstein had been wrong, these gyroscopes would have always pointed in the same direction.

In order to know where you are, you need a receiver — like your phone, a ground station and a network of satellites orbiting Earth to send and receive signals. At the same time, special relativity would say time moves slower for objects that move much faster than others. While the difference per day is a matter of millionths of a second, that change really adds up. For comparison, the energy of visible light falls between about 2 and 3 electron volts. A formation of galaxies appear to form a smiling face.

Two yellow-hued blobs hang atop a sweeping arc of light. The lower, arc-shaped galaxy has the characteristic shape of a galaxy that has been gravitationally lensed — its light has passed near a massive object en route to us, causing it to become distorted and stretched out of shape.

Map of dark matter made from gravitational lensing measurements of 26 million galaxies in the Dark Energy Survey. As an exoplanet passes in front of a more distant star, its gravity causes the trajectory of the starlight to bend, and in some cases, results in a brief brightening of the background star as seen by a telescope.

The artistic animation illustrates this effect. This phenomenon of gravitational microlensing enables scientists to search for exoplanets that are too distant and dark to detect any other way. This is the first picture of a black hole. Using the Event Horizon Telescope, scientists obtained an image of the black hole at the center of the galaxy M Credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. He felt very strongly that all of nature must be described by a single theory.

In addition, he believed there was a link between the need to resolve apparent paradoxes of quantum mechanics and the need to unify electromagnetism and gravity.

Einstein always insisted that quantum mechanics could be derived from some more complete theory. For Einstein, who was never satisfied with the weirdness and randomness inherent in quantum theory, any acceptable unified field theory had to have quantum mechanics as a consequence. In the s, when Einstein began his work on a unified field theory, electromagnetism and gravity were the only known forces, and the electron and the proton were the only known subatomic particles.

Most physicists at the time were excited about the newly discovered quantum theory, and spent their time absorbed with exploring its bizarre and interesting consequences. But Einstein, and several other scientists, did work on the problem of unification. In , Hermann Weyl proposed a unification scheme based on a generalization of Riemannian geometry.

Oskar Klein later refined this idea. Einstein liked the five-dimensional approach. Over the years, a standard, if incomplete, explanation emerged for why the world went mad over a physicist and his work: In the wake of a horrific global war—a conflict that drove the downfall of empires and left millions dead—people were desperate for something uplifting, something that rose above nationalism and politics.

Einstein, born in Germany, was a Swiss citizen living in Berlin, Jewish as well as a pacifist, and a theorist whose work had been confirmed by British astronomers. Mythological as this story sounds, it contains a grain of truth, says Diana Kormos-Buchwald, a historian of science at Caltech and director and general editor of the Einstein Papers Project.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, the idea of a German scientist—a German anything —receiving acclaim from the British was astonishing. He uses his fame to repair contact between scientists from former enemy countries. At that time, Kormos-Buchwald adds, the idea of a famous scientist was unusual.

Marie Curie was one of the few widely known names. However, Britain also had something of a celebrity-scientist in the form of Sir Arthur Eddington, the astronomer who organized the eclipse expeditions to test general relativity. Eddington was a Quaker and, like Einstein, had been opposed to the war. Much was made of the supposed incomprehensibility of the new theory. They do not personally concern ordinary human beings; only astronomers are affected.

Things were not going any smoother in London, where the editors of the Times confessed their own ignorance but also placed some of the blame on the scientists themselves. Einstein himself, find no little difficulty in making their meaning clear. Einstein of some appointment in another part of Berlin, and old-fashioned time and space enforced their wonted absolute tyranny over him who had spoken so contemptuously of their existence, thus terminating the interview.

Unified field theory : Einstein spent much of his later years trying to merge the fields of electromagnetism and gravity. He was unsuccessful, but may have been ahead of his time. Other physicists are still working on this problem. There are many applications of Einstein's work, but here are some of the most notable ones in astronomy:.

Gravitational waves : In , the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory LIGO detected space-time ripples — otherwise known as gravitational waves — that occurred after black holes collided about 1. LIGO also made an initial detection of gravitational waves in , a century after Einstein predicted these ripples existed. The waves are a facet of Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Mercury's orbit : Mercury is a small planet orbiting close to a very massive object relative to its size — the sun. Its orbit could not be understood until general relativity showed that the curvature of space-time is affecting Mercury's motions and changing its orbit. There is a small chance that over billions of years, Mercury could be ejected from our solar system due to these changes with an even smaller chance that it could collide with Earth.

Gravitational lensing : This is a phenomenon by which a massive object like a galaxy cluster or a black hole bends light around it. Astronomers looking at that region through a telescope can then see objects directly behind the massive object, due to the light being bent.

A famous example of this is Einstein's Cross, a quasar in the constellation Pegasus : A galaxy roughly million light-years away bends the light of the quasar so that it appears four times around the galaxy. Black holes : In April , the Event Horizon telescope showed the first-ever images of a black hole. The photos again confirmed several facets of general relativity, including not only that black holes exist, but also that they have a circular event horizon — a point at which nothing can escape, not even light.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community space.

Elizabeth Howell is a contributing writer for Space. She is the author or co-author of several books on space exploration. Elizabeth holds a Ph. She also holds a bachelor of journalism degree from Carleton University in Canada, where she began her space-writing career in Besides writing, Elizabeth teaches communications at the university and community college level, and for government training schools.

To see her latest projects, follow Elizabeth on Twitter at howellspace. Elizabeth Howell.