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Enter the General Relativity Rabbit Hole: Unraveling Einstein's Theory That Deconstructs Space and Time - CNET

Enter the General Relativity Rabbit Hole: Unraveling Einstein's Theory That Deconstructs Space and Time - CNET

Enter the General Relativity Rabbit Hole: Unraveling Einstein's Theory That Deconstructs Space and Time - CNET
Jun 21, 2022 3 mins, 59 secs

In 1916, Einstein announced his holy grail theory of general relativity.

Basically, Einstein realized that space is much more than the "space" we live in and that time transcends the clocks we've invented.

There's no beginning or end to this fabric of space and time, or as he called it, spacetime. .

But there are other effects too, like time moving slower depending on where you are in the universe and space-borne magnifying glass phenomena dubbed gravitational lensing. .

Regardless of when your indoctrination to general relativity camp was -- even if it was five seconds ago due to my jam-packed intro -- I'd bet you thought it sounded bizarre.

I mean, it involves premises like the fourth dimension and an invisible fabric.

But trying to think about 4D space, for us, would be like Pac-Man trying to understand 3D space?

That would hurt his brain because there isn't a Z axis for Pac-Man like there isn't a time axis for us.

So as you read this, remember that everything we're about to discuss regarding general relativity lives in 4D.

Einstein's 1916 article published in Annalen der Physik on "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity.".

Imagine a nonmoving elevator on Earth and an accelerating one somewhere in space, traveling upward with a force exactly equivalent to the force of gravity (9.8 meters/second^2).

If there weren't any windows on these elevators, how could you tell if you were in the space one or the Earth one? .

Modifying that a little, what if you had to figure out if you were in a non-windowed elevator that wasn't moving in space and one on Earth that was falling, so you were experiencing weightlessness?

Weightlessness on Earth in the presence of gravity feels just like weightlessness in space in what we'd normally consider zero-gravity. .

General relativity just takes it a step further. .

OK, you might still be on that bit about Earth stopping you from falling through space.

If Earth weren't there, wouldn't we be floating around like astronauts on the International Space Station.

This brings us to part two of general relativity: The oceanlike fabric of spacetime sort of redefines the notion of falling.

If we put a bowling ball into this trampoline, it'd roll to the middle and make the stretchy material warp inward.

The trampoline is the fabric of spacetime, the bowling ball is Earth, and the marble is you?

Anyway, according to Einstein, anything in the universe with mass warps spacetime sort of like the bowling ball warps the trampoline.

Black holes warp it a whole lot, Earth warps it somewhat, the moon warps it a bit and even you warp it a teeny tiny amount.

But if you're still scratching your head, American physicist John Wheeler once perfectly explained general relativity in 12 words: "Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.".

That's general relativity.

From left to right: The moon warping spacetime, the Earth warping spacetime, the sun warping spacetime and a black hole absolutely smashing spacetime down to a single point: singularity.

But obviously, light traveling through a spacetime warp is crossing a longer distance than light traveling through empty space.

In short, time moves slower as a gravitational field in spacetime gets stronger

And with regard to Cooper, someone on Earth would observe time moving slower for him while he's on the black-hole-planet -- such that only one hour passes for every seven years on Earth

There are a few other ways that time dilation occurs due to general relativity, but this one gives you the general gist

Some experts argue that the fabric of spacetime could, theoretically, "fold" like that, especially near a super warped area such as regions around black holes

We've gone over the fact that black holes are a big player in the general relativity game, but let's zoom in to the voids for a moment

Because these leviathans are among the most gravitationally strong objects in the universe -- some have masses equal to billions of times that of our sun -- they don't just warp spacetime

The voids' spiral sent actual ripples through the fabric of spacetime, like the way dropping a rock in a pond would send ripples across the water

Since then, scientists have even managed to take two photographs of black holes in the universe, and both of these images show what warped spacetime near these abysses really looks like

Even aside from such concrete, visual proof of spacetime, mathematically speaking, experts have tried time and time again to find a flaw in Einstein's general relativity equations

General relativity states there's a fourth dimension that crochets together space and time, deeming linearity an illusion for our 3D minds, producing the far-fetched possibility of wormholes and creating a foundation for gravitational waves reverberating throughout the cosmos. 

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