Einstein

Albert Einstein brought upon change in both the world of science and the world of today. He mentioned many controversial ideas, that at his time, were thought you be ridiculous. In my opinion, one of his best theories was about Space Time and the laws that the universe relies on. Einstein was able to prove that time was relative. Meaning that time doesn't operate the same way all over the universe. This of course was shocking to anyone who lived in his time. The idea that time was changing was very farfetched when we witness time moving at the same speed every day. But Einstein was in fact correct. Time could be beat. Time could almost literally be ignored. And if you were to do this, you would have to move faster than the speed of light. To better explain this, I'll use the most common form of explanation for this concept. Say that you have a twin brother or sister. An astronaut takes you onto a space ship, leaving your sibling behind. You then proceed to fly around the earth for 30 years as your twin sits around back on earth. When you land, something significant can be seen. Not only is your twin 30 years older but you have not aged. This concept was truly crazy, because not only would that make the trip seem instantaneous, but we ask the question: "What happens on the spaceship?" But of course we cannot achieve such a feat. We can barely fathom how much energy it would take to move the speed of light, mostly because light itself has no mass. So when you try to move mass that speed, you find yourself with a problem. Einstein not only determined the factors of light speed but also came up with an explanation for space. Picture the universe as a large trampoline. If you were to place a bowling ball (let's use this as the sun) in the center the trampoline, it would form an indentation. This indentation is what represents gravity. When you roll a small marble (let's use this as earth or some planet) across the trampoline, you'll find that it will roll towards the bowling ball. The proximity of the marble to the bowling ball is also taken into account, because the depth of the indentation is much deeper near the bowling ball than it is near the outskirts of the trampoline. It's this method that keeps our planets in orbit. It's this continuous falling that stops our planets from falling into the sun. But you still have adapt the trampoline model to the 3rd dimension, because we all realize that the universe isn't some flat piece of fabric. You must picture it like a sponge the pinches inward when a object has a large mass. And the sponge itself is just a force and not an object. These two theories that Einstein came up with are not only hugely important to where we are in science, but were the most horrific sounding things to the common people of his time.


For more on the twins and spaceship demonstration, go here.