ALBERT

EINSTEIN
(1879 – 1955)

Albert Einstein not

only didn’t complete high school, he tried to
enter college without a high school diploma.
He then slipped away from his boarding school in
Munich to join his family who had recently
moved to northern Italy, using a fake doctor’s
note.

He later applied to ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of

Technology but failed the entrance examination! After finally
graduating from college, and for two years afterwards, he was
unable to find an opening in his field, teaching physics. So he
took a job as a clerk in a Berne, Switzerland patent office in 1902.
Nineteen years later, Einstein won the Nobel Prize for his
discovery of the law of photoelectric effect.

By the time of his death in 1955, he had irretrievably changed

our view of reality, introduced several critical theories of relativity
and on gravitation, published additional concepts on
intermolecular forces, quantum mechanics, and the motions of
celestial bodies and what we now call the “Big Bang Theory”.
Einstein published over fifty scientific papers and is considered to
be the greatest physicist of all time. By the end of his life, he was
considered by many to be one of the greatest geniuses ever
born.

Einstein’s final words, spoken in

German, allegedly died with him, as it is
reported that the nurse at his side didn’t
understand a word of German. After his death,
his brain was preserved at Princeton Hospital in
hope that in the future,
scientists could determine what made Einstein
so brilliant. In 1999, he was named Time
magazine’s Person of the Century. Einstein was
an intensely human, utterly lovable human being, full of humour
and pithy sayings.
 This theoretical physicist introduced his Special Theory of
Relativity in 1905 and his General Theory of Relativity in 1915.
The first showed that Newton's Three Laws of Motion were only
approximately correct, breaking down when velocities
approached that of light. The second showed that Newton's Law
of Gravitation was also only approximately correct, breaking
down when gravitation becomes very strong.

Special Relativity

Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is valid for systems that are

not accelerating. Since from Newton's second law an acceleration
implies a force, special relativity is valid only when no forces act.
Thus, it cannot be used generally when there is a gravitational
field present (as we shall see below in conjunction with the
Principle of Equivalence, it can be used over a sufficiently
localized region of spacetime).

We have already discussed some of the important implications of

the Special Theory of Relativity. For example, the most famous is
probably the relationship between mass and energy. Other
striking consequences are associated with the dependence of
space and time on velocity: at speeds near that of light, space
itself becomes contracted in the direction of motion and the
passage of time slows. Although these seem bizarre ideas
(because our everyday experience typically does not include
speeds near that of light), many experiments indicate that the
Special Theory of Relativity is correct and our "common sense"
(and Newton's laws) do not apply at speeds approaching that of
light.

General Relativity

The General Theory of Relativity

was Einstein's stupendous effort
to remove the restriction on
Special Relativity that no
accelerations (and therefore no
forces) be present, so that he
could apply his ideas to the force of gravity. It is a measure of the
difficulty of the problem that it took even the great Einstein
approximately 10 years to fully understand how to do this. Thus,
the General Theory of Relativity is a new theory of gravitation
proposed in place of Newtonian gravitation.
Tests of the Theory of General Relativity

General Relativity and Newton's gravitational theory make

essentially identical predictions as long as the strength of the
gravitational field is weak, which is our usual experience.
However, there are several crucial predictions where the two
theories diverge, and thus can be tested with careful
experiments.

1. The orientation of Mercury's orbit is found to precess in

space over time, as indicated in the above figure (the
magnitude of the effect is greatly exaggerated for purposes
of illustration). This is commonly called the "precession of
the perihelion", because it causes the position of the
perihelion to move around the center of mass. Only part of
this can be accounted for by perturbations in Newton's
theory. There is an extra 43 seconds of arc per century in
this precession that is predicted by the Theory of General
Relativity and observed to occur (recall that a second of arc
is 1/3600 of an angular degree). This effect is extremely
small, but the measurements are very precise and can
detect such small effects very well.
2. Einstein's theory predicts that the direction of light
propagation should be changed in a gravitational field.
Precise observations indicate that Einstein is right, both
about the effect and its magnitude. We have already seen a
spectacular consequence of the deflection of light in a
gravitational field: gravitational lensing.
3. The General Theory of Relativity predicts that light coming
from a strong gravitational field should have its wavelength
shifted to larger values (a redshift). Once again, detailed
observations indicate such a redshift, and that its
magnitude is correctly given by Einstein's theory.
4. The electromagnetic field can have waves in it that carry
energy and that we call light. Likewise, the gravitational
field can have waves that carry energy and are called
gravitational waves. These may be thought of as ripples in
the curvature of spacetime that travel at the speed of light.

Just as accelerating charges can emit electromagnetic

waves, accelerating masses can emit gravitational waves.
However gravitational waves are difficult to detect because
they are very weak and no conclusive evidence has yet
been reported for their direct observation. They have been
 observed indirectly in the binary pulsar. Because the arrival
time of pulses from the pulsar can be measured very
precisely, it can be determined that the period of the binary
system is gradually decreasing. It is found that the rate of
period change (about 75 millionths of a second each year) is
what would be expected for energy being lost to
gravitational radiation, as predicted by the Theory of
General Relativity.

The Modern Theory of Gravitation

Our best current theory of

gravitation is the General Theory
of Relativity. However, only if
velocities are comparable to that
of light, or gravitational fields are
much larger than those
encountered on the Earth, do the
Relativity theory and Newton's theories differ in their predictions.
Under most conditions, Newton's three laws and his theory of
gravitation are adequate.

The portrait on the cover is by legendary photographer Philippe

Halsman.