albert einstein relativity the special and the general theory

Therefore, they must be manifestations of the same phenomenon, some cosmic field that accounts for both acceleration and gravity. There was no way to make a distinction between the effects of gravity and the effects of being accelerated.Įinstein dubbed this “the equivalence principle.” The local effects of gravity and of acceleration are equivalent. If he dropped an object, it would fall to the floor at an accelerated rate-just as if he stood on Earth. He would feel his feet pressed to the floor. Then Einstein imagined that the man was in the same chamber way out in space, where there was no perceptible gravity, and a constant force was pulling the chamber up at an accelerated rate. There would be no way for him to tell-no experiment he could do to determine-if the chamber was falling at an accelerated rate or was floating in a gravity-free region of outer space.

Any objects he dropped would float alongside him. In the chamber, he would feel weightless. Despite Einstein's propensity to focus on science rather than the “merely personal,” even he was not likely to watch a real human plunging off a roof and think of gravitational theory, much less call it the happiest thought in his life.Įinstein soon refined his thought experiment so that the falling man was in an enclosed chamber, such as an elevator, in free fall. Like other great tales of gravitational discovery-Galileo dropping objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the apple falling on Isaac Newton's head-it was embellished in popular lore. The tale of the falling man has become an iconic one, and in some accounts it actually involves a painter who fell from the roof of an apartment building near the patent office. While sitting in his office in Bern, a thought “startled” him, he recalled: “If a person falls freely, he will not feel his own weight.” He would later call it “the happiest thought in my life.” The physics world had not yet caught up with his genius. It was late 1907, two years after the “miracle year” in which Albert Einstein had produced his special theory of relativity and his theory of light quanta, but he was still an examiner in the Swiss patent office. The general theory of relativity began with a sudden thought.

Albert einstein relativity the special and the general theory