Can anyone explain the Theory of relativity by Albert Einstein in simple english?
Someone else asked exactly this the other day, and I did my best then to provide the highlights. I’ll try again for you now. Firstly, it’s important to understand that relativity is such an incredibly complicated subject, that the likes of you and me (lay people) would find it virtually impossible to comprehend entirely. But we can understand the effects it has on the universe rather than why it has those effects. OK. As you know there are 2 theories, special and general. Special came first, and changed the way the universe and time were viewed by scientists, and general explained, amongst other things, how and why gravity exists. Before Special Relativity, it was assumed that time was an unchanging component, that it ticked steadily onwards at the same rate and speed, regardless of the circumstances. That, if I stayed on earth and you zoomed into space in a space ship our watches would read the same time at every stage. But Einstein’s famous theory showed this wasn’t true. We each of
Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity: E = M C2(Squared not x2) Energy = Mass x The speed of light in a vacuum squared Basically Einstein was on a fast train, he noticed his watch was SLIGHTLY different to Big Ben when he passed it, so what it means is, if you’re speed is great enough the gravity will have a effect which causes time to go slightly faster but you will not notice because you’re smack bang right in the middle of the effect, so in other words you’ll age faster in a train than walking.
OK, here goes. Apologies if this is long, but hey, we are talking about a tricky subject! LOL I only have a very basic understanding of the “Specific Theory”, but for what it’s worth here goes… First, as others have mentioned, the speed of light is constant. That means, whenever you look at light, as far as you are concerned it is *always* travelling at light speed. If you had a gun that fired bullets at, say, 2000m/s and you fired it forwards from an aircraft that was doing 500m/s, then relative to you, the bullet will move away at 2000m/s, but relative to someone you just flew passed, standing still on the ground, the bullet would move away from them at 2500 m/s (bullet speed + aircraft speed) Light doesn’t work like this. As someone mentioned above, if you were in a spaceship doing half light speed and you turned on a torch (facing forward), a person you just flew passed would *not* see the light from the torch moving off at one and a half times the speed of light. (Speed of space
