Who came up with the theory of relativity? Detailed answer

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Who came up with the theory of relativity? Detailed answer

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Who came up with the theory of relativity?

No, it wasn't Einstein. The theory of relativity was first stated by Galileo Galilei in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World in 1632.

To understand the theory of relativity, the first step is to understand the theory it has replaced. We are talking about the theory of "absolute rest", postulated by Aristotle in the IV century BC. e. According to Aristotle's version, rest is the natural state of any body, and, left to itself, the body will certainly return to this natural state.

The theory of relativity states that all bodies are in motion relative to each other and that the definition of a body as being "at rest" is pure convention. It follows from this that the speed of this or that body cannot be expressed as absolute - only as "relative" to something else.

The Italian astronomer and philosopher Galileo Galilei was also one of the founders of modern physics. He is best known as the man who supported the theory of Copernicus (or Aristarchus) that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

The Catholic Church considered the hypothesis heretical and subjected the scientist to the court of the Inquisition. However, Galileo did not at all rot in a casemate infested with rats for his principles. He served his sentence in the luxurious home of the Archbishop of Siena, after which Galileo was allowed to return under comfortable house arrest to his villa near Florence. It was only in 1992 that the Church officially admitted that it was sort of mistaken about Galileo and that the scientist's views on the structure of the solar system were still correct.

In this matter, Galileo really turned out to be right, but even such a person as he was by no means immune from mistakes. So, Galileo's favorite argument, confirming the rotation of the Earth, was that it was this movement that caused the tides to ebb and flow. Galileo noticed that the Mediterranean Sea was much more tidal than the Red Sea and attributed this to the "sloshing" of the water caused by the Earth's rotation, which he said was stronger in the case of the Mediterranean Sea because it was oriented east to west.

Galileo's arguments were completely refuted by the testimony of direct eyewitnesses - sailors who claimed that the tides occur twice a day, and not once, as Galileo assumed. The scientist refused to believe in "such nonsense."

Albert Einstein understood that Galileo also made a mistake in his theory of relativity - more precisely, that the theory "fell apart" in exceptional circumstances.

Einstein's work "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", published in 1905, was the first to talk about the "special theory of relativity", which described the unusual properties of particles moving in vacuum at a speed close to the speed of light.

The "general theory of relativity", which imposes the principles of special theory on large-scale phenomena like the force of gravity, was published ten years later - in 1915.

Author: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

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