EINSTEIN’S THEORY OF RELATIVITY

EINSTEIN & SPACE - TIME:

1. He placed the physically measured notion of time on essentially the same footing as that of space.
2. Einstein’s radical advance, as we have said was to propose that time is also essentially, on the same footing as the three dimensions of space. Hence the notion of a 4-dimensional combined space – time.
3. Observers oriented differently in space-time would measure time intervals, by their respective clocks, differently from each other. This is known as relativistic time dilation.
4. There can be events in time whose ordering depends on the orientation of the observer in the space-time.
5. If one event can casually influence a second event, it actually turns out that the first will always be before the other for all observers however differently oriented they may be in space-time.

1. In any case, by viewing time on the same footing as space, Einstein’s proposal upset deep-seated notions of time such as the absolute nature of simultaneity.
2. It was Einstein’s insight that two observers who are moving with respect to each other with a uniform velocity should be thought of as oriented differently in space – time.
3. “Everything is Relative” is often the profoundly misleading conclusion drawn from the above observations on space and time.
4. Different observers in relative uniform motion may thus view events in space-time from different orientations , but nevertheless arrive at invariant conclusions about physical phenomena. Everything is not  relative.

CONCLUSION:

10. The year 1905 is thus quite a unique occasion, which is why Einstein’s discovery continues to be a lasting legacy to this day. Though there have been many new theories proposed in Physics ranging from the domain of sub-nuclear regime to inter-galactic scales, we have yet to see a modification to the kinematic framework proposed by Einstein.
11.  The postulates of the Special Theory of Relativity have become guiding principles in the formulation of new dynamical laws.
12. Einstein’s later discoveries in his study of gravitation further deepened the physicist’s conception of space and time.
13. It changed the idea of space-time as a passive arena for all events and rather made space-time itself a participant. The cosmological expansion of the universe is the most striking demonstration of this idea.