So, in science class, lately, we've been studying gravity (and the Law of Universal Gravitation, proposed by Sir Isaac Newton). Then today, I stayed home and didn't go to school. However, I spent the day doing productive stuff, among them, I watched a documentary I had recorded about Einstein. They were discussing his theory of General Relativity, and so, I found it to be very interesting.
As I was watching, the narrator started talking about Einstein's theory, and then pointed out that according to Einstein, there's no such thing as gravity. How is this possible? you may ask. Well, here's how:
- Sir Isaac Newton knew that unbalanced forces were needed to cause movement, and he thought of gravity when the apple fell. We know that. However, what they don't tell us is that he knew a push was needed to change the object's movement. When the apple fell, he had no explanation as to what that push might be. He resolved to make up the idea of gravitational pull.
- Einstein knew this. One day, he was thinking, and wondered what would happen if a man fell from a building. He concluded the man would be weightless, which was how he began to form his theory of special relativity.
- [insert lots of things here that I don't feel like explaining]
- He decided that what Newton thought to be gravity, is actually the bending of the time/space fabric around objects, and that such bending/warping causes objects to fall to other objects. Kinda like if you had a blanket stretched out, and you had a basketball (for example), and dropped it on the center of the blanket, which by the way isn't on the floor, but suspended, then obviously, that center part would sink down, right? Now, picture another ball (maybe a softball). If you drop it near the basketball, it will fall towards it because the blanket is "warped". This same thing happens in the universe.
- Hence, all we know about gravity is wrong.
- Einstein proved his theory with observations of starlight during solar eclipses (when the light passed near the sun, it was warped).
