The Generalization

Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation by Albert Einstein, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. The Generalization

The Generalization

Not content with all this, Einstein proceeded, a few years ago, to develop a “general” theory of relativity, which includes the effects of gravitation.

To make this idea clear, let us imagine two observers, each, with his measuring instruments, in a large and perfectly impervious box, which forms his “closed system.”

The first observer, with his box and its contents, alone in space, is entirely at rest.

The second observer, with his box and its contents, is, it may be imagined, near the earth or the sun or some star, and falling freely under the influence of its gravitation.

This second box and its contents, including the observer, will then fall under the gravitational force, that is, get up an ever-increasing speed, but at exactly the same rate, so that there will be no tendency for their relative positions to be altered.[314]

According to Newton’s principles, this will make not the slightest difference in the motions of the physical objects comprising the system or their attractions on one another, so that no dynamical experiment can distinguish between the condition of the freely falling observer in the second box and the observer at rest in the first.

But once more the question arises: What could be done by an optical experiment?

Einstein assumed that the principle of relativity still applied in this case, so that it would be impossible to distinguish between the conditions of the observers in the two boxes by any optical experiment.

It can easily be seen that it follows from this new generalized relativity that light cannot travel in a straight line in a gravitational field.

Imagine that the first observer sets up three slits, all in a straight line. A ray of light which passes through the first and second will obviously pass exactly through the third.

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This book is part of the public domain. Albert Einstein (2020). Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022.

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