The Fabric of Time

Einstein and The Fabric of Time

Albert Einstein was a German born scientist considered by many to be the greatest thinker of the twentieth century. In 1905 he published The Special Theory of Relativity and in 1915 he published The General Theory of Relativity; these two papers changed the scientific community forever. These books revolutionized the scientific views on gravity, electromagnetic, and the dimension of space and time. It gave birth to the most recognizable formula today; E=mc2. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1921 for his work in physics.

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity covers many scientific concepts; the one that’s the most intriguing is Einstein’s concept of time. The theory proposes that we live in a universe that is composed of four dimensions; he called this fourth dimension space-time (Phillips). One can imagine space-time as a bed sheet threaded by space and time. An object that contains a significant amount of mass, like the sun, causes this fabric to curve. In outer space, the best example is our solar system. The sun’s mass causes the largest degree of curvature in the solar system. The smaller objects, the planets, roll through the curved space of the sun. This phenomena result in the gravitational time dilation effect, concluding that time is relative and not absolute as Newtonian science claimed. According to Einstein, two people can experience the same event at different times (Einstein: Relativity General and Special Theory, 16). For example, if a star explodes thirty light years away from Earth, someone relatively close to the star would experience the event as it is happening, but it will take us thirty years for people on Earth to experience the same event. The second postulate of the gravitational time dilation is that the faster an object travels, the slower time progresses in relation to an object at rest.

The world that we live in and the life we live have shaped our minds to see time for what it is: ticking at...