Einstein’s Relativity and its influences

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The theory of relativity is the basic theory about space-time continuum and gravitation which was mainly established by the greatest theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. According to the areas it aims to describe, Einstein’s theory of relativity can be classified into special relativity (space-time) and general relativity (gravitation) 1. The theory of relativity, as do quantum mechanics, brought a revolutionary impact on the foundation of modern physics, and thus had an impact on modern technology. And it impacted the “common sense” understanding that people had of the universe by its new concepts such as four dimensional spaces and curved space.
The influence of relativity on the traditional physics is it lead physics to a new level and changed our mind thoroughly. The principle of special relativity pointed out that both the Newtonian mechanics and Maxwell’s electrodynamics are covariant of Lorentz transformation so they can be unified. And the principle of general covariance which extended out from general relativity lead physics to the no-inertial system. So at both special and general level, the theory of relativity logically made physics into a perfect complete scientific system.
Beside its contribution to physics Einstein’s relativity also offered so many scientific bases for some breakthroughs and new technologies. We can divide the influences into two aspects.
First, special relativity describes the laws of motion of an object which moves at high speed. Meanwhile it offered the mass-energy relation which is E=mc^2 (E=energy m=mass c=speed of light). Although Einstein didn’t believe in quantum mechanics2, his mass-energy relation still helped in the establishment of it. Also this relation built the mathematical model ...

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..., however this cannot be achieved in practice. And some recent researches found that our space possibly is a multiply connected complex frame, thus shortcuts named wormhole exists. Gravitational lens effect which was predicted by general relativity makes the research of black holes, dark matter and dark energy possible for astronomers8.
Those technologies talked above may still too far from our daily lives, but actually the application of Einstein’s relativity is inundated with so many things around us, such as the smoke detector, screen, etc.
Through all the impacts of Einstein’s relativity on our modern lives, techniques and even our minds discussed above, so we can see how important Einstein’s relativity is to us and how much we have gained. And the great ideas from it will continuously challenge human mind and the arguments around it shall improve our science.

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