General Relativity Theory has come to pass in my time.

 

 

A few year back – in 2002 to be precise I started getting interested with the work of Stephen Hawkins and black holes – (thanks to Tom and Nancy Stuehler from Baltimore who gave me priceless material on this). I have listened to his lectures and even read some of his books. It is a very interesting topic. It is said that fact is sometimes stranger than fiction, and nowhere is this more true than in the case of black holes. Black holes are stranger than anything dreamt up by science fiction writers, but they are firmly matters of science fact.

Yesterday was a very interesting moments for those who have always gazed up with quest to probe – what is up – or out there? Einstein theory of Relativity was finally and practically confirmed by scientist. They demonstrated a recording of two black holes colliding a billion light years away.

A Century Ago, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Changed Everything. Worse, he had discovered a fatal flaw in his new theory of gravity, propounded with great fanfare only a couple of years before. And now he no longer had the field to himself. 

Gravity Probe-b

So Einstein went back to the blackboard. And on Nov. 25, 1915, he set down the equation that rules the universe. It describes space-time as a kind of sagging mattress where matter and energy, like a heavy sleeper, distort the geometry of the cosmos to produce the effect we call gravity, obliging light beams as well as marbles and falling apples to follow curved paths through space.

This is the general theory of relativity.  Since the dawn of the scientific revolution and the days of Isaac Newton, the discoverer of gravity, scientists and philosophers had thought of space-time as a kind of stage on which we actors, matter and energy, strode and strutted.

With general relativity, the stage itself sprang into action. Space-time could curve, fold, wrap itself up around a dead star and disappear into a black hole. It could jiggle like a belly, radiating waves of gravitational compression, or whirl like dough in a mixer. It could even rip or tear. It could stretch and grow, or it could collapse into a speck of infinite density at the end or beginning of time.

A team of scientists announced yesterday Thursday 11^th February that they had heard and recorded the sound of two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, a fleeting chirp that fulfilled the last prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

I’m glad to be awake in this moment of Stephen Hawkins and the confirmation of General Relativity.

This is a big deal and many people will read this discovery of the century millennium to come.

I will raise my glass to this.

(disclaimer - I'm just a village boy who gazes the star with strange curiosity.)

Please click   Illustration by New York Times