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Word Gems
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Einstein
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the 1915 paper
The General Theory of Relativity
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return to "Einstein" main-page
Albert Einstein: "The special theory, on which the general theory rests, applies to all physical phenomena with the exception of gravitation; the general theory provides the law of gravitation and its relation to the other forces of nature."
Albert Einstein: "The theory of relativity ["special" and "general"] may indeed be said to have put a sort of finishing touch to the mighty intellectual edifice of Maxwell and Lorentz, inasmuch as it seeks to extend field physics to all phenomena, gravitation included."
empty "space" loses its meaning
Albert Einstein: "When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter. ... Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended. In this way the concept 'empty space' loses its meaning... The particle can only appear as a limited region in space in which the field strength or the energy density are particularly high."
Wikipedia: "General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalizes special relativity and refines Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of partial differential equations."
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Editor's last word:
The “Special” Theory is denominated as such as it addresses a limited subset of the natural world, excluding the force of gravity.
The “General” Theory speaks to this deficit with an explanation of the inner workings of gravity, a view quite different from that presented by Isaac Newton.
It should be noted, as well, as per the admission of Einstein, that the overall theory of relativity, special and general, is an extension of the work of Faraday-Maxwell and Lorentz.
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