In this Universe that we live in, contains a vast amount of secrets that are unknown to man. These secrets have been a curiosity to mankind since before the great Greek philosophers and scientist like Aristotle and Plato, and to this day we do not know all of it. Physics is the science that tries to uncover all of the unknown through observations and analysis of all the phenomena we experience every day. Physics is applied to almost everything imaginable, from chemistry to biology, from planet rotations to a proton. Great minds like Planck, Stephen Hawkins, Hubble, Isaac Newton and the famous Albert Einstein have tried and contributed to our understanding of how the universe is and how it works. And to this day, the discoveries that Albert Einstein has made are still being interpreted and used to make explanation of the Universe. Through Physics many unknown marvels have been discovered and the most recent ones were possible through Einstein’s contributions and his ideas.
One of the most famous physicists, Albert Einstein, changed history during his lifetime. He proposed some mind raveling ideas that to this day are not fully understood. Einstein discovered the extremely famous theory of relativity which we all have heard of it before even if we do not understand it. It is thought that in 1931 Einstein was the first to attempt to build a model of the Universe using his ideas and concepts that he thought to were true. He made the “Lambda” which is a term he used “that would counteract gravity and allow the whole system to stay beautifully in balance” (Powell 1). Although, some people argue that he quit trying to fully understand this term, others say that he kept experimenting with it and came to the conclusion that “as space expands, new matter appears out of nowhere to fill the new empty space. The two processes balance out, so that the average density of the cosmos never changes” (Powell 1). This contradicts one of the fundamental laws in Physics which is mass cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed. This conclusion that Einstein made up can be better explained using Dark Energy. This “Lambda” is now regarded as a new way of seeing the Universe by thinking it as an energy field or matter-creation field. All of this explained here was derived from the General Theory of Relativity and even though Einstein stopped implementing “lambda” in his research it is used to this day.
If one can go deeper into the foundation of all of these discoveries recently made in Physics most can be traced down to one of Einstein’s greatest treasure that he left mankind, the Theory of Relativity. This theory is not yet approved to become a law because there is not a conventional way of proving this and for it to become a law it needs a lot of experimentation and there cannot be an exception, but it has been used to explain many and extremely important phenomena in our Universe. It was used by Hubble to explain how the Universe is constantly expanding on its own; it is also used by Karl Schwarzschild who was one of the first scientists to propose the idea of the black holes. This theory helped create the area of Physics known as Quantum Physics when Einstein did an experiment implementing the Theory of Relativity to back up Planck’s experiment that proposed “that light energy exists not as continuous waves, but as a stream of miniscule quanta particles or units” (Burgess 1). It was also used to understand and propose the most accepted idea of the creation of the Universe, The Big Bang Theory. If the Theory of Relativity comes out to be false, all of the latest understandings and discoveries made in the last 20 to 40 years could end up in a trash can, due that most of them have come from the simple equation , E=mc^2, which means, energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.
There are still a lot of discoveries and mysteries that the Universe contains. That is why scientist are working hard to fully understand the “why” and the ‘how” everything works because if we do understand it, we may implement that knowledge in some of our everyday living. And other brilliant minds like Newton’s, or Aristotle’s will keep on discovering new things about Physics and helping mankind understand this complex place that we live in. Although Einstein died more than 50 years ago, his ideas and his theories are his legacies that he left to mankind to act as guidelines to help us unravel all the secrecy the Universe contains.
Citations:
Burgess, Joanna. "10 Discoveries Relativity Made Possible: Discovery Channel." Discovery Channel. N.p., n.d. Web. . .
Powell, Corey. "On His 135th Birthday, Einstein is Still Full of Surprises - Out There | Discovermagazine.com." Out There. Discover, 14 Mar. 2014. Web. . .
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