One hundred years ago this month, Albert Einstein published a series of four papers that introduced the theory of general relativity. After the publication of his theory of special relativity in 1905, Einstein realized that special relativity could not be applied to gravity or an object undergoing acceleration.
In 1907 Einstein came to a key realization. Imagine someone inside a closed room sitting on Earth. That person can feel the gravitational field. Now put that same room out in space, far from the gravitational influence of any object, and give it an acceleration of 9.8 meters per second. There would be no way for someone inside the room to distinguish between gravity and uniform acceleration.
Einstein then wondered how light would behave in the accelerating room. If one shines a flashlight across the room, the light would appear to bend downward since the floor of the room would catch up with the light. Since gravity and acceleration are equivalent, light would bend in a gravitational field.
Finding the correct mathematical expression of these ideas took Einstein several more years. In 1912, Einstein’s friend, mathematician Marcel Grossman, introduced him to the tensor analysis of Bernhard Riemann, Tullio Levi-Civita, and Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro. Three more years of wrong turns and hard work followed, but in November 1915 the work was complete.
In the four November 1915 papers, Einstein laid the foundation of the theory, and in the third he used general relativity to explain the precession of the perihelion of Mercury. The point at which Mercury has its closest approach to the Sun, its perihelion, moves. This movement could not be explained by the gravitational influence of the Sun and other planets, and so in the 19th century a new planet, Vulcan, orbiting close to the Sun, had even been proposed. No such planet was needed. Einstein could calculate the shift in Mercury’s perihelion from first principles.
However, the true test of any theory is if it can predict something that has not yet been observed. General relativity predicted that light would bend in a gravitational field. In 1919, British expeditions to Africa and South America observed a total solar eclipse to see if the position of stars near the Sun had changed. The observed effect was exactly what Einstein had predicted. Einstein instantly became world-famous.
When the eclipse results were announced, British physicist J.J. Thomson described general relativity not as an isolated result but as “a whole continent of scientific ideas.” And so it proved to be. Black holes and the expanding universe are two concepts that have their roots in general relativity. Even GPS satellites must account for general relativistic effects to deliver accurate position measurements to people on Earth.