General Relativity

[Achilleus]

Hiya Im a Physics Newbie

 

 

 

If Anyone can explain the law of relativity in a way which a stupid guy like me could understand, would mean alot tah

[Randox]

I can take a stab at it, but my understanding is limated by limated abilitys in non-Ecludian geomatry.

 

 

 

The basic idea is that space is curved, what we percive as a strait line would nto be strait if our perception of time was not so limated. To help you viualise this, imagin people living on a sphere who could only percive 2 dimensions. There world would look flat and they could travel an unlimated distance in any direction. However if one were to walk in a strait line for a very long time he would eventualy end up where he started. So space is something like the surface of that sphere. Time is the fourth dimension and we are limated to a seqential perception of its existance.

 

 

 

This theory seeks to explain gravity. All objects and energy put dents in this curved space time. Now think about a marble in a bowl with a compleatly round bottom (no flat part). If that bowl is uprigth and you put the marble in it, the marble will go to the bottom. Thats what happens when objects further bend space-time, they create pits that the object falls into along with other objects within range. Large objects like plannets create much larger dents that are cosiquently harder for little things like humans to 'climb' out of. I belive that it is other 'lines' in space that actualy push objects into the 'dents' created by massive bodys (massive as in 'mass' not size).

 

 

 

Hope this helps and is correct.

[Biabf]

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity

 

 

 

Explains it all in "simple" terms.

[assassin_696]

General relativity is the modification of special relativity to include gravity.

 

 

 

In layman's terms, all it basically says is that matter warps/bends the fabric of spacetime, which explains gravitation. The theory also predicts that light is bent or slightly slowed near an object of mass. Time is also slower near objects of larger. The abstract isn't too hard to grasp for either theory, special relativity deals with the constancy of the speed of light and the relative nature of observations.

 

 

 

The maths involved in both is pretty damn complicated though, and I wouldn't pretend to know the first thing about it really. Working out time dilation isn't too tricky but after that you get into tensor calculus and all that kind of thing, which is beyond me.

[Stilev]

general relitivity is a very simple idea, the problem is it is massivily complex to prove it as said above time and space is a grid and gravity bends space and time thats why light bends etc

 

 

 

i'd suggest going and picking up a book on it, i've read a couple of them, really boring :P