What is space-time theory

 The space-time theory is one of the most fundamental theories in modern physics. The idea that space and time are two different entities that can be separated has been around since the early 1900s, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that physicist Paul Dirac proposed that they were actually just different aspects of the same entity, which was called spacetime. This helped explain a lot of the strange things we observe in our universe, from black holes to quantum mechanics to Einstein’s theory of general relativity and so much more!

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Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second

The speed of light in a vacuum, as measured by a physicist, can be approximated at 299,792,458 meters per second. One way to understand this phenomenon is to imagine yourself standing at a bus stop on Earth. If you could send a pulse of light in one direction towards another person who is at the bus stop 100 meters away from you, then that person would receive the light nearly instantly because the distance between you two is negligible when compared to the speed of light. In comparison, if you were sending someone on Earth an email that your friend was on Mars reading them right now as opposed to sending them a chat message where they won't see it for minutes after you sent it because of our limited internet connection speeds here on Earth.

Space-time can be thought of as a fabric that bends in time

We're used to thinking of time as an unchanging line that has a past, present, and future; this is what Einstein originally suggested in his Special Theory of Relativity. But over time, physicists found inconsistencies with this view - mainly that they couldn't reconcile what they were observing with a constant velocity of light. There was no possible way for something to travel through space faster than light without breaking certain laws.

Imagine bending time back and forth

The space-time theory, proposed by Albert Einstein in his general relativity paper of 1915, would help bridge the gap between motion and understanding. Simply put, this law states that any object will move in a straight line at a constant speed. This was exemplified by Newton's laws of motion. Newton argued that a body will move along its trajectory with an acceleration given by the magnitude of force exerted divided by its mass. The sum total acceleration from all forces on a particle is zero when considered from every other reference frame because no point on earth has any net force being applied to it. Imagine bending time back and forth for example, you are jumping off a trampoline with one foot then with two feet down.

Time can be twisted into a pretzel

Einstein was able to show that all objects were distorted by the Earth's gravity in his work, but he also believed that if one could see a whole body of an object in its own frame of reference - or through something called a fourth dimension which might be time itself - then it would look as though no distortion was present. In a paper he wrote with dm Hilbert, who formalized some of Einstein's work into equations, they concluded: It seems to us conceivable that physics will ultimately not require a metric field. Time still has its effects on objects, but there is no fixed point where everything starts; time just flows at different rates depending on what you're looking at.

Gravity slows down light

The principle of equivalence, a central idea in Einstein's general relativity, says that gravity affects time as well as space. Put simply, everything that is accelerated will experience time passing more slowly. In simpler terms, this means when astronauts travel through space at high speeds and experience weightlessness (zero g), they will perceive themselves to be traveling in slow motion since there is less gravity to slow down their perception of time.

Where do black holes come from?

Black holes are a byproduct of any event that results in an intense gravitational field. As cosmic objects emit radiation, they become progressively hotter until they eventually collapse into themselves and form a black hole. Once they form, the force of gravity becomes so strong around them that not even light can escape. A great place to see some excellent examples of these events in action is at the Great Red Spot on Jupiter where gas becomes heated, compressed, and begins to swirl before forming its own singularity. Know more...

Wormholes

The time travel into the future or past that features prominently in science fiction may not be impossible, according to a new model that can be used to explore wormholes. A wormhole is a passage through space connecting two distant points in spacetime. These could hypothetically connect extremely long distances such as from one end of the universe to another, from one galaxy to another, or from one side of a black hole’s event horizon (the border beyond which nothing can return) to another. A quantum computer would use what Albert Einstein described as spooky action at a distance (popularly known as quantum entanglement) through which information could be exchanged between two different parts of spacetime without any physical connection. Know more...