Even if you don’t know much physics, you probably know one of its core tenets: an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion. In fact, in a vacuum where there’s literally nothing to slow things down, things don’t prefer being at rest or in motion. This plays out in real life all the…
Astronaut Scott Kelly returned from a year-long sojourn in space in June. His slightly older astronaut twin, Mark Kelly, stayed home as a control—part of NASA’s twin study to monitor the effects of space on the human body. But there’s a physical change that NASA might not be able to measure that easily. Mark is now…
Go outside and you will be showered, every day, with proof of the theory of special relativity. This proof comes in the form of muons, so you won't actually see it, but we'll tell you why the presence of these particles proves Einstein right.
Check your watch. What time is it? But wait, you've actually been moving and accelerating, and according to Einstein, everything's relative. So what time is it really? It all depends…
Although the major excitement today is focused on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, his Special Theory of Relatively is a quick and fascinating read that changed the way we think about the universe..
One of the most famous concepts in science was introduced in a paper with the uninspiring title, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies." A little reading can give you the basics of relativity, right from the source.
Too often relativity is confined to space ships and interplanetary travel. It's time to dive and see what weird ideas relativity can bring to us from beneath the sea.
In a manner of speaking, Albert Einstein just helped an international team of astronomers find a hot Jupiter that’s 2,000 light-years away. It’s the first time in history that the theory of relativity was used to locate another planet.
Foolish humans. Such hubris to think that we could dethrone Einsteinian special relativity, by virtue of a single experiment. Now it's official: the notion that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light really was the result of a "faulty kit".
Time dilation. Length contraction. The fact that time moves faster at your face than it does at your feet. These are all experimentally verified consequences of the Special Theory of Relativity, proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein. But the theory also helped explain one of the most nagging questions of modern…
This truly awesome video has the answers to that question. It imagines a trip down a desert highway at speeds approaching light, and then shows all the weird and wonderful optical effects the theory of special relativity says we'd experience.
