The history of physics is essentially a story of accelerating expanding confidence. Physicists for hundreds of years studied and analyzed how things work. In Italy, a certain physicist really got things going by weighing and watching balls at the beginning of the 17th century.Galileo let various balls of ranging masses fall to the earth from the leaning tower of Pisa to see what was going to happen. While several people were unhappy with his vision during this period. The work of Galileo became the foundation for contemporary physics. A short time after this, free from angry people seeking to stop his vision. Isaac Newton pushes things forward by giving the Galileo treatment to apples. Isaac started to look at the trajectory of which things would fall. He was puzzled by how things always fall in one direction down. He never observed objects dropping sideways or upward.
He did not find an explanation for this puzzle until 1687. Under all this was a mysterious phenomenon known as gravity. James Clerk Maxwell made a very interesting discovery in the 19 Century. He demonstrated that magnetism and electricity are connected, and can be fused to create the force electromagnetism. He was able to demonstrate that light and water have something in common. That is the magnetic and electrical component of light flows like water in waves. Physics was well on its way now with new results based on earlier observations and others even had practical applications. The planet Neptune was hypothesized by Newton's laws. The work of Maxwell brings us radio and television, and it's hard to imagine anything more valuable than that. At this point, physicists appear to have conquered the world. They simply needed to fill a few gaps is all that remained.
Albert Einstein
However, by the 20th century, the gaps were only becoming larger. The new advancements did not stand on or add anything to the old ones. Stuff like radiation and x-rays were just odd and strange in an almost negative way. In the world of physics, everything was not fine any longer. A scientist by the name Lord Calvin forecasted cloudy skies ahead for the great science. A tornado would soon be on the horizon thanks to a Swiss patent clerk in 1905. Albert Einstein, at 26 somehow was able to change most of what we thought we knew. He argued that light is sort of a wave. But it moves in particles and packets. He released his famous E = MC Squared equation in the same year. In which he argues mass and energy are equal. This would only be the beginning of many surprises to come.
He would soon publish the findings of a thought experiment that stuns everyone. So brace yourself things are about to get interesting. Firstly it begins with the assumption that light speed is constant in a vacuum. Imagine that someone is looking at a spacecraft flying really quickly and is holding a clock. If this person looks close enough they will notice the ship's clock is running a bit slower than the one they are holding.
On top of that, he argued the ship would also be literally shrinking in size. However, everything would be ordinary for the astronauts inside the ship. Time and space can change, Einstein argued. Both are relative depending on who is looking at them. This argument is what is known as special relativity. As jarring as that may have been Einstein was only getting warmed up.
Then, he demonstrated that apples and bowls were not the only objects vulnerable to gravity. Also affected were light, time, and space. Time is slowed down by gravity. And space is being warped. The more intense it is the more gravity warps space. The more light bends as well. This is what is referred to as general relativity. Traditional physics was greatly disrupted by his work. Einstein even cracked the door open to the mysterious quantum physics. Ideas like cats may be dead or alive are now being considered. Everything is now unclear. His renowned equation leads to nuclear power. The massive Hayden collider would not have worked without special relativity. Mysterious things like black holes were also forecast by general relativity.
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