Matteo Cantiello edited In_November_1915_just_hundred__.tex  over 8 years ago

Commit id: 724ea8fbda1fb726d00f1a0671e094fb9a436345

deletions | additions      

       

In November 1915, just hundred years ago, the whole world was shaken by a new visionary work. One man alone brought to humankind a profoundly different perspective on the very nature of, arguably, the most relevant aspects of our perceived reality: space and time.  In his "On the General Theory of Relativity" \cite{1915SPAW.......778E}, Albert Einsten discussed the intimate connection between space, time, energy and mass. The picture that emerges is extremely elegant.   %geometric theory in which the force of gravity emerges naturally as the stretching and bending of space-time caused by the presence of %mass and/or energy.   The pinnacle of the theory is equation~\ref{einstein},which is  actually a set of 10 equations called {\bf Einstein's Field Equations}. These equations describe gravitation as a result of space-time being curved by matter and energy.   Space and time can be measured using the so-called metric tensor (a tensor is a mathematical object analogous to but more general than a vector), which enters through the quantity $G_{\mu\nu}$. The metric tensor is, so-to-speak, a complex ruler with a clock attached. The equation states that the result of making a measurement using the metric tensor doesn't only depends on space time itself, as expected in Newtonian mechanics. Instead mass and energy enter the picture via the quantity $T_{\mu\nu}$, also called the stress-energy tensor. The stress-energy tensor basically measures the density and flux of energy and momentum.