“You can’t blame gravity for falling in love”
Albert Einstein
but for almost everything else…
Gravitation
What is gravity?
Gravity is the force of attraction between two objects, for example between the earth and the moon or between the earth and an apple.
The apple falls to the ground because it is attracted by the earth. However, this is not a one-way street as the earth is also attracted to the apple, although this form of gravity is so weak that it cannot be detected.
This means that objects with a large mass (suns, planets) exert greater gravitation than those with a small mass (people, apples).
All objects regardless of whether they are living beings or celestial bodies are subject to a gravitational pull. Even distant stars exert an attraction on the earth. And even though these stars are as massive as our sun, the gravitational force which they generate has a weaker effect on us. This is because gravity depends not only on the mass of an object but also its distance. The greater the distance between two objects, the weaker their mutual attraction will be. But it will never be zero as it is infinite.
Weightlessness is therefore an illusion. There is no place without gravity. However, there are things which exert the opposite effect such as centrifugal force. Centrifugal force is the reason why you always feel as if you are being pulled to the periphery when you are on a chair swing ride.
When the International Space Station orbits around the earth, it is also exposed to centrifugal effects. The faster it flies, the more it is pulled away. Now, if the ISS is traveling quickly enough for the centrifugal force which is pulling it away from the earth to equal the effects of the earth’s gravitational pull, these two forces will balance each other out. On board the space station, weightlessness prevails.
Albert Einstein found out that gravity is in fact a form of space.
Space comprises the three dimensions height, width and depth. It forms the “material” from which our universe is made. And just as material gives way when a massive ball is placed on it, so too does space curve around a massive object in the universe. The greater the mass of the object, the greater the curvature will be. Like small marbles on the surface of the material, other bodies also fall into this dent as they follow the shape of space. So, Einstein discovered that gravity is not really a force but simply a curvature of space.
In addition to the three spatial dimensions, there is also a fourth one, namely time. They are linked together to form “space time”. Just as gravity causes space to curve, it also stretches time. This means that time moves more slowly in the earth’s gravitational field than further away in space.The greater the gravitation, the more slowly time passes.
This theory by Albert Einstein was tested in the solar eclipse of 1919.
Einstein had postulated that the sun with its large mass would change space measurably, causing the light from distant stars to be slightly deflected as it passed by the sun.Normally, the light from the sun is far brighter than that of other stars, meaning that this curvature cannot be detected. It is only during a solar eclipse that the light around the sun is dimmed sufficiently for other stars to be seen at the same time.
In this way, British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington was able to photograph the deflection of light during the 1919 solar eclipse for the first time. He found that the apparent position of the stars around the sun had changed in exactly the way that had been predicted in Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
Albert Einstein
Born in 1879 as the son of Jewish parents, Albert Einstein is one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. His research and theories on matter, space and time have revolutionized not only modern physics but also how we view the world. In 1919, he became internationally famous after his General Theory of Relativity was proved, receiving the Nobel Prize in 1921 for the “law of the photoelectric effect”.
Einstein is considered to be the epitome of a researcher and a genius. He was an adventurer seeking to find out what holds our universe together. Yet, he was also a man who was greatly interested in politics and human welfare. He was committed to global peace processes as well as social harmony and the value of education.
Our film primarily explores his philosophy of learning. Imagination and curiosity were always more important to him than mere rote-learning. He considered the encouragement of individual skills to be most important.
He was and remains a fascinating personality who always went his own way and sought to inspire others to do the same thing.
