Theories
Special Relativity
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Special relativity describes space, time and motion for observers moving at constant velocity relative to one another, built on the constancy of the speed of light and the sameness of physical laws in every inertial frame. It predicts time dilation, length contraction and the equivalence of mass and energy.
Facts
Proposed Year Cross-Tradition Connections
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Critiqued
Luminiferous aether theory held that light propagates through a stationary medium filling space, which the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment failed to detect any evidence of. Einstein's 1905 special relativity superseded the aether explanation outright by postulating that the speed of light is the same in every inertial frame with no preferred medium required, eliminating the need for an aether rather than merely refining it.
Precursor To
Einstein's 1905 special relativity, restricted to unaccelerated inertial frames, left open how gravity and accelerated motion fit the same framework; his 1907 to 1915 extension, built on the equivalence principle between acceleration and gravity, generalized special relativity into general relativity, describing gravity itself as the geometry of curved spacetime.
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