Universe
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Chapter 1 - Worldview
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Welcome to the Universe page
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On this page, we present you with the first part of the first building block, reality on a universal scale: Einstein's idea about the relationship between time and space. He stated that relationships are the fabric from which reality is built.
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Core ideas
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The relationship between space and time
| This endless morphing of matter into energy (and vice versa) powers the cosmos, matter, life. Yet through it all, the energy-matter content of the universe never changes. It’s strange but true: Matter and energy themselves are less fundamental than the underlying relationships between them. We tend to think of things, not relationships, as the heart of reality. But most often, the opposite is true. “It’s not the stuff,” said the Brown University physicist Stephon Alexander. The same is true, Einstein showed, for “stuff” like space and time, seemingly stable, unchangeable aspects of nature; in truth, it’s the relationship between space and time that always stays the same, even as space contracts and time dilates. Like energy and matter, space and time are mutable manifestations of deeper, unshakable foundations: the things that never vary no matter what.
“Einstein’s deep view was that space and time are basically built up by relationships between things happening,” said the physicist Robbert Dijkgraaf, director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where Einstein spent his final decades. (1) |
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| (1) | The Simple Idea Behind Einstein’s Greatest Discoveries - K.C. Cole - Quanta Magazine - 2019 |
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