A Matter of Time

Famous physicists view of time - Albert Einstein

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein: German (born March 14, 1879; died April 18, 1955)

Einstein was born in 1879 to a South German family.  He was born in Ulm, but his family moved to Munich when he was rather young.  He developed an interest in mathematics and science at an early age, but if took him longer than most children to learn other common things such as learning how to speak his own language properly.  At one point his parents worried that he may have had a learning disability, but Einstein simply had a different learning style and different interests than most.  Though Einstein had a reputation for being a poor student through most of his early childhood and in spite of significant doubts his parents had about his academic potential, he eventually astounded them all by going far beyond anything they could have imagined and becoming a leader of leaders in his field.

The most important contribution Albert Einstein made to time physics was his famous theory of relativity.  Einstein’s theory of relativity presented a variety of ideas, one of the most important being that time is relative to the physical universe—a physical universe being defined by the presence of movement, matter and consciousness.  In accordance with Einstein’s theory, the passage of time will differ for objects which move at different velocities through space.  An interesting paradox, commonly referred to as the “Twin Paradox”, arose out of Einstein’s theories. This paradox addressed the problem of relative age between a set of twins.  If one twin were to remain on Earth while the other traveled into space, the space-traveling twin would return to Earth younger than the twin who remained on Earth.  This is because the space-traveling twin experienced a slowing-down of time while moving through space, which in turn altered the relative ages of the twins when the space-traveling twin returned to Earth.  Each twin perceives a different amount of time has passed.

Because we inhabit Earth—a single body moving at one speed—we do not directly notice Einstein’s theory in our everyday lives.  Due to the basic nature of the theory of relativity, it was a difficult topic for the average person to understand.  In one instance however, Einstein cleverly made his theory clear to the layperson: “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity” (Mirsky).  Einstein’s theories are widely accepted today and the theory of relativity is often linked to the possibility of time travel in the future.

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