Einstein, or it’s okay to say “what?”
.jpg "A good cup of coffee might be a good way to start reading Einstein's famous paper. Image (C) Christopher Michel, 2012 (CC by 2.0).")
June 30 marks the anniversary of publication for physicist Albert Einstein’s first paper on special relativity. On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies (1905) sets out Einstein’s theory on the relationship between space and time, establishing relativity for time and distance, and the absolute nature of the speed of light. As one of his four annus mirabilis [Latin: “miraculous year”] papers published in Annalen der Physik science journal the year that he obtained his doctoral degree, Einstein’s paper turned the concepts of space and time inside out—or upside down. It also set him on track to incorporate gravity into a general theory of relativity 11 years later, which observations from LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) have only recently proved correct.
