“Lights all askew in the heavens men of science more or less agog,” declared a New York Times headline. Photographs taken during the eclipse verified that the position shift matched Einstein’s prediction.

Distant stars would thus appear not exactly where expected. His theory predicted that a massive object - say, the sun - could distort spacetime nearby enough to bend light from its straight-line course. But it wasn’t until a solar eclipse in 1919 that everyone took notice. With this insight, gravity was explained.Įinstein presented his general theory of relativity at the end of 1915 in a series of lectures in Berlin. According to general relativity, objects warp the fabric of spacetime like a weight resting on a trampoline, and the fabric’s curvature guides their movements. Instead, Einstein presented space and time as a unified fabric distorted by mass and energy. Out was Newton’s idea, which had reigned for nearly two centuries, of masses that appeared to tug on one another. An idea born in a Swiss patent office that evolved into a mature theory in Berlin set forth a radical new picture of the cosmos, rooted in a new, deeper understanding of gravity. In his general theory of relativity, Albert Einstein reinvented space and time, foretelling a universe so bizarre and grand that it has challenged the limits of human imagination.

Albert einstein general relativity