A scientific breakthrough that changed the world: 110 years ago, Albert Einstein announced his theory of relativity

One hundred and ten years ago, on November 25, 1915, the eminent physicist Albert Einstein made one of the most important discoveries in human history – he presented his General Theory of Relativity at a meeting of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin. It radically changed scientific understanding of the structure of the universe and became the foundation for many advances in modern science and technology.

Instead of two centuries of Newtonian physics, Einstein proposed a new, four-dimensional model of the world. According to his theory, space and time are inextricably linked, forming a single continuum. Massive objects, by deforming this fabric, create gravitational fields that determine the motion of other bodies, explaining, in particular, the orbital motion of the planets.

One of the main ideas of the theory of relativity is the famous equation E = mc², which establishes the equivalence of mass and energy. It describes the fact that the energy of an object depends on its mass and vice versa. This principle is of paramount importance for understanding the processes occurring within atoms and stars, as well as for explaining cosmic-scale phenomena such as the expansion of the Universe and the existence of black holes.

According to Martin Masayev, a leading engineer in the Department of Theoretical and Experimental Physics at the Institute of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the Kabardino-Balkarian State University named after Kh. M. Berbekov, the theory of relativity has become firmly entrenched in our everyday lives. It has become the foundation for such fields as celestial mechanics, which describes the motion of celestial bodies, and astrodynamics, which governs the trajectories of spacecraft. It is thanks to Einstein’s scientific findings that the GPS and GLONASS satellite navigation systems, which provide precise location on the Earth’s surface, function.

«Thanks to this theory, it became clear that the Universe is not immutable but is constantly evolving. Black holes were predicted. Scientists also realized that the flow of time can vary depending on location.» «This made it possible to calculate the motion of planets, satellites, and even light signals with high accuracy,» notes Martin Masaev.
Despite the enormous significance of this discovery, Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize not for it, but for his contribution to the study of the photoelectric effect, which explained the nature of light emission and became an important step in the development of quantum mechanics.

However, it was the general conclusions drawn within the framework of the theory of relativity that became the starting point for many scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century and determined the direction of further study of space and matter.