Page 61 - DK Life Stories Albert Einstein by AELC
P. 61
In spite of all these new
responsibilities, Albert still DID YOU KNOW?
focused most of his energy
on his latest theories. One Albert wrote a letter
protesting World War I,
of his most promising was but only three other
an addition to his theory scientists signed it.
of general relativity. He had
been attempting to calculate the
degree to which light from a star will
be bent by the gravitational force of the sun.
This would become known as “gravitational
lensing.” Put simply, if light from a distant
source is coming toward you and there is a
large object between you and the light, the
gravitational field from that mass will change
the course of that light (often referred to as
“bending” the light).
There had already been a theory for
centuries about this phenomenon, but Albert
calculated that the effect was greater than
had long been thought. He presented this idea
in a book published in early 1917 called On the
Special and the General Theory of Relativity, Generally
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