instein has been called the most brilliant person since Newton. This may be because of his "Theory of Relativity," which contained the famous equation E=mc; or his major involvement in the Manhattan Project, the making of the atom bomb, probably the most destructive weapon known to man. Einstein has one of the most spectacular uses of geometry in his theory of gravitation, also known as the general theory of relativity. "Einstein discovered that by considering the properties of space as though it were curved, he could account for the effects of gravity of gravity without using the customary "pull" that we intuitively associate with gravity. He found that he could explain the natural world by using geometry" (Stwertka 20). In the general theory of relativity, a large mass such as the sun warps the space around it. Even though this is hard to visualize, if we can think in two dimensions, it is like the depression made by a large ball on top of a sheet of rubber. Any kind of mass near the sun will tend to "fall" into the depression, and move toward the sun. This kind of behavior has the same effect that is said to be caused by the gravitational pull. Now that we know this part of the theory, Einstein's prediction that a beam of light is deflected by gravity is now easier to explain in the terms of the "warped" space. The deflection of light is caused by the curvature of space itself. As we know, light travels in a straight line. In space they define a straight line, or geodesic, through which they are moving. "Near a mass space time is non-Euclidean, and the line is now curved like a line drawn on a sphere. The curved path followed by light near the sun is really a straight line in the non-Euclidean space around the sun. In a similar way, the rotation of the earth about the sun can be interpreted as the earth traveling along a geodesic in curved space-time" (Stwertka 20-21). This theory has been put to many tests. All of these tests have p...
