Kevin Hartnett | Quanta
In November 1915, in a lecture before the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Albert Einstein described an idea that upended humanity’s view of the universe. Rather than accepting the geometry of space and time as fixed, Einstein explained that we actually inhabit a four-dimensional reality called space-time whose form fluctuates in response to matter and energy.
Einstein elaborated this dramatic insight in several equations, referred to as his “field equations,” that form the core of his theory of general relativity. That theory has been vindicated by every experimental test thrown at it in the century since.
Yet even as Einstein’s theory seems to describe the world we observe, the mathematics underpinning it remain largely mysterious.
