Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity completely changed the way we understand space, time, energy, and even causality. Einstein said two different observers can experience time differently, disagree about the size of an object, and even disagree about the order of different events. And they would both be right! How can those things be true? What do they even mean? And why would Einstein, or anyone else, believe such crazy nonsense? In this talk I will discuss what led Einstein to some of these ideas, what they mean, and how we have observed them in the real world. I’ll even discuss one important technology that every one of you has used, that wouldn’t work without relativity.
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