The Theory of Everything Book Report

In concordance with Christian doctrines, this system implies that heaven and the throne of God lie beyond the tenth sphere. On the other hand, during the first half of the 16th century, Polish cleric Copernicus developed an astronomical model which positions the motionless Sun at the center of the universe, with the Earth, the moon, and six other planets revolving at a constant speed around it. He argues that all stars were at rest and that their nightly movements are simply indications of the earth’s rotation. However, members of the Church, especially Protestants, who interpreted the Bible literally, refused to grant Copernicus credit for his theory. Nevertheless, once released among the population, the Copernican theory raised support from various scholars, a few of whom, such as Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo, went on to dedicate their career to solidify its legitimacy. With their use of mathematical reasoning, instead of antic philosophy, the Copernican theory finally became justified among the population. Pertaining to its influence among laypeople, the Copernican theory raised various questions against the

Aristotle’s model by today’s standards can easily be picked apart, but at the time, it was the best explanation that could be made with so little technology and insight. Although his theories have long since been replaced, they created a base for future scientists to work off of and challenge. Over time many great scientists began to question Aristotle’s theories. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), for example, contested the absolute significance of the earth, and he did not agree that it should be viewed as the center of the entire universe (Lizhi & Youquan, 1987). He plotted the earth at the center of the universe and created a heliocentric system just as mathematically complicated as the Ptolemaic system (one that also improved on Aristotle’s), but it explained a number of anomalies, including resolving the issue of retrograde motion (Ede, A. & Cormack, L., 2004). The problem was that Aristotle’s physics of ‘natural motion’ fell apart without the earth in the center of everything.

Later on, he accomplished and developed the general theories of relativity which “helped make predictions concerning light and gravitation” (“Albert Einstein”. 5). Einstein’s first prediction was “that a red shift is produced if light passes through an intense gravitational field, and this was subsequently detected in astronomical observations in 1925. The second was a prediction that the apparent positions of stars would shift when they are seen near the sun because the sun’s intense gravity would bend the light rays from the stars as they pass the sun” (5).Later on, “one of the deep

The Economist’s article “The most beautiful theory” discusses Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. It explains the origins of general relativity through Einstein’s initial thought experiments that eventually led to the realization that the university functions in four dimensions (“three spatial dimensions, one temporal one”) and that mass curved space-time, creating gravity. Over time, Einstein’s theory was verified by observations, such as those made by Arthur Eddington when he noticed the skew of light around the sun during an eclipse, which could only have been due to distorted space-time. His theory has also been expanded over the years as physicists try to combine general relativity with

Through wonder and complicated thinking Einstein gave a strong argument on how space and time could be curved. By Einstein creating this theory he completely altered the way we could think of space and time. Einstein pictured space as a three-dimensional version of a thin rubber sheet. If you put a heavy object on the sheet, it makes a dent, and therefore an object's path would be affected by that dent. So, planets orbit the sun because “the space around the sun is curved in the 2-D equivalent of a funnel or basin”.( http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/stu/20th_people_einstein.html) “The curvature of space results in the effects of gravity. This notion of curved space becomes more tangible . . . occurs because its curvature of space”. (http://www.fi.edu/learn/case files/einstein/curved.html) Einstein introduced this special theory of relativity because it dealt only with the special case of motion in frames of reference that are neither increasing nor decreasing to the viewer. In other words, “the frames of the reference are . . . a consistent speed in a straight line”. (Jake Goldberg pg.47) Einstein also changed how we now think about gravity itself! He came up with his own theory of gravity as well, called Equivalence Principle. “Einstein said that when he was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of a sudden a thought occurred to me: 'If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight.' I was

the heliocentric solar system. Johannes Kepler further modified the heliocentric system, by mathematically showing that the planets’ orbits are elliptical. With his invention of the telescope, Galileo made new observations about the solar system and found mathematical laws that described the movement of the planets. Later, Isaac Newton established a universal law of gravity. With the new scientific discoveries, the gap between religion and science increased. Science revolutionized the human though and its understanding of the universe.

His model said that the planets moved not in circles around the sun, but in ellipses and the mathematics was proved using three laws:

In 1916 Einstein proposed his new General Theory of Relativity that built upon Newton's Universal Theory of Gravitation which showed "that gravity is responsible for the motions of both planets and falling objects near the Earth" (Fix, p 86). Einstein' theory "describes gravity as a curvature in four-dimensional spacetime" (Singh, p. 502). The original intent of the theory was to explain the inaccuracies of Mercury's orbit when using Newton's law and the Sun's bending of light.

Nicholas Copernicus was the first to question the universal truths and teachings of the church. He devised a theory that the earth along with the other planets revolved around the sun. This theory disagreed with Aristotle and the old teachings that the universe revolved around the earth, and that man was the center of the universe.

Newton: One day I was just sitting on the ground and I saw an apple was falling down to the ground. I asked myself, why this apple is not falling sideways or going up, why it is falling down. So, when I did my research I found it was because of the gravity.

Before Newton talked about gravitation the main knowledge of scientists was a elementary knowledge of optics, mechanics and astronomy.Copernicus Kepler and Galileo provided the background knowledge of the stars and planets, but Newton used their data to discover the whole gravitational system.10Newton reasoned that the planets and all other physical objects in the universe moved through mutual attraction of gravity.Newton said that every other object in the universe affected every other object through gravity.This explained why the planets move in an orderly fashion. Newton found that “the force of gravity towards the whole planet did arise from and was compounded of the forces of gravity towards all it’s parts, and towards every one part was in the inverse proportion of the squares of the distances from this part.”Newton proves all of this mathematically. This was known to be the single most important contribution to physics that ever has been made.11

The Elegant Universe The book “The Elegant Universe” written by Brian Greene starts off talking about something called Quantum Mechanics and how it relates to Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity. Then gets into how modern Physicist and even leading up to the 1900’s people have either a really small Cosmos or a really big one. By the end of the chapter he tries to put quantum mechanics to law or relativity together to create superstring theory. The theory is confusing and somewhat hard to understand.

Gravity is the force which attracts an object to the center of the earth, and toward any other physical object having mass. Issac Newton and Albert Einstein both contributed to today's knowledge of gravity.Newton started working in 1687 by scratch, he knew nothing about gravity it until he saw an apple fall. Newton dint have much friends growing up because he would lock himself in his room and brainstorming ideas about how gravity could work. A few decades later Einstein started brainstorming off Newtons work to get an even better understanding of it.

The general consensus in the academic world is that knowledge is power that can solve humanity’s problems. Sometimes, it is clouded by greed, or it lights the way for a better humanity. Scientists experiment to prove new theories, artists sculpt to express emotion and theologians study to provide interpretations of biblical stories. Therein lies the problem, while society is always searching for knowledge, to date there is no singular “foolproof” method of obtaining it. In the movie “The Theory of Everything,” Stephen Hawking has a “eureka” moment when pulling a sweater over his head and seeing flames through the material. In this case, it seemed that serendipity played a role in his search for truth. This led me to wonder, to what extent is the discovery of knowledge a matter of serendipity that can then go on to solve problems? While an exploration of whether knowledge is produced only to solve problems in the Natural Sciences may be more obvious, its application to Mathematics and Indigenous Knowledge may draw some interesting observations.

about a 10 billion times normal speed. After observing for about an hour we could see the first forms of matter appearing and then the formation of planets, stars and finally galaxies. After a few billion years we found out how life was first formed and how it evolved. Over the course of time our invention would help solidify other theories and eventually it would begin the process to ultimately create the Theory of everything. But that was only one aspect of our true intentions. While fueling the flame for many theories, another goal of the simulation was to find out and create things that we had no idea existed. For instance, in the first hour alone of the simulation we discovered 10 new elements that were instrumental to the creation of