Why is special relativity called special relativity?

If the question arises, it is because the name is not quite natural... Special
relativity is in fact rather a universal theory of space and time. It provides a
framework for space-time, in which one can then study the fundamental
interactions of the Universe.

The reason it is called special relativity is that it is restricted is that it is

restricted only to the inertial frame. What is called an inertial frame is
actually a frame that is either stationary or moving completely uniformly (so
it goes in one direction, in a straight line and at a constant speed).

That's where it's restricted: it's a theory with no acceleration, no rotation, no

change of direction, so it's a bit limited...well, not limited, but it's restricted!
(it's a pun, since in French, it's called ''relativité restreinte'' and ''restreint''
means ''limited''!)

Einstein, after 1905, will ask himself a big question which is the question of
gravitation. Why is he going to do this? Because gravitation, as explained by
Newton works pretty well, but it doesn't work in the case of special relativity.

According to Newton, gravitation is a force which acts between two distinct

bodies and which acts immediately, regardless of the distance between the
two bodies. What this means, for example, is that the Earth revolves around
the Sun because of the gravitational force and if the Sun disappeared
instantaneously, according to Newton, the Earth would immediately cease to
feel the effects of the Sun's gravitation and therefore would leave in a straight
line on its momentum... But what this means is that the information of the
loss of gravitation would cross the Sun-Earth distance faster than the distance
of light, since instantaneously. And that is forbidden by special relativity.

Suddenly, Einstein decides to tackle this problem there. As if he hadn't

demolished Newton's theories enough! And, to tell the truth, gravitation
poses several problems for him because gravitation is not a force like any
other. First, gravitation is a force which is attractive, it is a force which
attracts and that already, in mechanics, it is not something classic. Then, it is
a force that acts over an infinite distance. As soon as this force exists, if we
take two bodies that attract each other, move them away by placing them at
two ends of the Universe, they continue to attract each other. They attract
each other much less strongly, but they continue to attract each other. It's
weird! Then, it's a force that you can't cancel, you can't constrain it. We
cannot create a cage in which there is gravitation, but outside of which there
is no gravitation. No, that's not possible.

One day in 1907, while working at the patent office in Bern, Einstein was
daydreaming as he looked out the window and saw a worker working on the
roof. There, he said to himself: '' If this worker falls, during his fall, he will
not feel his own weight. '' What it says (and there, there is nothing
revolutionary, we know it since Newton and since Galileo: if we have objects
that fall, they all fall at the same speed), it is that if while falling, the worker
makes three or four tiles fall with him, for him, he will see the tiles floating
weightless to him. When we are in free fall, all the objects that are in free fall
float relative to each other. If we follow Newton, gravitation does not depend
on the mass of the falling object and that is not intuitive!

What we know, thanks to Newton, is that when we measure the force exerted
on an object, this force is equal to the mass of this object times the
acceleration that this object undergoes. But, in the case of weight (which is a
force), the weight is W=mg (g being the acceleration of gravitation on Earth).
But, in addition, this weight is expressed as Newton said, by a formula which
is proportional to the product of the masses of the two objects in question (the
one which falls and let us say that of the Earth) and inversely proportional to
the square of the distance that separates them. Mathematically, it is very
telling since we have: m object x g = ((m object x m Earth)/(distance Earth-
object)^2) x G. And we can see that if we are interested in the acceleration
gravitation, so g, it does not depend on the mass of the falling object.

You have to understand what that means: we have the Earth which revolves
around the Sun and if we decide to replace the Earth by Pharell Williams, at
the same position as the center of the Earth to put it simply, and that it moves
at the same speed in the same direction, drop everything and watch what
happens, Pharell Williams is going to orbit the Sun following the same orbit
as the Earth, whereas it is still downright lighter, because it does not depend
on its mass. So be careful, gravitation depends on the mass, but only on that
of the object towards which we fall. What makes me or someone else, we are
attracted in the same way on (towards) the Earth. In the same way, if we were
on the Moon, we would be drawn in the same way towards the Moon. But we
are not attracted in the same way to the Earth as to the Moon.

What this means, if this gravitational force is exerted by a massive body (for
example a planet or a star), is that the way it will exert its force on another
lighter body, does not depend on the mass of this object. So, if we place a
massive object (a planet, a star) in space, we can, at any point in space,
measure the acceleration of gravity that an object that would be there would
have, without even know its mass. What that means is that we can represent
this acceleration everywhere in space, even before we have introduced the
slightest body. The result we get there is what we call a gravitational field and
what Einstein will deduce from it is that it is possible to geometrize
gravitation. That is, gravitation is more a property of geometry than a force.
That's revolutionary! And in 1912, he realizes, gradually of course, that his
theory of gravitation cannot work in a so-called ''Euclidean'' space. More
precisely, a Euclidean SPACE-TIME, that is to say a flat space. When we say
''flat space'', we don't mean a 2D space, we mean a space that has no
curvature. A space which is flat, to put it simply, is a space in which two
parallel lines always remain parallel, never intersect. It is a space in which we
take a triangle and the sum of its angles is always equal to 180°, etc. It is the
space that we are used to conceptualizing, to representing ourselves. In
conclusion: 1912, Einstein sees: impossible flat space.

He then remembers that he had a professor, Marcel Grossman, who was a

specialist in non-Euclidean geometries, so he contacts him to ask him to work
with him on his theories. He then goes to Zurich to work with Grossman and
in 1913, they will publish together an article-sketch of what will later be
general relativity and this article is entitled: ''Conception of a general theory
of relativity and theory of gravitation. The theory developed in this article-
sketch uses a space which is not flat, a space which is therefore non-
Euclidean which can bend, deform. We find in this publication an equation,
therefore two elements separated by an equal sign. What these two parts of
the equation say is that one actually describes how spacetime can warp
depending on the density of matter present in the Universe and the other part
says how the matter can move according to the deformations of space-time.
So, in a way, we have: on the one hand, space-time which tells matter how it
can move and on the other hand, matter which tells space-time how it should
deform . At this point, we are not very far from general relativity as it will
come out later, in 1915. And there, gravitation no longer appears as a force,
but rather as the manifestation of a deformation of space-time. Gravitation
becomes a property of space-time depending on the density of matter present.

Besides that, there is also something else that Einstein had in mind, since he
was always stuck with the idea that special relativity could not take
acceleration into account. He therefore developed what is called the principle
of equivalence. The idea is as follows: if we are in a cabin that is closed
(without window, nor anything allowing us to know what is happening
outside) and that this cabin is placed on the ground, on Earth, we undergoes
gravity, terrestrial weightlessness. What Einstein is saying is that if we now
take this same cabin, but put it very, very far out in space, completely
isolated, in a place where we will imagine that there is no force noticeable
gravitation, that we accelerate this cabin upwards (the top of the cabin, since
there is no ''high'' in space!) with the intensity of this acceleration which must
be the same as the intensity of weightlessness on Earth, what the principle of
equivalence says is that there is no physical experience that allows a person
in the 1st or 2nd cabin to determine if she is on Earth and therefore feeling
the effects of gravity, or if she is in space and is actually feeling acceleration.
So what Einstain sees with that is that gravitation is similar to acceleration.
What this means is that with an acceleration, we can cancel the effects of
gravitation or, on the contrary, simulate the effects of gravitation. And what
that then means is that he will be able, in his general relativity, to use the
notion of acceleration, since he will be able to use the notion of gravitation.

Moreover, Einstein, in 1905, had shown that there was an equivalence

between energy and mass (e=mc^2). What this means is that in fact, each
time he speaks of mass, he will in fact be able to speak rather of energy and
in particular, in terms of gravitation, he will be able to say that gravitation is
not not caused by mass, but by energy. On the other hand, this is where
mathematically it becomes very difficult. This is where we will begin to
involve what are called ''tensors''. A tensor is a generalization of a
composition of vectors. So in the theory of general relativity, there is
something called the energy-momentum tensor, which is used to represent the
distribution of mass and energy in space-time. It's mathematical and
complicated.

So special relativity establishes the equivalence between mass and energy

and general relativity shows how this mass and this energy can distort
spacetime. To fully understand the impact of all this, what Einstein shows is
that until then it was thought that it was the presence of massive objects that
affected the trajectory of objects, the Earth, instead of going in a straight line,
began to revolve around the Sun. What Einstein shows is that in fact, not at
all! The trajectory of objects is not modified by the presence of massive
objects, it is the space itself on which this trajectory is based, which is
deformed. And that is super powerful! That amounts to saying that in fact, the
Earth does not revolve around the Sun, it goes straight in a space that
revolves around the Sun... It's very unnatural, in fact!

In particular, what that means is that: since gravitation is no longer a force

and all the movements that we thought were the expression of this force are
not, in this case, we thought that on the Earth there was a force called
gravitation which makes it revolve around the Sun, if there is not this force, it
means that the Earth is in fact in inertial motion and that according to the
landmark from which we place ourselves, either it is immobile, or it moves in
a straight line at constant speed. And that is exactly what Einstein shows! It
shows that yes, the Earth moves in a straight line at constant speed. It's just
the straight line it goes on that is no longer straight (the line turns).

What we see is that, in the classic cases of astronomy that we have been
studying for a long time (movement of planets, stars, etc.), Newton's
equations and Einstein's equations derived from general relativity, give values
that are quite similar, that therefore, in the cases that we knew, that we
mastered, it works well with Newton, it works well with Einstein. But
Einstein's equations also predict what can happen if the energy and mass
density are much greater than those of, say, the Sun, where Newton's
equations no longer work and Einstein's foresee a certain number of things
which are really new, which are conceptual and which are revolutionary for
their time.

At the time, in particular, there was a problem with the orbit of Mercury...
There had also been, previously, a problem with disturbances in the orbit of
Uranus and the scientists had imagined that in fact, it was due to the presence
of another planet that we did not know. They had made calculations to
determine what this planet would be, what would be its mass, its trajectory
and where we could see it, then they pointed their telescopes in these
directions and they discovered Neptune! Which was very strong, for the time.
With Mercury, something somewhat similar is happening. What happens is
that the orbit of Mercury, which is an elliptical orbit, like the other planets,
this orbit moves slightly with each revolution of Mercury around the Sun. It's
called the precession of the periapsis (here: perihelion) of Mercury. So,
quickly, periapsis and perihelion: when there's an elliptical orbit around a
star, say the Sun, there's a point on that ellipse that's the closest point to the
Sun in that orbit. This point is called the perihelion. Helion from Helios,
which means Sun. If it is not the Sun, but simply a star, we say periapsis. So
the precession of Mercury's perihelion means that in fact, with each
revolution of Mercury around the Sun, this perihelion advances a little bit. In
fact, it follows an orbit around the Sun itself.

Going back to Kepler's laws, the orbit should be perfectly elliptical, so it

doesn't work. However, since then, we know from Newton that we must take
into account the fact that there are many other planets in the solar system,
each with its own mass, and which affect the orbit of Mercury and therefore,
if we measures the orbit of Mercury taking into account the other planets of
the solar system, we find a result which is much closer to what we observe
experimentally, but which is not yet completely exact. To freeze minds: we
are mistaken by about 1/1000 of a degree per century... So, once again,
astronomers will imagine that in fact, it is because there is a planet that we do
not know, as for Uranus. So they're going to try to do some math to figure out
what this planet should be, where it should be, and so on. Then they point the
telescopes, but they see nothing! They called this planet Vulcan, but it's not
there, it doesn't exist!! Then, they will imagine that it may be a cloud of
diffuse gas that weighs just the right amount, but they won't find it either... So
they are at an impasse.

Afterwards, we have to put things into perspective, that is to say that for most
scientists of the time, it was not a major phenomenon. For them, Newton's
equations work fairly well and they attribute the discrepancies to
measurement problems or to the fact that we don't know enough about all the
little things that can hang around in the solar system... In short, here it is: this
is not very very important. But for Einstein, it's very important because he
sees a paradox in it. He tells himself that if, by his theory, he can calculate the
orbit of Mercury very precisely, he will have demonstrated the superiority of
his theory over Newton's theories and he will therefore have demonstrated
that the Newtonian theory of gravitation is, at least , to be nice: incomplete.
Very imperfect, it is... rotten, what! And, at the end of 1915, a little bit after
releasing his major publication (which we will talk about later), Einstein
publishes an article where he precisely measures the orbit of Mercury, using
his theory and the results are perfect!

Funny fact: Hilbert, a great mathematician, had written to Einstein to

congratulate him, because he was himself working on the subject and he was
besides on the verge of getting there before Einstein. So, in his letter, he
congratulates him, but he also wonders and asks him how he succeeded in
calculating the result so quickly, because these are still very complex
calculations... Einstein will never answer this question. question, but we
know enough about Einstein's life now, including his correspondence with his
friend Beso, to know what happened. What happened, in fact, is that as early
as 1913, when he brought out his sketch article with Grossman, he started to
study the subject and he started to do calculations, calculations, calculations,
with his friend Beso, to try to find the correct trajectory of Mercury in
relation to the Sun.

When we unroll the calculations and the manuscripts, what we realize is that:
step 1, they failed miserably! They were wrong about the mass of the Sun...
So they correct that problem, which brings them to step 2. Step 2: they are
wrong again because in fact, they made mistakes about the measurement of
the volume of Mercury... They then correct this problem, which brings them
to step 3. Step 3: they are wrong again (!) because they did not take into
account the fact that Mercury rotates on itself, which is important. So, in fact,
they are not finding the results. What must be remembered from all this is
that over two years of work, they will not find the results and what is
interesting is that for Einstein, this calculation was going to be able to
validate his theory, so we still had to imagine that he had such confidence in
his theory that, even having found false results, they said to themselves: ''no,
it doesn't matter, who cares, it's correct!''

Consequently, one wonders how he was able to find the right result, at the
end of 1915... What happens is that in fact, at the time when he was writing
his article with Grossman, the latter had proposed to him a mathematical tool,
a tensor, but Einstein had decided not to use this tensor, because he did not
find it beautiful, inelegant, several technical reasons and therefore he had
preferred to make his own tensor. The problem is that the latter was bad. He
may have been handsome, but he was no good! And in fact, in 1915, Einstein
decided to take up the tensor that Grossman had proposed to him for his
theory. And there, everything works perfectly! And this tensor, which is
called “energy-momentum”, which he will use in his 1915 publication on the
theory of general relativity and then in his following publication on the
perihelion of Mercury.

To sum up...

General relativity shows that gravitation is not a force, but the expression of
the interaction between energy density and spacetime.

It is expressed by the deformation of the space-time function of the density of

energy, but also by a distribution of the density of energy function of the
deformations of the space-time.

There will be several direct consequences. As early as 1915, Einstein will

calculate that the rays of light can be deflected by a very massive object. He
will, moreover, calculate precisely what this deviation is and he will even
give a protocol to be able to validate this hypothesis.
Small parenthesis: the photos that make up the light don't have mass strictly
speaking, but they have energy, so it's a bit as if they had mass... It's not
simple! It's a bit like quantum mechanics. All this to say that, as photons have
energy, they can be affected by gravitation.

The protocol that Einstein will give to validate this hypothesis is the
following. He tells them, "The next time there's a total solar eclipse, you look
in the near vicinity around the Sun and you're going to find stars that
normally wouldn't be there." more precisely, it says which stars, how many
degrees it will vary, etc., but on the idea, that's it.

And on May 29, 1919, Sir Arthur Eddigton will take measurements during a
solar eclipse and find precisely what Einstein predicted!

Another consequence predicted by Einstein: gravitational lenses. The idea is

as follows: if a ray of light can be deflected by a massive object, it is quite
possible that two rays of light coming from the same object are deflected in
different directions by a massive object. And that, we were able to validate it
afterwards. This is also how we were able to detect black holes, since black
holes, by definition, we cannot see them! But they are so massive that they
deflect the rays of light which ultimately behave like a lens (but not a glass or
plastic lens, it's a gravitational lens), it allows us to deduce where do we can
find very massive objects, even if they cannot be seen! Black holes are also a
direct consequence of Einstein's theory, that is to say that the equations tell us
that if we can sufficiently increase the energy density locally, it ends up
making... a black hole!

Another consequence of Einstein's equations is that gravitation must "slow

down" the time measured at a distance. And for that, there is a completely
immediate application concerning this point, it is the GPS.

Without going into too much detail about what a GPS is, what you need to
know in general terms: to locate a point on Earth, there are satellites that
revolve almost everywhere around the Earth and there are signals which are
emitted from the object that we want to locate towards the satellites and by
triangulation, the satellite can say: here, the object that we want to locate is at
such a place on Earth, But there is a catch! Because of gravitational effects,
satellites that are high up and moving fast have their internal clocks out of
sync with the clocks on the ground. And so, it is necessary to constantly
correct the clocks of the GPS satellites. So it may not seem like much,
because satellites don't go that fast, compared to the speed of light, but that's
what makes the difference between a car that is positioned at 5m near and a
car which is positioned at 50, 500, then at 2 km, then at 25 km near! That is
to say that the desynchronization does not catch up, it only increases.

And finally, a last point: Einstein's equations predict that the Universe is quite
possibly expanding and he doesn't quite like this idea, he senses that it is
false. For him, he always considered that the Universe was static, that it had
always been as it was and that it would always be as it is. Suddenly, he will
introduce into his equations a constant which will correct this expansionist
effect of the Universe, without affecting the very behavior of the equation.
Without going into too much detail, his equations being highly differential,
the introduction of a constant does not affect the derivatives, so the equation
always behaves the same way, whether this constant has been added or not.
This constant will affect the nature of the Universe, but not its behavior.
Einstein therefore decides to call this constant the “cosmological constant”.

When, in 1929, Hubble is going to show that in fact the Universe is

expanding, Einstein will say about this constant that it is the biggest mistake
of his life! But... the emergence of the notion of dark energy will bring this
story of cosmological constant up to date, which is perhaps not such a stupid
thing! And that's classy enough: to imagine that what he considered a huge
bullshit could well be one of his greatest discoveries, knowing that he is still
responsible for: special relativity, general relativity, the basis of quantum
mechanics, the discovery of the atom, etc., in short, the 20th century is
Einstein's century! And so, to imagine that it ends there, that’s class!

Bonus : String theory

On the scale of galaxies, it is general relativity that allows us to understand

the behavior of objects. On the scale of the infinitely small (ie particles), we
understand relatively well how things work thanks to special relativity.
Conclusion: when it's big and heavy (planets, stars and galaxies), it's general
relativity that counts and when it's small and light (p, e, photons, etc.), it's
special relativity . So when it's small but heavy (black holes, Big Bang), we
don't know how to do it, because both theories can come into play.

But these two theories are incompatible with each other, hence the idea of a
theory that unifies all of this: string theory.

String theory states that each particle is actually a very, very small strand of
energy (even at the particle scale!). These strands of energy vibrate to give
quarks, photons, etc. This theory is beautiful, clean, elegant. But here it is: to
be able to function mathematically, these strings must be able to vibrate in 10
spatial dimensions (+ 1 temporal dimension...)

THE BRANES

What string theory says is that you can stretch the strings long and wide, like
a membrane, except it's called a ''brane''. It is possible that our entire
Universe is in fact on a single brane among an infinity of other branes (like a
sheet in a book). Apart from maybe gravitation, there is no possible
intersection between the branes... if they exist!!! We don't even know if they
exist or not so from there make them ''intersect''...! We even think that when
two branes touch each other, it produces a Big Bang, and that's the limit of
the analogy.