Who is given credit for hypothesizing the theory of relativity

Although light comes in many flavors — from the rainbow of colors humans can see to the radio waves that transmit spacecraft data — Einstein said all light must obey the speed limit of , miles , kilometers per second. So, even if two particles of light carry very different amounts of energy, they will travel at the same speed.

This has been shown experimentally in space. In , NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected two photons at virtually the same moment , with one carrying a million times more energy than the other. They both came from a high-energy region near the collision of two neutron stars about 7 billion years ago. A neutron star is the highly dense remnant of a star that has exploded.

While other theories posited that space-time itself has a " foamy " texture that might slow down more energetic particles, Fermi's observations found in favor of Einstein. Just like the Sun bends the light from distant stars that pass close to it, a massive object like a galaxy distorts the light from another object that is much farther away.

In some cases, this phenomenon can actually help us unveil new galaxies. Entire clusters of galaxies can be lensed and act as lenses, too. When the lensing object appears close enough to the more distant object in the sky, we actually see multiple images of that faraway object. In , scientists first observed a double image of a quasar, a very bright object at the center of a galaxy that involves a supermassive black hole feeding off a disk of inflowing gas.

When a massive object acts as a lens for a farther object, but the objects are not specially aligned with respect to our view, only one image of the distant object is projected. This happens much more often. Weak lensing is very important for studying some of the biggest mysteries of the universe: dark matter and dark energy.

Dark matter is an invisible material that only interacts with regular matter through gravity, and holds together entire galaxies and groups of galaxies like a cosmic glue. Dark energy behaves like the opposite of gravity, making objects recede from each other.

By surveying distortions of weakly lensed galaxies across the universe, scientists can characterize the effects of these persistently puzzling phenomena. While microlensing has so far found less than confirmed planets, WFIRST could find more than 1, new exoplanets using this technique.

The very existence of black holes, extremely dense objects from which no light can escape, is a prediction of general relativity.

This Spitzer image shows the galaxy Messier 87 M87 in infrared light, which has a supermassive black hole at its center. Around the black hole is a disk of extremely hot gas, as well as two jets of material shooting out in opposite directions. One of the jets, visible on the right of the image, is pointing almost exactly toward Earth.

The details of how such jets work are still mysterious, and scientists will continue studying black holes for more clues. Until recently, this was only theoretical. Ripples through space-time called gravitational waves were hypothesized by Einstein about years ago, but not actually observed until recently. In , an international collaboration of astronomers working with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory LIGO detectors announced a landmark discovery: This enormous experiment detected the subtle signal of gravitational waves that had been traveling for 1.

This opened a brand new door in an area of science called multi-messenger astronomy, in which both gravitational waves and light can be studied. For example, NASA telescopes collaborated to measure light from two neutron stars merging after LIGO detected gravitational wave signals from the event, as announced in Given that gravitational waves from this event were detected mere 1. Planetary exploration spacecraft have also shown Einstein to be right about general relativity.

The research hypothesis is a paring down of the problem into something testable and falsifiable. In the above example, a researcher might speculate that the decline in the fish stocks is due to prolonged over fishing. Scientists must generate a realistic and testable hypothesis around which they can build the experiment.

If over-fishing is causing a decline in the numbers of Cod, reducing the amount of trawlers will increase cod stocks. These are acceptable statements and they all give the researcher a focus for constructing a research experiment.

Though the other one is perfectly acceptable, an ideal research hypothesis should contain a prediction, which is why the more formal ones are favored. A scientist who becomes fixated on proving a research hypothesis loses their impartiality and credibility.

Statistical tests often uncover trends, but rarely give a clear-cut answer, with other factors often affecting the outcome and influencing the results. Whilst gut instinct and logic tells us that fish stocks are affected by over fishing, it is not necessarily true and the researcher must consider that outcome.

Perhaps environmental factors or pollution are causal effects influencing fish stocks. A hypothesis must be testable , taking into account current knowledge and techniques, and be realistic. If the researcher does not have a multi-million dollar budget then there is no point in generating complicated hypotheses. A hypothesis must be verifiable by statistical and analytical means, to allow a verification or falsification.

This means that the research showed that the evidence supported the hypothesis and further research is built upon that. Hypothesize about a proposed relationship between two variables, or an intervention into this relationship. The research hypothesis is often also callen H 1 and opposes the current view, called the null hypothesis H 0.

Consider the following hypotheses. Are they likely to lead to sound research and conclusions, and if not, how could they be improved? Children with insecure attachment style are more likely to engage in political dissent as adults. This is an ideal hypothesis statement. It is well-phrased, clear, falsifiable and merely by reading it, one gets an idea of the kind of research design it would inspire.

This hypothesis is less clear, and the problem is with the dependent variable. A better hypothesis might be: those who drink a cup of green tea daily display lower levels of inflammatory markers in the blood. Though this hypothesis looks a little ridiculous, it is actually quite simple, falsifiable and easy to operationalize. The obvious problem is that scientific research seldom occupies itself with supernatural phenomenon and worse, putting this research into action will likely cause damage to its participants.

When it comes to hypotheses, not all questions need to be answered! However, scientists should always be alert for their own possible biases creeping into research, and this can occur right from the start.

Normative topics with moral elements are seldom neutral. A better hypothesis will remove any contentious, subjective elements. A better hypothesis: decrease in total discretionary income corresponds to lower marriage rate in people 20 — 30 years of age. This hypothesis may yield very interesting and useful results, but practically, how will the researchers gather the data? Even if research is logically sound, it may not be feasible in the real world. A researcher might instead choose to make a more manageable hypothesis: high scores on an insecure attachment style questionnaire will correlate with high scores on a political dissention questionnaire.

Though complex, this is a good hypothesis. It is falsifiable, has clearly identified variables and can be supported or rejected using the right statistical methods. Research Hypothesis. Retrieved Nov 11, from Explorable. The text in this article is licensed under the Creative Commons-License Attribution 4.