8 EINSTEIN’S UNIVERSEAS
once ivity developed a reputation for beingimpossible for an ordinary person to grasp. Matters sout in imes decided to do a story, and—forreasons t can never fail to excite t, oneo conduct terview.
Crouc of nearly everyting errors in ion t Einstein o publis only t tion stuck anyway.
Soon tivity ion—and tific establis, it must be said, did little to disturb th.
asked tisronomer Sir Arton if it rue t and Einstein’s relativity ton considered deeply for a moment and replied: “I am trying to t, tivity t it involved a lot of differentialequations, Lorentz transformations, and oted matics (t did—evenEinstein needed ), but t it so tuitive.
In essence ivity says is t space and time are not absolute, but relative to boto ter one moves ts become. e can never accelerate ourselves to t, and try (and faster orted ive to an outside observer.
Almost at once popularizers of science tried to come up o make tsaccessible to a general audience. One of ttempts—commercially atleast—ivity by tician and prand Russell. Init, Russell employed an image t imes since. oenvision a train one 60 percent of t. tosomeone standing on a platform c pass, train o be only eig too slos rain o be running at only four-fiftheir normal speed.
rain ions. to train e normal. It form o do, you see, ion relative to t.
t actually ime you move. Fly across ted States, and youep from tbely alter your oime and space. It ed t a baseball t a s o e. So ts of relativityare rea