Hari Taqwan Santoso

Weekly English Assiignment

The Elegant Universe

By: N.O.V.A

Its a documentation video of Brian Greene explanation about modern physics at youtube.com. That documentation was separated in to 16 series under title The Elegant Universe. Here, Brian Greene tried to explained Einsteins relativity and the quantum theory. Started from year 1900, when physicist Max Planck, observed the thermal radiation in a cavity. When an electromagnetic radiation was shot toward a body, it would be absorbed, half reflected or completely reflected depend on the material structure of that body. The body which almost complete absorb the radiation was called blackbody. In fact, those had black color. But it was not enough, because black colored body wasnt a good approximation of blackbody concept. So, Planck focused his experiment to a special blackbody, i.e. a cavity with a small hole as it door. When the radiation entered the door, it would be trapped inside the cavity and probably could not get out. Finally, Planck found a new fact of physical science at all, the quantization of energy phenomena. Further it made a great revolution in physics that assumed impossible before, i.e. the quantum mechanic.11 The second subject that told in those videos was Einsteins theory of relativity. An early idea of relativity was published by Galileo Galilei. In 17th century, Isaac Newton developed it into mathematic form and got the absolute space and time as conclusion. But at Einstein era, the idea of absolute space and time had been questionable and finally rejected by null result of Michelson-Morley. Einstein firmly declared that there was no absolute space and time, but the constant one was speed of light. It took the unity of space and time to space-time that told in special theory of relativity as implication. Not stopped here, Einstein continued his theory till release The General Theory of Relativity at 1915. By using the Riemannian Geometry he concluded that matter just a curvature of space-time. By that, Einstein predicted that a light will be curved if it was through near a big mass such as a star. It evidenced in 1919 when the total eclipse happened. Position of a group of star get shift when it saw at eclipse.

Now, quantum is popular by mean a very quick process of that so different with physical meaning a very little piece of

Hari Taqwan Santoso

Weekly English Assiignment

Unfortunately, this concept was hard to be understood because Einstein used the high level of mathematical technique to express his theory. By complex algebra operation, he resulted this equation2:

But here, Brian Greene by very simple explanation also discuss about this equation. He take an analog, space-time just like three dimensional flexure space. When we give a mass on it, it will be warped as big as mass that given before.

I like to call it equation of existence because if that equation is absolutely right, the existence of this universe just a motion and space-time. Or we can simply say we are nothing.