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Relativity   Listen
noun
relativity  n.  
1.
The state of being relative; as, the relativity of a subject.
2.
One of two theories (also called theory of relativity) proposed by Albert Einstein, the special theory of relativity, or the general theory of relativity. The special theory of relativity or special relativity is based on the proposition that the speed of light is a constant no matter how observed, and is independent of the motion of the observer. From this follows several principles, such as the increase of mass with velocity (which has been confirmed: see relativistic mass equation) and the impossibility of acceleration to a speed greater than that of light; the equivalence of mass and energy, expressed by the famous equation E = mc^(2); and time dilation, which is the apparent slowing of a clock in a system, as observed by an observer in a system moving relative to the clock. The general theory of relativity is based on the proposition that there is no physical difference between gravitational force and the force produced by acceleration. From this follow several results, of which the bending of light rays in a gravitational field and the equivalence of the inertial and gravitational masses have been verified. The possible existence of black holes (believed by many astronomers to have been adequately proven) is another consequence of the theory.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Relativity" Quotes from Famous Books



... had left about the Perdu. He found that presently he himself could handle the facts of life with the light dexterity which had so amazed him; but through it all he preserved (as he could see that those about him did not) his sense of the relativity of things. He perceived, always, the dependence of the facts of life upon the ideas underlying them, and thrusting them forward as manifestations or utterances. With his undissipated energy, his curious frugality in the matter of self-revelation, and his instinctive knowledge of men, he made ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... relativity of knowledge that dances before the eye, that bewilders, eludes, evades. Group-systems and electives seem like a makeshift for the real thing. We cannot tie a fact to a pupil, because to the tail of the fact is tied history itself. ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... the universe, as an emanation of the unconscious, has been constructed. {90c} Throughout it has been marked by design, by purpose, by finality; throughout a wonderful adaptation of means to ends, a wonderful adjustment and relativity in different portions has been noticed—and all this for what conclusion? Not, as in the hands of the natural theologians of the eighteenth century, to show that the world is the result of design, of an intelligent, beneficent Creator, ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... dependent on physiology and external observation, and tend to think of matter as something much more solid and indubitable than mind. Meanwhile the physicists, especially Einstein and other exponents of the theory of relativity, have been making "matter" less and less material. Their world consists of "events," from which "matter" is derived by a logical construction. Whoever reads, for example, Professor Eddington's "Space, Time and Gravitation" (Cambridge ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... our psychic judge, and the audience would encourage him by their readiness to grasp the revelations made. The language of mysticism, philosophy, and poetry would be strained to its utmost capacity. Then a sense of incompleteness, of deficiency, of hopeless relativity would overcome the audience. The medium had exerted every spiritual faculty to receive the truth. But the visitor could not convey celestial ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... me to knock something of a hole in Einstein's relativity theory. Unless you wish to grant all these particles some method of determining their relationship to particles ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond

... of Naples have its detractors, and if there be artists who declare it inexpressive, preferring the "gloomy firs," the "clouds and perpetual north winds," of the northern seas; let it be believed, if possible, that such relativity does not exist for the human body, source ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce



Words linked to "Relativity" :   natural philosophy, general relativity theory, relativity theory, Einstein's theory of relativity, event, relative, general theory of relativity, theory of relativity, quality, relativistic, general relativity, special theory of relativity, principle of relativity, special relativity, special relativity theory, Einstein's special theory of relativity, physics



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