ng up to, during, and after that revolutionary year, according to the special theory of relativity. As this is the 100 anniversary of the original release of Special Relativity, a review of the original assumptions, documents and ideas that led to the acceptance of this theory is timely and warranted. Every year millions of students taught this theory without a critical analysis of Relativity. Relativity consists of two variants Special Relativity and General Relativity and is considered the cornerstone of modern physics.
Albert Einstein borrowed from the ideas Fitzgerald, Lorentz and Voigt to create a new conception of the universe. His first work in this regard later came to be known as Special Relativity and contained many controversial ideas which today is considered as obvious. Among these are Length Contraction, Time dilation, Twin Paradox and the equivalence of mass and energy are summarized in the equation E = mc2.
This equation was shining capstone of the new theory with its first & second postulates, namely that the laws of nature are the same from all perspectives and that the speed of light 'c' is constant in a vacuum, regardless of perspective. Further, the theory also predicted an increase in mass with velocity. Numerous examples have been given the "evidence" for the validity of special relativity.
Most notable is that the experiments using particle accelerators sped particles to incredible velocities which apparently provide confirmation of Einstein's theory. However, doubts remain in the scientific community, which has never entirely abandoned comfort of a Newtonian worldview. This is immediately obvious, since they refer to
In his later more comprehensive work called the theory of general relativity (1916), Einstein proposed a major rethinking of cosmology. He conceived of a space time continuum that is curved by mass, in other words, planets, stars, galaxies and other stellar objects cause a curvature of space time. Moving these objects is determined by the aforementioned curvature.
As a result of these ideas, our understanding of geometry, mathematics, physics, science and the universe never be the same. However, some researchers reported that the speed of light is not constant from different experimental observations. They have also reported errors in the fundamental equations. If so, it would require a significant rethinking of the known cosmological models and assumptions of modern physics.
