Einstein’s theory of relativity—which holds that time and space are relative rather than absolute concepts—has guided our understanding of how the universe moves for more than 80 years. Questioning it is nearly blasphemous in the field of physics. But Assistant Professor of Science James O’Brien makes just such a contrarian case in a recent paper, in which he and a colleague detail “conformal gravity”—a new, improved math to guide the forever of space.
Why is Einstein wrong?
His theory is beautiful and very accurate when explaining smaller things like Mercury’s orbit, but it starts to have problems when you begin talking about bigger things—like collections of stars or galaxy clusters. And because Einstein’s theory doesn’t cover everything, dark energy and dark matter were introduced to make the theory work— which makes physicists comfortable, because Einstein is our guru.
But hasn’t NASA claimed to have found evidence of dark energy and dark matter?
Physics, in some ways, is like a big murder trial. With enough circumstantial evidence, we can claim it has been found, but it doesn’t mean we’ve actually found it. The ideas have been around since the 1930s, but we still haven’t seen, touched, or tasted dark matter. It is time to go in another direction.
How do you explain “conformal gravity”?
When you boil it down, it is very similar to Einstein’s general relativity, but with some new ideas that guide the physics at the largest of scales. And we believe that this extra information is what Einstein’s theory is missing, and hence why it needs unobserved quantities such as dark matter and dark energy to account for the phenomena we observe.
—Dan Morrell
